Somehow the idea of playing house was a lot easier in my dreams of having a family (much like the idea of getting pregnant being easy, the idea of leaving high school for the big bad world being easy, the idea of doing it all being easy). The idea of losing weight after babies being easy. But that is a whole other post! Back to the topic at hand …
A 3 year old boy and a 2 year old boy require about the same amount of exercise as 6 farm dogs to be tired enough to sleep at night. Or 2 Labrador puppies. Hence we have had sleep issues for years now. I am not even joking. At 11 months old F was in hospital with a bad virus and decided on me was the only place to go to sleep at night. Fast forward a year and he still felt I was the only place to go to sleep at night. This became exhausting and meant I had no time out in the evenings. C then decided that he needed to come into our bed in the middle of the night and F soon followed suit. Then they both decided sleep was for sissies. Fun times! I conclude that this was my punishment for having babies who slept through from 5 weeks old.
Until they didn’t.
Lack of sleep for extended periods of time does funny things to a person. Essentially my memory has been fried. This makes work difficult when I can’t remember which customer I was serving, I forget I took someone’s passport and immigration papers and it takes tears to return them half an hour later when it suddenly clicks that I had indeed served them (oops!) and I have the attention span of a fruit fly (I may or may not have googled that, google is awesome, especially when you tell it you have x,y and z wrong with you and it tells you you are dying). Anyway, what was I talking about again?
Right, so lack of sleep can really stuff you up (did I already say that?) and I am at the point where I literally feel like I might be going crazy (in a hormonal evil witch way, a which way is up way and a ‘CHOCOLATE!’ kind of way – hence the weight thing becoming an issue). My solution over summer was to drink lots of beer (on top of the coffee addiction). Unfortunately after months of multiple beers a night I realised that alcohol was making the problem of being snappy and grumpy and just not a box of fluffies worse. I’m not depressed, I’m just exhausted with two very full on (F is VERY full on) little boys on a few hours sleep a night, 5am wake ups, a full time job, a commute home, 2 hours in the evening with which to stay on top of house work and cook dinner (enter exhibit number 2 causing weight gain – easy meals. Sausages in bread, sausage rolls, pies, pasta, rice – pretty much anything that does not include anything green or rather, anything one might consider healthy).
So yes, I am a balanced crazy. But nobody wants to admit that they find it hard do they?
Does anyone else often feel crazy from this full time job called parenting where you have tiny little unpredictable humans driving you slightly insane while being completely loveable at the same time?
