One is a baby food, one is a carpet, one is a sleep method, and one is what my brain feels like today.
After 2 more rough nights, I am trying to formulate a new plan, and that plan is . . . I need to take a week off of work and Ferberize this kid.
I have no sick time. I have no vacation time, unless I want to steal from Christmas. I am not allowed to take unpaid time off (nor can we afford it, heaven’s sake.) Somehow, I need to take this impossible equation and turn it into a one week, kid-gets-on-a-ridiculously-strict-routine-I’m-talkin’-no-deviation-food-naps-you-name-it, my-life-is-not-my-own-this-week week. I firmly believe that one week of completely strict scheduling will lead to night sleeping, and then we can relax into a routine. Which is not a schedule, it’s a tiny bit more flexible than a schedule. I also believe that it would require my pretty strict focus to make this happen, but 80% or so of my time and energy is spent on this %(*#*%&^ job, which is lobbing huge project after huge project at me, and doesn’t look to slow down until mid January.
So, I’m going to ponder this, and discuss it with the husband. I’m going to look at my work schedule (did I mention? Projects? Like rolling out a whole new benefits package? Arm twisting all the managers into doing Performance Evaluations? ISO certification, and if you don’t know what that is just know that’s it’s big? Pushing a huge safety project to completion? Creating a complicated HR database, in a system with which I’m not too familiar but no one in IT "has time" to help me and "there’s no money in the budget" to buy a ready made one so it’s just me and Access For Dummies and the Help menu? And that’s just December.) I need to pick a week out of there where I can be a mush brained zombie. Because I can’t actually take a week OFF work, but I can take a week off and still go to work, if you get me. Then I need to enlist the husband, who also is slammed, writing a chapter for his dissertation and revising a paper for publication and applying for grants and washing a bazillion loads of laundry besides. We need to write out a schedule, we need to put a big old day planner on the fridge, and then we need to divvy up the 168 hours in one week and decide who is going to take what shift. And we need to Ferberize. It’s a method, also called Cry It Out, in which I have a lot of faith. But in order to do it, essentially we have to commit to staying up all night 3-4 nights in a row, and after 6 months of not the best sleep, the prospect of that scares me. I drive an hour to work, on winding country roads. I have already fallen asleep and hit somebody on that drive once. I’m slightly scared of killing myself, here. BUT THIS CANNOT GO ON. It’s always darkest before the dawn. I need to squeeze some more time and energy and what-have-you out of my beaten, broken consciousness, and make this happen, because then afterwards it will be LOADS better, and I can face 2009 secure in the knowledge that I can once again sit through a half hour tv show without instantly nodding off.
Stay tuned for Operation Jack Will Sleep And Save His Mother From Insanity. And pray that I can stick to our plan in the middle of the night, when I usually wake up and sleepwalk into the baby’s room and then plug in, in the hopes that he’ll quiet down so I can get a couple of hours sleep before I have to get up for work. Because man, I lose a lot of my sense and motivation at 2 in the morning, and my robot brain screams at me – just lay down for a minute – just lay down for a minute – just lay down for a minute – ahhh, that’s bet– zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.