Sleep-Deprived Hormones

So people in close proximity to me have hinted that my last post may not have given people a wholly honest picture of what life in fish tank has really been like lately. And I have to admit, they're correct. So here it goes.

Life in the salmon family this past week has been, shall we say, "difficult."

Apparently, after publicizing my dreams of evil Snow White, a number of you started praying that the nightmares would cease because that night and the two nights following, I didn't sleep a wink. I've had difficulty sleeping in the past but I have never before been able to say that I was literally awake all night long (of course, in the past I've been able to take beautiful drugs like Excedrin PM to help me sleep). Strangely, I didn't feel tired during the days (or nights, obviously). What I did notice by the 3rd day was my mind didn't fire quite as rapidly as I'm accustomed and my body seemed to have difficulty maintaining its sense of balance. Playing Banangrams (a Scrabble-type of game) with my husband, I found myself staring at the tiles trying to make sense of what they were; I thought the P's were R's and the R's, D's. Needless to say, the two rounds we played weren't even close. Walking from the theater to our car, I nearly fell over...twice. A close friend took one look at me and said, "You don't seem like yourself." Today she admitted, "I thought you were mad at me. Your eyes weren't glowing."

Worse, though, my hormones kicked into overdrive and were exaggerated from lack of sleep. Cleaning out the closet in the nursery-in-waiting was a task that led to hysteria and uncontrollable sobbing. Craig started rocking me in his arms and telling me to quiet down; I only managed to quiet down when he started using the relaxation techniques we're learning in our Lamaze class and I realized how ludicrous my life had become.

The good news? I seem to be coming out of this. At church Saturday night, I was telling my Bible study leader about my insomnia and a woman I'd never met before overheard me and told me to play quiet worship music at night and make use of my time laying awake to pray and ask God about the little bird growing inside of me. Well, I didn't get around to playing worship music that night after church because by then my body was literally numb and all I wanted was to lay down. I did, however, take her suggestion to pray while laying in bed. Guess what? I didn't get much past, "Here I am, God. What do you want to talk about?" before it was lights out. Maybe it was sheer exhaustion, maybe God was waiting for me to turn to Him. I don't know. What I do know is that every  night since then I've lain awake until I said those words and then I'm instantly asleep. Now, I'm still waking up halfway through the night to go to the bathroom and my sleep during the 2nd part of each night has not been great. Of course, at that point in the night, I'm pretty groggy and not coherent enough to remember to pray. Maybe I'll remember tonight. I'll let you know how it goes.