Jealousy

Have you ever been so jealous of someone sleeping that you just want to punch them in the face?

You may or may not laugh at that question but feel free to.  I do all the time whenever I ask myself or anyone else that question.

I'm not much of a sleeper, never really have been and according to my mother I started phasing out naps at only 14 months.  Being older now though, I crave sleep something fierce most days.  I need it.  I want it.  I dream about it.

Yes, you read that correctly.  I DREAM ABOUT SLEEPING!  Which means, while I'm sleeping, my body craves it SO MUCH that I actually dream about it.  Disturbing fact, isn't it? 

Anyway, insomnia wracks my body every night and exhaustion sometimes takes over but it's never for very long.  It's terrible. 

I'll give you a for instance, I got a mere 2.5 hours of sleep last night and it wasn't even all at once, it was broken up.  There are various reasons for this much lack of sleep, a teething 14 month old, a fussy 3 month old who just started new medicine, a heat exhausted husband throwing up most of the night.  You get the idea. 

Four hours of sleep is my usual.  That's right, I make all this happen on a mere four hours of broken sleep every night. 

So I looked up some statistics and guess what?  The average new mother only gets about four hours of broken sleep for the first 2 years of her child's life.  The average new father gets about six hours for those first two years.  Go figure.  I'm not a man hater, I just get so jealous of people who get more sleep than I do.  It's kind of funny actually. 

I sat here reading over this information and thought back to my high school health class days when I was told that the average adult required six to eight hours of sleep and that without that much sleep our minds started to lose functionality on its base levels. 

I then thought back to the new mother/father sleep statistics and thought to myself, how the HELL do we do it?  

How do we manage to function even on our basal levels when we aren't getting the amount of sleep required to completely refresh our brains and bodies every night?

It's a question I pondered for a few hours before I came to this conclusion:  Sheer willpower.

That's right, willpower is what makes us, as parents, so friggin awesome.  We get very little recognition for all our hard work and even less sleep but the rewards are endless and wonderful and that is what keeps us going.  

The love from our children, their little smiles when they see us, their wonderful giggles, the sparkle in their eyes when you show them something new and the like is what makes all this lack of sleep so very worth it.

I can't tell you how much my life has changed in the past two years.  I had two beautiful baby girls, got married and have learned so many things I sometimes feel as though my head is going to explode but it is all worth it when I wake up in the morning and my little girls are smiling at me, cooing or babbling and ready beyond words to start their new day of exploration with me and daddy.  

So there you have it folks, I hate sleeping people because I never get enough sleep but I'll continue to do it just the same because my girls are the only reason I need to keep getting up every morning despite the sleepless nights.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.