It's strange. On Saturday, I thought I'd finally hit my stride. I was feeling good and unstressed and rested. On Sunday, I was feeling a bit fatigued. And on Monday, I was toast, of the burnt to a crisp variety.
Just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of this crazy experiment, the road totally schooled my ass!
Admittedly, it was an insane weekend. Here's the quick rundown.
Thursday -- Claire and Dave leave in at 6pm in the baby bus, headed for Louisville, KY.
Friday -- I get up super early and fly into Lexington, KY. We hang at the hotel. Dave and I play a gig at 8:30pm
Saturday -- We get up at 5:15am, leave by 6am to drive 8 hours to Boone, Carolina. Play a gig at 4pm. We're asleep by 9pm.
Sunday -- get up at 6am, leave by 7am, drive 4 hours to Newberry, SC. Play a gig at 3pm. Meet up with one of my oldest and bestest friends Desaray and her wife Lauren. Hang until 9, hit the rack, wake up at 11:30pm, leave the hotel by 12:30pm. Drive 4 hours to the Atlanta Airport, fly from there to Dallas and then home to Austin. Get in about 9:50am.
Dave and Claire? They drove home from there. Total driving time, 23 hours.
Luckily, I have the most amazing parents in the world. They picked Lisel and I up from the airport, and watched her while I napped. They even suggested that I sleep over last night, so Dave could get a full nights sleep after a full days drive.
And yet even with their help, I woke up today, zonkered. I was kaput, done, practically empty and bone tired.
Yeah I've been thinking, thinking, thinking and worrying. Because I'm starting to think that Dave and I might be doing some real damage stress wise to ourselves.
The baby? She's fine. She's happy. She seems to be rolling with this quite well. It's Dave and Clair and me that I worry about.
Here's my deal. At home, I get just enough sleep. Lisel still wakes up during the night but Dave takes night duty. He can get her back to sleep relatively quickly and easily. And about 5am, we bring her bed with us. I'm still nursing, and I love, love, love co-sleeping and waking up with Lisel is definitely one of my favorite things.
On the road I pretty much get no sleep at all.
Because on the road Dave is exhausted from driving. And sometimes Clair sleeps in the room with us (because we can't afford another room all the time) so it's up to me to take night duty. And letting Lisel cry it out is not really an option because if she cries for a couple of hours then no one gets any sleep.
We need a quiet, sleeping baby.
My solution? Bring the baby in bed with us and nurse her back to sleep. Which is quite quick and effective on the quiet sleeping baby front.
On the mommy front, not so much.
Lisel sleeping next to me all night is a tossing, turning, thrashing, nursing bonaza. As I told Claire earlier today, Lisel is basically sleeping next to her favorite food.
It would be like me getting in bed with a big plate Tamale House migas. I'd be asleep, and then I'd wake up just enough to smell the migas, and I'd be all, "Yum, migas, me want migas." and I'd eat a bite and go back to sleep for an hour, and then I'd wake up and be all "MMMMM migas, just one bite," and then I'd fall back asleep only to wake up 45 minutes later smelling those delicious migas...
You get what I'm saying right.
So we go on the road and I get all sleep deprived, and then we get home and I get a little sleep, and then we go on the road...
Y'all, I know about sleep training okay! And we're trying it! But we're never home long enough to get any kind of rhythm going! And well, maybe we're not trying so hard but when we're home we need our sleep! So letting the bean cry it out...maybe we're putting it off okay! Stop judging me!
Um, what? You weren't judging me? You were just reading. Maybe I projected a little. Dude, I'm sorry. But I'm so tired...
Anywho, here's the deal. We're going to start experimenting on making this road thing more doable, and less stressful. And I'm going to blog about it. And I'm open to any and all advice. I think we can do this and make it work without killing ourselves, but I have a feeling it's going to take all the creativity we can muster.
I'll let you know how it goes.
2 comments:
i have no advice! i cant even imagine. i have so little advice im shocked and amazed, and a little refreshed cause, you know me, i have LOTS of opinions about everything, but my point is I love YOU!
Babies get into habits. If they find that they can only get to sleep by, e.g. nursing in their Mom's bed, then that will be the method of choice, and no substitution will be accepted. Retraining baby to learn another way to comfort themselves means, when they're really young, one or two tough nights of crying. But the older they get, the harder it gets to retrain them. Our daughter found a really good way. She nursed her baby with a Gund "Huggybuddy" kitty (they come in a variety of animals) -- its like a kitten head on a blanket. The baby associated the kitty with comfort. They would then put her to bed with "Kitty." Now the only problem is what happens if they can't find Kitty. That's why they always have a spare. Now, at 21 months, the baby goes to sleep in just a few minutes; very little fuss, if ever.
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