The Worst January

Warning, major whine fest ahead.

It’s amazing that I’m not asleep right now, but it is what it is. I felt like writing this down so I don’t forget just how horrible things are right now. To put it in perspective, we’re mostly healthy, barring some stubborn pneumonia, so horrible is all relative.

Our nightly ritual before my pneumonia and Juniper’s terrible cold:
Tom get’s home from work around 7 – 7:15 and I have dinner ready. We eat and Tom takes Juniper upstairs for bath time while I do the dishes. At about 8:30 I come upstairs after bath time and me and Juniper commence to reading, brushing teeth, and trying to go to sleep. Ever since we removed the side of her crib in the beginning of September, she wants us to fall asleep next to her crib. If we try to leave before she’s fully asleep, she cries. She usually falls asleep around 10. I can sometimes get out of her room at 9:30 if I’m really lucky but most nights lately I get out of there around 10:30. Tom is usually downstairs watching some tv show I never have time to watch and I tell him I’m going to bed. We barely talk to or see each other during the week. Occasionally like on Friday or Saturday I’ll stay up a little later and we’ll watch an episode of Justified or something like that. I’m almost always in bed asleep an hour before Tom. Juniper has been waking up in the middle of the night once or twice and I take care of her so my sleep is effed up and I need to get it when I can.

In early January I started getting really sick and stopped sleeping in our bed all together. I slept on the couch where I could cough in private without disturbing Tom’s sleep. I also couldn’t put Juniper back to bed in the middle of the night so Tom took over that duty. And I guess my coughing kinda made me sound like I had the black plague and Tom was afraid of contracting my illness so he stopped kissing me on the mouth or he did so reluctanlty. Many nights as I lay on the couch, coughing my lungs out, Tom would go straight upstairs from the basement, rarely saying goodnight to me, probably thinking I was already asleep, which I never was. So I went to sleep feeling physically terrible and feeling emotionally very alone.

Turned out I had pneumonia. So January 7th through about the 21st I was on the couch alone, coughing up a storm, trying to recover. I still read to Juniper and stayed with her until about 9:30 but couldn’t lay down next to her crib without starting a coughing fit so Tom took over the last bits of Juniper falling asleep. He also took over most nights of her waking up in the middle of the night. Tom was able to work from home for one week while I was at my worst so he took Juniper to daycare and picked her up. I tried to sleep as much as I could but while Juniper was home, Tom had to work a lot of the time. I was able to start sleeping in our bed around January 21st but as soon as I stopped having coughing fits at night, that’s when Juniper’s started.

It’s now January 24th. My pneumonia has appeared to have gone away, though I’m getting nervous it’s coming back. I had crackling in my throat tonight as I lay in bed. Juniper has been sick that past 3 nights in a row with a horrible cough, stuffy nose and low grade fever. I’ve been staying up with her in the middle of the night on the couch when she coughs and cries. One night we stayed up for a coupe hours and had some cereal before trying to sleep on the couch together. Last night was the worst. We were up together from midnight until about 6:30 when she finally stopped coughing and we came upstairs and got into the big bed. We got three hours of sleep before she woke up at 9:30. All night long we tried to sleep on the couch. She would cough, then cry, then grab me and say “I want you mommy.” Then cry again. Oh, and she rarely takes naps during the day. I have to drive around for miles to get her to go to sleep and it sometimes doesn’t work at all.

I’ve seen two friends in the last three weeks. One for some tea and a playdate when I was still sick with pneumonia but had to get out of the house and one for a few minutes as she picked up Juniper for a playdate so I could get some rest.

Since July Tom and I have had exactly two dates. One of them was a brunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary where we just drove down the street 6 blocks and ate breakfast while our friends watched juniper. It was about an hour total. Our second date was in San Francisco for Tom’s office Xmas party. It wasn’t exactly a date but it was at least getting out late at night with adults and adult beverages. We have no babysitter in Portland right now and I fear with her current bedtime regime, I don’t know how it would work with a babysitter. I feel like I barely see my husband. I’ve been sleeping on the couch for three weeks now. I’m not getting enough sleep. I am worried I’m not recovering well from pneumonia and I don’t know what to do about it. There have been so many colds and flus this season. I don’t know if I can take much more of this. But I have no choice. I take whatever comes, and I take care of my baby. My needs and the needs of our marriage take a back seat.

This is where I am right now. And by the way, I can hear Juniper coughing down the hall. I’m prepared tonight. Sleeping on the couch with her the past 3 nights has been really uncomfortable, so I set up the futon in the basement. When it was just me on the couch, I could sleep on my back, propped up on pillows, but with her, she rolls into me and tries to squish her body up against me, so I end up with about 6 inches of couch and I have to sleep on my side.

So that’s the terrible start to our year. Even though 2013 has really sucked so far, I have really high hopes for February. Juniper will go from having 2 days of daycare to 3 days and my grad school applications will be done as of February 1st. I will be free once again to set my own schedule and I won’t have to squeeze any free time I have into working on my grad school apps. I can once again go to the gym. I’m going to try to find a babysitter. We’re planning on a much needed trip to sunny Florida some time in March. So if I can just shake this pneumonia, February should be a-ok, right? Juniper can’t stay sick forever, right? She’s going to learn to fall asleep on her own again right? I’m going to get to spend time again with my husband, yes?


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