Sleep

I'm looking forward to my upcoming foot surgery so I can get a little sleep. I long for anesthesia. I can't remember the last time I was able to have a long stretch of sleep.
Maybe after my C section when I had the nurse put the twins in the nursery for the night? Much to the nurse's disgust I OK'd a bottle feeding and said I wanted sleep. I had 2 kids at home and special needs kids don't sleep.
Oliver used to wake around 1 am and stay awake until 6 am. Not just kinda awake. Not just playing in his bed. No, he was UP. He would get out of bed, go into the living room, dump all the throw pillows onto the floor and jump off of the sofa onto them. He would shriek with delight. He would tear through the house giggling. He would shake with excess energy. No one could sleep through Oliver. He would then go to preschool where he'd pass out on the floor. An expensive preschool. We were paying to have him nap. We talked to the pediatrician who suggested we get him a special bear to sleep with. Clearly that would never work, but I gave him one. He was not interested in a bear. The pediatrician suggested fear of the dark and thought we should invest in night lights. I didn't think he was afraid of the dark since he was happy to run around our pitch black house between 1 and 6:00 am. But I got a night light. A cool Buzz Lightyear night light. He likes the night light, but it didn't help with the sleep issues. We called in a sleep therapist. Sleep therapists are $225 an hour.
By this point I'd had the twins and my one good night of sleep. I didn't feel guilty about the twin's bottle feeding, I didn't succumb to the guilt which that nurse heaped on me when I wanted the twins to sleep in the nursery. This was my one shot at sleep and I'm glad I took it. I look back on that night fondly.
Everyone, friends, my OB, random strangers, told us we needed help in those first few weeks with twins.
You will get no sleep, they sagely informed us.
You've never experienced sleep deprivation like this.
We hired a night nanny for those first few weeks that everyone told us to dread. She was experienced with twins and preemies. She loved being a night nanny. I don't know why anyone would like that, let alone love it. Staying up all night listening to babies cry? Fun. She was amazing with the babies. They loved her. We joked about how our children would have this vague memory of this fantastic blonde mom but then the memory would morph into images of me and Jeff. The poor kids would wonder what happened.
As it turns out twins aren't so bad. Sure they are up more because they wake each other, but here is the thing: they also sleep. See, Oliver didn't. So we had this wonderful night nanny but since Oliver was tearing around the house it didn't really matter. We still couldn't get any sleep. Holden was fascinated by this woman who would sometimes be in our house in the middle of the night. He thought she was the tooth fairy. After all the tooth fairy arrives when you are sleeping, right? He was so excited when he'd see her and he'd run to me to report his sightings.
Unfortunately Oliver's sleeping habits negated the help of a night nanny so we ended that arrangement.
The sleep therapist arrived and we spent an hour or so describing our situation. She had a lot of suggestions. In the end, we gave Oliver Benedryl. Every night. For about a year. He sleeps now. When he does wake up he doesn't run through the house. He gets into our bed. Along with everyone else. Its not ideal, but not worth the fight of getting him back in bed. At least we get an hour or two at a time.
Laurel and Griffin are in toddler beds. They have free reign once they are up. We usually have someone join us at the 4 am mark. If both join us then we are in for some sort of altercation over a pillow or just the right spot. There have been times when all 6 of us are in our bed. There is ALWAYS a fight if that happens. Someone took someone's spot and they were there first and its their turn to be next to mommy and he always gets to be there and its not fair and she took my bear and thats my blankie and I had that first...
THIS IS MY BED AND THERE IS NO FIGHTING IN THIS BED! IF YOU WANT TO FIGHT YOU GO TO YOUR OWN ROOMS!
So now that our sleep schedule is relatively sorted out and we get a whole 3 hours at a stretch I introduce a 6 week old kitten into the mix.
Guess who pooped under the bed at 5:30 am?