>The difference sleep makes

>It’s been said before, and it will be said again many times before my children are grown and gone:

Sleep makes all the difference.

Ok, maybe not ALL the difference.  But a huge difference.

First of all, when the kids don’t sleep well, I don’t sleep well.  When they don’t nap, I don’t get things done during the day, which means I have to do them at night when they finally go to bed, which means I get less sleep before they wake up and we repeat the chaos, only this time way more exhausted.

When they don’t sleep at night, I don’t sleep at night, end of story, no explanation needed.  Except, wait…what’s that you say?  You want to know whether my husband can get up with them and I can still sleep?  Yeah,  right.

When my husband doesn’t sleep 8 or 9 hours a night, he yawns repeatedly all morning, making me want to hit him with a pillow and chronicle how much more sleep he has gotten than I did.  He then falls asleep randomly during the day, usually right when one child needs to eat and other needs to nap or when one needs a change and the other needs attention or…well, you get the idea.  Never at a helpful time.  Since I juggle them all week, I’d rather not do it all weekend, too.

When I don’t sleep, I am foggy, inefficient, unable to carry on a conversation, incapable of answering questions from a 2-year-old patiently 100 times each.  I am grumpy and apparently likely to want to hit people with pillows (look, he’s lucky it’s nothing harder.  I can’t remember the last time I slept 8 or 9 hours straight).

But I do settle into a sleep-deprived routine, learning how to get everyone fed, clothed, and more or less entertained on 4 to 6 hours of interrupted sleep a night and no nap – because heaven forbid both boys nap at the same time for more than 30 minutes – and I start to forget that it was ever different.

Until a miracle happens.

A miracle titled “The Baby Slept Through the Night”!

No, it’s not really sleeping through my night, it’s that stupid textbook definition of more than 6 hours straight, but you know what?  I’ll take it.

Theo slept for 7 straight hours last night, of which I slept five and a half!!

He then ate and fell back to sleep for 2 and a half hours!

I know it’s not a miracle, he’s just getting older, but I swear when the sun came up I heard angels and a hallelujah.  (Except that I didn’t, because I was ASLEEP!)

And then I remember that sleep makes the difference between the person who’s been impersonating me for the past three months and the Real Me.

So maybe I was right the first time: sleep makes all the difference.