I haven’t slept in about 10 years. Okay, I’m exaggerating…a little. My insomnia started when I was pregnant with my daughter, and it hasn’t let up since.

I now hold the belief that only single people, with no kids, no pets and quiet neighbors, actually sleep. They also must not live near an airport, and can’t keep their windows open to allow the sound of chirping birds to come through. Anyone wanna lend me a BB gun?

My lack of sleep was compounded by having two preemies who both wore heart monitors. You have never really heard an alarm, until you’ve heard one that tells you your baby isn’t breathing, or their heart rate has dropped dangerously low…at 3:00 AM. For my next blog post, I will be discussing adrenaline rush.

Now my dog is getting old, and likes to nudge me with her cold, wet nose to let me know she needs to poop, or puke, or because she feels the need to be petted in the wee hours.

And, there are kids having bad dreams and moving about in the night. I’m always on high alert when I hear one of them. You never know when vomit will strike.

Add to that, my husband’s snoring…okay, not fair…everyone has a husband who snores. But, I’m also lucky enough to have one who suffers from night terrors. My wonderful guy once woke me by pulling me out of bed by my ankles while screaming, “Get out of here! Get out of here!” And another time, he jumped from the bed with all the covers, hit a picture off the wall, and ran into the closet, knocking all the clothes down in the process. He claimed a marching band was coming toward us, and we were about to get trampled.

I don’t know if I didn’t sleep that night because he startled me…or if I was disturbed that he left me there to get stomped by people with wind instruments.

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My insomnia is back. Not only back, but with a vengeance. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in quite awhile. In the past two weeks, I have increased my dosage of Melatonin, secretly snuck a couple of sleeping pills that I’m not supposed to take anymore, seen my family doctor, and had an EKG and echocardiogram. I AM TRYING to figure this out.

It’s understandable, that to a non-insomniac, saying I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in awhile would imply that I toss and turn. But, NOOOOO. It is not so cut and dry. Of course, there are nights when I have something serious on my mind and toss around because of it. But, more often than not, I lie awake because I have a song stuck in my head (thank you to Barney and The Little Einsteins for that), or because there’s the slightest bit of breeze from the fan, or because the dog moved and woke me up. As a matter of fact, if ANYTHING wakes me, I don’t go back to sleep. Though, I would be thrilled to have that type of insomnia right now…the kind where I can’t go back to sleep. At least I would have a fighting chance to get some rest. As long as Mars is at the highest point in the sky, the Moon is full, the wind is SE at 12.2 miles per hour, and our windows are closed.

See, lately I can’t be so lucky as to actually get to the point of having something wake me. The insomnia I’ve had the past couple of weeks, has been the kind where I just can’t fall asleep AT ALL. Where I do everything I know of, but the last time I look at the clock it is inevitably after 5:00 AM. It’s torture. It’s maddening. It’s like I need the United Nations in my bedroom to help me fight this thing.

Trust me, I wouldn’t trade all the sleep in the world for my two kids, but this is one thing I can, with near certainty, blame on them. It started with the pregnancy hormones, which not only left me sleepless, but once made me LEAVE WORK in the middle of the afternoon to come home and make an enormous pot of macaroni and cheese. Then, because our daughter spent five weeks in intensive care, every sound during the night was sure to be the hospital calling (it never was). After that, came toddler nightmares, and sickness which ALWAYS seems to manifest itself in the wee hours. Then another premature baby, this one with stomach, eye AND heart problems. I have now become a worrier of mass proportions. I agonize about everything. Everything. What do I need to put on the grocery list? Did I remember to put that permission slip in my daughter’s folder? Will it rain tomorrow? Should I really let my daughter buy a hot dog for lunch? Will my son have to poop while he’s at school? Who cares? Apparently, I do.

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I have suffered from insomnia since I was pregnant with my daughter. She’ll be nine in December. For a long, long time I suffered with it, mostly because I saw my doctor frequently enough for all my other ailments that I didn’t want to bother him with me not sleeping. I mean, that’s my fault, not his, right? I tried to solve my own problem by looking on-line, where I found St. John’s Wort. I’m sure it works perfectly well for lots of people, but it made me feel like a sloth while my head and heart were racing. Like I was running a marathon and taking a math test at the same time, but I couldn’t lift my arm if I tried. Not a pleasant feeling. I finally talked to my doctor about it, and have tried two different prescription medications, one of which made me crazy. Like, wanting to drive my car into a brick wall crazy. Or, waking up and seeing knives floating around the room crazy. Just plain ca-RAZY, crazy. The other one gave me heart palpitations.

So, after many more sleepless nights of me wanting to drive my fist through my headboard. And, countless repetitions of, “I surrender this God. You can let me sleep”, I went back to the herbal route and tried Melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced naturally, in some gland that I can’t spell or pronounce, which controls internal clocks. I’ve been taking half a pill (1.5 milligrams) for a couple of weeks now, and I think it may be working! Now, I still have issues, don’t get me wrong. If my daughter has a bad dream, I’m the one who is up for the rest of the night.

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