Not What I Had In Mind

So this has been a sleep-deprived week at the Joy household. I wrote about the ridiculous lack of sleep over the church retreat weekend, starting with Rose waking me at 4am Saturday with a tooth that had fallen out, then 20 straight hours awake partying at the retreat, then 2 1/2 hours of sleep and not much more than dozing the rest of Saturday night...

Catching up from that big deprivation wasn't going well. Joy did a lot of night wakings this past week, of the kind in which she wakes at 2:30 or 3am and starts enjoying herself in the crib, with loud comments. Sometimes she'll snooze again at 5am, sometimes she just stays awake. And then she doesn't nap! As you can imagine, the big people have a hard time sleeping through this too.

Finally on Friday night I had a good solid 8-hour night. It would have been longer (Joy slept till we woke her at 7am, eleven hours!) but I had bell practice all morning and we needed to get a week's worth of groceries before I left.

Oh, how I was hoping for a solid night last night, to consolidate my rest and make the world right!

But Rose came to my bedside at 2:30. "My tummy doesn't feel good." I staggered out of bed, gave her some simethicone, and sent her back to her room. Ten minutes later, she was back. "I threw up all over my bed," she reported.

Aughh. Got her moved onto the couch with a barf bucket, stripped her bed, started the laundry... and woke up Joy. Who didn't go back to sleep. But that was the least of the worries.

Rose, wide awake, wanted a video. So we curled up on the couch to watch, and she then started heaving at intervals of 10 or 15 minutes. I lost count of how many trips I made to dump the bucket.

Eventually she was tired enough to sleep, thought the barfing was done, go to bed Mommy, I'll stay on the couch. So I gratefully hauled back to bed, about 4am this was. Ten minutes later, she's at my side. She'd whoopsed again, and without my help she didn't get the bucket in time. So now I have another load of laundry to do, and I'm back out to the living room. To lie down on the floor, since Rose is now using the whole couch. She was so tired she actually did nap, but the ten-minute intervals continued, with me on duty listening for the gagging since she couldn't position the bucket in her sleep.

Finally JoyDad got up after 5 sometime. I put him on bucket duty and wearily crawled away to bed. I did get to "sleep in" at that point. And the last bucket, that I dumped just as he was getting up, was (wonder of wonders!) the last retch. He didn't have to oversee a single one. Lucky, lucky dude.

Despite a few hours of morning sleep, I don't feel much rested.

This was not what I had in mind.

UPDATE: Well, just when I get a good self-indulgent whine on, I read something that makes me count my blessings. Prayers for Nik and his mama over at Maternal Instincts. They're having a rough time right now, and sleep deprivation is just part of it.