Newborn-babyitis

I’ve acquired newborn-babyitis.

This involves being confused about night-time and day time. Specifically it means where the rest of the world believes it’s time to sleep my brain and body is a non-believer.

Don’t be fooled by this sweetly sleeping infant. This photo was snapped midday.

Like a newborn, this occurs at the most inconvenient times and places. Specifically at bedtime and in bed.

There’s no logical reason for a baby to think it’s time for alert and active thrashing about and for making various odd noises when almost everyone else (except those who work third shift) has drifted off into dreamland, or as I call it, “that which cannot be named or achieved.”

There’s no logical reason for my own thrashing about and the sense of my body plugged into a direct current of electricity. Wakeful and semi-alert well past bedtime reeks of the nonsensical and infuriating.

This state of unrest, literally un-rest, is particularly aggravating when not ten minutes before climbing into bed my head kept nodding off to the side, dreams kept intruding in the current episode of White Collar or Burn Notice on Netflix, and my eyelids had lost the ability to remain open.

Why, oh why, oh why, couldn’t that near comatose state in the family room translate into the bedroom, on comfy pillows, with a fluffy comforter and total silence?

Unlike a newborn, I don’t have a wet diaper, I don’t need feeding, I’m past the swaddling stage, a binky is completely optional lately and swinging or rocking would just make me nauseous.

This happens even following a completely caffeine-free day. No diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew. And no, none of that surreptitious caffeine like they sometime put in Root beer. My body craves, desires, requires, can’t go on without, will go stark raving mad without sleep. I’m not about to jeopardize that with a little fizzy fling on ice.

Why such rebellion from an otherwise cooperative and compliantly sleepy brain? I sort of understand the infant’s topsy-turvy sleep schedule. They’ve been ensconced in a perfect floating world for so long where sleeping and waking all looked and felt the same. Suddenly changing when those things happen appears illogical to that tiny brain. But a full-grown, semi-sane adult should drop off into Never Never Land with nary a thought.

It’s like getting in the car and finding the engine won’t turn over. Not even an Rrrrrr, or a click. Just Nothingness. A giant void of non sleep. I don’t even begin to approach that little ledge between consciousness and sleep. Yeah, you know, that elusive line of awareness, fuzziness and goneness. That blissful, wonderful, coveted lack of sensation.

That slippery slope dried up recently. A fence got built in its place.

Baby blankets (Photo credit: happydacks)

Grrr.

I’ve had experience with sleep meds so I’m not really anxious to go there.  Poor sad potato.<<== Click there to make sense of that weird phrase and to understand my reluctance to go the chemical route.

Eventually newborns adjust their sleep patterns to conform to the family schedule. At least usually. Or so I’ve heard. Not sure I ever experienced that with my own children.

I could take a cue from the wee little ones. Maybe I need to try a pacifier, a blankie and a lullaby or two.

And naps. Lots and lots of napping.