Pregnant me is different because I get soooo tired for no reason other than that an inch-long unrecognizable baby is sucking me dry of energy.  The last few days I’ve napped during the day, despite objection #2 above.  Today I got lucky and was able to get both kids down for a nap at once, thereby freeing myself to also sleep.  Other days I’ve slept while Maggie napped, rationalizing that Degen is old enough to take care of himself in baby-proofed areas.  I’ve also snoozed on the couch in front of the TV as the kids watched My Friends Tigger and Pooh or whatever else popped on the kids station or roamed the house freely.  It’s nice to have my father-in-law, Dick, around as an emergency backup adult for the times when I involuntarily collapse on the couch.  At least someone else would (probably) hear the kids crying.

I vaguely remember something like this when I was pregnant with Maggie, only it was different then because I had only one child and he was less than a year and a half old.  That meant he didn’t get offended when I’d put him in front of the TV for hours while I slept, no matter how guilty I felt about it.  He happily played with his toys and watched his videos over and over and over again.  Not so, now.  When I try to sleep when Degen is awake now, he’ll run up and shake me, screaming “Wake up, Mommy! Open your eyes!” repeatedly.  Hard instructions to resist.

Why is it that when I wake up in the morning I feel refreshed and rested, but when I nap during the day I usually feel like I just need another nap?  I HAVE to take the naps, but they just aren’t very restful.  I seem to feel slightly less nauseated in the evenings when I nap during the day, which is payoff enough to justify them to myself, but why won’t they wake my head up too?  Ten minutes or three hours, it doesn’t seem to make a difference how long the nap is, I just don’t feel a whole lot better in the end.  Hmph.

For those of you who are wondering if the next nine months are going to be a play-by-play of my pregnancy, brace yourselves for the worst because I’m hardly interested in anything else at the moment.  In fact, my brain probably isn’t clear enough at the moment to speak reliably on any other subject.  In fact, when I think of the things I’ve said in the past that were most embarrassing and thoughtless, nearly all of them were while I was pregnant (a couple were during high school or while I was dating Colin, but they are the minority of the group).  There are times when I really wish I could go hide alone in an air-conditioned cave at the outskirts of town for a few months and just sleep and eat while I’m pregnant, then re-join society when I’m fit to interact pleasantly and coherently.  Aren’t there societies that let women do that while they’re pregnant?  I think someone told me so once and it stuck with me…except the part about what they were called and how to find them and join them.  I guess I’m doing the next best thing right now–living with family who help take care of me and forgive me more readily than the rest of the world might.

After all that, I’m finally starting to awake from the haze my nap left me in.  And the kids are still asleep!  Yay!  What to do with all this lack of energy while I have some free time?

I’ve been exercising 30 minutes a day, every day except Sundays, for more than 40 days now!  This is a huge change for previously unathletic me, and I’ve learned a couple of things in the process.  I thought I’d record my thoughts on the subject while I’m in a good mood so that next time I feel grumpy about exercising I can read over it again.

1. Exercising is great stress relief, helps me relax, and puts me in a good mood.  Even when I hate it while I’m doing it, once I’m done I have more patience with my family and it’s easier to have a good attitude about my problems.  I’m generally happier than I was before I started exercising every day.

2. Variety is important for me.  I’ve been doing a yoga video at home in the evenings for the last couple of weeks because I could do it inside with the kids, and at night when it’s too dark to safely go outside (and I’m sure people are in the apartment complex gym…I’m shy that way).  The last two days I started getting REALLY annoyed with the woman on the video and started exercising half-heartedly.  Last night, in the middle of my video, I decided to try something else.  I got the iPod out and went for a walk around the apartment complex–it was only dusk (reluctant thanks to Daylight Savings), and being outside was really refreshing.  This morning I walked for a while outside, then went to the gym and ran for a while, then lifted some weights.  It’s much easier to keep exercising if I can quit Option A when I get sick of it and have Options B and C to switch to.

3. Exercising while listening to something helps me work out longer.  Listening to the scriptures helps me focus and be calm (plus I get some scripture study in), while listening to upbeat music motivates me to keep going and distracts me when I don’t want to keep going.

4. Working out in the morning is best, even though it’s possibly the hardest time of day to make myself do it.  When I do it in the morning, it’s not hanging over my head as a to-do all day.  I also have that feeling of confidence-boosting accomplishment to start the day with and motivate me to keep it up.  Plus, I’ve got the endorphins going while I do my foundational work of the day, instead of “wasting” them while I sleep at night.

5. I sleep better when I exercise.  I haven’t had a whole lot of trouble sleeping since high school (when I hardly slept at all), but early this year stress started bugging me to the point that I couldn’t shut it off when I got to bed and it would take me a long time to get to sleep.  Since I’ve been exercising, that problem has totally gone away and I usually go to sleep happy.

6. Exercising every day is possible with little kids and without money.  Sometimes the kids work out with me.  Sometimes I exercise in 5-min increments in order to get my 30 minutes in.  We had a couple of nights without electricity and I still exercised.  I haven’t spent a penny on working out since I started this goal.

7. I don’t have to exercise a huge amount or get super-sweaty to make a difference or to lose weight.  Even a happy little walk outside or the easiest level of that workout video is worthwhile.

8. Runners aren’t as crazy as I always thought.  Running is sometimes easier than walking fast…who knew?h

9. My body really does improve and get stronger as I consistently exercise.  Having never really exercised regularly, it was hard to believe that if I made the effort I would see a difference.  Everyone has heard that exercising a muscle will increase its strength, but now I’ve actually experienced it.

10. Exercising alone is one of the few things I’ve discovered that will convince my mind to turn off its “mom-radar.”  You moms know–it’s that part of your brain that is always paying attention to whether the kids are doing okay.  It’s on when I’m sleeping, it’s on while they’re sleeping, it’s even on when Colin is watching them while I go on errands by myself.  Until now, the only time I would find that it would turn off was when I’d pay a trusted babysitter to watch the kids and go on a date with my husband.  But when I’m exercising alone away from the house it turns off.  Exercising is at least as good for my sanity as our weekly date.

11. Having social support is important.  For those days when I’m discouraged and don’t want to keep it up, it’s a huge help to have Colin around to be accountable to.  I know he’ll ask me if I exercised before we go to bed, and I don’t want to say no.  And if I tell him I don’t want to exercise today, he’ll give me a long list of reasons not to give up.

12. Rewards make it easier, and they don’t have to be food-related or expensive to be motivational. Especially at the beginning, I found myself thinking of how I could keep walking for just a few more minutes or stay up the extra half hour at night to get my 30 minutes in, because if I did I’d get flowers at the end of the week.

13. Ironically, when I exercise I have MORE energy to do other things, not less.  Weird, but true.

14. Weight lifting is sometimes more fun than yoga, walking, running, or cycling.  You have more instant gratification–I have a feeling of accomplishment every time I finish a set of repetitions, and that only takes a minute or two in some cases.

Last night was the third night we tried it.  The first night it was so late at night and he was so exhausted that he went to sleep after only three trips to bed (including the initial bedtime routine).  The second night I believe we put him back to bed five times.  Nap time yesterday was only two trips to bed.  Last night it was around five times, but there was a rogue factor in that I wasn't home the whole time and Colin was asleep in bed, having taken some Benadryl for a runny nose/sore throat.  I think we're doing great, especially since the examples in the book talk about being required to take 144 trips back to bed the first night.  So, I'm excited that he's doing so well and that it's so much easier than I expected.  If I have to take him back to bed three times every night for the next year, I think that's totally doable. 

I have to explain that Dr. W doesn't recommend letting all kids cry themselves to sleep.  In fact, his book is designed specifically to help you to not have to do that by not creating sleep problems in your baby.  We tried letting Degen cry himself to sleep once when he was about 3 months old.  We let him cry for exactly 38 minutes, as we hid in the bathroom and tried to ignore the sound coming through the walls.  He just got more and more angry and cried harder and harder.  So we gave up on that method of teaching him to sleep…until we read this book. 

Dr. W explains that you have a responsibility to teach your child to soothe himself to sleep.  When he has a sleep problem, there are a couple of ways to help him learn to soothe himself: one, to go "cold turkey" and ignore him till he goes to sleep, no matter how long it takes; or two, to do the gentler method of letting him cry for gradually longer periods of time and soothing him in between (five minutes of crying, go calm him down, six minutes, calm, seven minutes, calm, etc. until he goes to sleep).  Because Degen had already transitioned to a toddler bed and because I didn't believe in the sleep-deprived condition I was in that I could be perfectly consistent, we chose to go the cold turkey ignoring route.

The first time we tried it Degen cried for over two hours, screaming and banging on the door to his room.  The second time it was about and hour and a half.  A week later it was about half an hour.  Now, five months later it's usually zero to five minutes of crying, with an occasional bad night.  I told Colin tonight that it's still agonizing for me to leave him in his room and close the door at night when he's calling for me.  His response was that it's hard for him to, that we have no real assurance that it's not scarring him for life, but that we're doing our best.  Small comfort…

However, the benefits are immense, both to Degen and to us as parents.  When we started, Degen refused to take naps and regularly wouldn't go to sleep until 11pm or 1am, then would wake up around 3am and scream for an hour until we took him downstairs to watch TV until he fell asleep again around 4 or 4:30.  Then he would sleep until between 7am and 9am and repeat the cycle.  Poor Colin was sleeping with him on the couch practically every night.

Within a couple of weeks of reading this book, Degen was taking 1-2 hour naps every afternoon, going to sleep by 5:30pm and staying asleep in his room until 7am and sometimes later, with the occasional 5-minute wakeup cry in the middle of the night.  It's made a huge difference in his mood and his ability to get along and play with others.  Now that he's a little older and more well-rested, he goes to bed around 6-6:30pm, but he still takes his nap and he rarely wakes up at night.  And Colin and I get a normal amount of sleep and are much happier and better able to cope, too.

For Degen, I'm grateful for the benefits of this method of getting him to sleep, but still uncomfortable about letting him sit in his room in the dark by himself.  The next step is to teach him to stay in his bed at night and not come to the door…  I'm gearing up for the fight in the near future.  After that, we'll start putting Maggie in the crib in his room at night.

Besides the benefit to Degen, Healthy Sleep Habits has helped us prevent problems with Maggie!  We learned about normal sleep patterns, how to tell when a baby is sleepy and not yet overtired, what to expect, and how to help her learn to soothe herself in a normal way.  And it's working!  Maggie sleeps for 45 mins to 1 hour every 1 1/2 or 2 hours and sleeps through the night most nights now.  Sometimes we have to leave her in her bassinet for a little while, but I've never had to leave her there for more than 10 minutes before she went to sleep, and most often she just drifts off after a couple of whiny protest yells.  It's wonderful!  And it makes me feel good that we're sort of getting it right with our second kid.

So, hopefully we haven't scarred Degen for life.  In any case, I recommend this book to anyone who has a child (the book talks about how to deal with problems up to age 16) or who is expecting a child.  It's a real education on how sleep should happen, how it gets messed up, and how to fix it.  And for those of you with colicky babies: first, I'm so so so sorry, and second, this book might be a lifesaver for you since he spends much of the first chapters discussing that particular problem. 

Happy sleeping!