If I don't get some sleep, I'm going to go to Wal-Mart and start biting random people while screaming Puck's speech from the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Through my life, I've been a connoisseur of sleep deprivation, beginning in the days of my youth when I handfed a few litters of orphan kittens round the clock. That was when I first knew the real meaning of tired. Then I turned into a monitor moth, staying up until three, four, or five in the morning chatting with friends who pretended they were attractive and witty in real life. After that was nursing school. By the last semester I was running on one or two hours of sleep a night, a trick that I didn't try again until I worked through a nursing agency years later. Because I'm a moron, I accepted shifts around the clock, sent my sleep schedule packing, and learned how to completely lose consciousness behind the wheel of a car.
But now? Now the Anti-Sandman sentry behind my eyelids has a new name.
Jasmine. Jasmine the sonorous, Jasmine the ill-timed, Jasmine the herald of hungry. There is no bed so comfortable that Jasmine the Tenacious will not notify us repeatedly through the night that She Needs Attending, and that we as her loyal lackeys should snap to and attend.
Well, I say "we" and "us," but really it's just me. You see, my darling husband sleeps like a brick. A brick strung out on Queyludes and benedryl. And if by some terrible chance he does wake up, he doesn't act like Robert. He acts like Genghis Khan, bent on conquering the pillows and blankets despite the Himlaya-like cold in the bedroom. I bear him no ill will for this, but it means that I am the only one getting up with the baby. All. Night. Long. Every. Stinking. Night.
"But what about daytime?" I hear you scream. "Can't he take care of her in the daytime while you get some sleep?" Well, I'm sure he would be more than happy to do that, except that her fussing causes an allergic reaction in him---it makes him break out in panic attacks. I'm not upset with him about this...at least, not unless it's three in the morning. But it does make it rather difficult. Of course, work still has to be done. When I get called in for a shift at the nursing home, I usually don't have much of a problem, even if I haven't slept in days and am hallucinating a little bit. I just have to make sure that the neon green echidnas don't steal the keys to my car, and it's all gravy from there.
I'm sure one day this will all work out and Jasmine will get on some kind of sleep schedule...perhaps not necessarily a convenient schedule, but a schedule. To everyone that told me during my pregnancy to "Sleep when the baby sleeps," I acknowledge your advice as sound, however...I don't believe this baby will ever sleep.
As soon as she starts letting me catch some Z's, I plan to be waiting up at all hours for a now-teenager Alex to get home and explain where exactly he's been until two AM, thank you very much, and doesn't he know its past his curfew, and he has some serious explaining to do, and is that beer I smell, and don't you know this is the good couch and you shouldn't be puking on it, and you had better pick yourself up off the floor and get into your room because you are GROUNDED, young man.
