confessions of a night owl

in the past few years, sleeplessness has plagued me.  but the circumstances of this sleeplessness have been so opposite of each other that it perplexes me. 

it started three years ago, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer.  even while he was still healthy, i'd find myself aimlessly wandering around in the wee hours of the morning, drinking large glasses of milk and reading a good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) book.

after he passed away, this lack of shut eye intensified.  i tried to deal with it naturally (tea, exercise, blah, blah, blah) but as the months wore on it became harder to function... especially when i had to work with 29 first graders every day.  finally, it was suggested to me by a counselor that i was suffering from depression.  after several doctor visits, i was finally sleeping again.

last year, i came off the "hard stuff".  i felt like i had coped enough with the passing of my beloved da-doo (ie.- worlds best father) to face life again without the support of anti-depressants.  it took a couple of months of tapering under the watchful eye of a professional and i was successfully back to my ol' self.... sleeping like a rock and all.

until...

the first week of august.

i tried to blame it on going back to work.  that's always an exhausting time of the year, any teacher would attest to this.  but because it's so tiring, i usually slept from the moment my head hit the pillow until the snooze button had been hit about 5 times.

so i found it rather unnerving that during the most exhausting season of the year for me, i was waking up and staring at the ceiling for hours upon hours.

i couldn't figure it out.  i was happy, relatively calm, adjusted... as far as i was concerned.  i worried fretfully that i was slipping back down the slippery slope.  and though those years have made me stronger, i wasn't sure i wanted to go back to that mental space.

one particularly sleepless night, i woke up after a strange dream.  i had dreamed that i was pregnant and had told my sweet husband.  while i don't remember all of the details of the dream, the last thing that happened will ALWAYS stick with me.  he was sitting in our (then) office, i told him i was pregnant, and he kissed me on my belly.  i woke up thinking, "what the...?"

it was 2:30 in the morning.  i walked around our quiet house, shaken by my dream.  i just couldn't figure it out.  all the while, i worried i was back to my old ways.  i tried my old tricks (milk, reading, cuddling up with trooper and a couple of fleeces on a certain couch) but nothing worked.  i finally gave up and just readied myself for the day.  i went to work, bleary eyed and prepared for my last day of meetings before kids started school for the year.

i sat in our staff meeting, clutching my cup of coffee, fretting about how i was going to possibly stay awake during meetings all day.

suddenly... it occurred to me... an epiphany of sorts.

what if... i... was?

i leaned over to my friend and whispered a question in her ear.  it went something like this...
me: "when did your sense of smell change when you were pregnant?"
her:  "why"
me:  "just wondering..."
her:  "before i even knew i was"
me: *silence*  (my brain starts thinking about how i had told kjaer the night before that maybe we needed to wash (YES WASH... don't ask how my brain works but it made sense at the time) our grass because it smelled so bad like dog pee.  i had nearly passed out while grilling chicken and had taken to walking in and out of our house with my shirt pulled up over my nose)
her:  "you're pregnant... aren't you?"
me:  "no... i took a test a few days ago.  no."  (brain... uhhhhhhh.... but something's up)

of course, we were like two little school girls (yes i see the irony that we were IN a school and supposed to be acting like TEACHERS) as she grilled me on anything "strange" that may have been going on with me.

that night i went home, and my entire life changed... as did my husbands.  i learned that, in fact, i was pregnant.

since then, even though i've sleeping like a rock during the week (Thank You Lord!)... on weekends, school vacations... any day i'm supposed to sleep in... i have woken up extremely early. 

this morning, after my last bathroom trip, i laid in bed and waited for sleep to visit again.  after awhile i just gave into the madness, leaned over the best i could without my belly getting in the way to kiss kjaer and stated, rather matter of factly, "it's just not fair."  i got up, came down here and started a blog.

why not, right?

after all, i have wistfully stated many times that i wish i could write a blog like some of my very talented friends.   once, i said it aloud to my friend, super-blogger hannah, and she said, "then write one".  while i laughed it off (oh, i just couldn't possibly) her encouragement has stuck with me. 

so as i laid awake this morning i couldn't stop thinking about it.  wouldn't these sleepless nights/mornings be the perfect time to write?  ... and who cares if no-one reads it?

i mean, it's just me and "thumper" (aka baby k) awake anyway.  i can even hear trooper (ie - my other soul mate) snoring over there on his doggie bed and quincy (our beloved cat) is curled up, sleeping on a fleece on the chair.

and... i have a suspicious feeling that it'll be just me and baby k awake like this for awhile.

so why not use my night owl time to do what i love?  write.  talk.  feel.

the difference is... that unlike the last period of sleepless nights in my life... this time it has been sparked into existence by the creation of something so precious, so amazing, so joyful... that i'm beginning to think i need to retract my statement to kjaer this morning.  no more whining and complaining...in approximately 12 weeks, my nights are about to get a lot more sleepless.

what i'm trying to say is, my hope is that baby k and i will be here for some midnight laughs and cries for many, many nights to come.

cheers to this epiphany... not the first of my life... but certainly a substantial one!