{"id":255,"date":"2007-02-19T15:36:21","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T20:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=255"},"modified":"2007-02-19T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2007-02-19T20:36:21","slug":"sleep-deprivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2007\/02\/19\/sleep-deprivation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep deprivation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nLast Thursday Ingrid was due for her 4-month immunisation. For some reason I was totally sure that Friday was the day, and only found out I was mistaken on Friday morning, when I wanted to check the exact time.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nToday I was on my way to the Estonian embassy to get a passport for Ingrid. Halfway there I realised I had forgotten my own passport at home.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSo while the acute sleep deprivation phase may be mostly over, long-term chronic sleep deprivation is definitely still here with me, with all its subtle ways of undermining me. My brain feels broken: I forget and misremember things. I cannot concentrate. I am short-tempered and irritable during the day. My immune system is messed up: I was actually really sick for several days, for the first time in at least 3 years.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI need at least 8 hours of sleep a day in order to feel rested and fully charged. In wintertime, with those long dark nights, slightly more. Now, of course, I&rsquo;m nowhere near that.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nA typical night can go something like this:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\nGo to bed at 10. Give Ingrid a last feed. She is done and sleeping by 10.20. I fall asleep a bit later, maybe 10.30.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nIngrid half-awake at 0.30. I try to get her back to sleep because if I feed her now she will be hungry twice more before it&rsquo;s time to get up. Give up at 1 and feed. She falls asleep at 1.20. It takes me a while to go back to sleep since I&rsquo;m now wide awake.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nIngrid wakes again at 3. Feed. So drowsy that both of us are asleep again within 10 minutes.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nIngrid starts making noises at 4 &ndash; probably because the previous feed was so short (since we both fell asleep halfway through). Feed again. Ingrid asleep 4.10; myself 4.20.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nIngrid starts shifting around and floating out of her sleep around 6. I manage to keep her almost-sleeping for another 30 minutes by gently rocking her now and again. At 6.30 she&rsquo;s awake for real, kicking and wanting to play. I take her out to the living room, change the nappy, and let her spend a while on her own. I go back to bed and doze for 15 minutes, by which time she is bored &ndash; not crying, but making enough noise to wake me again. I move her to a new place and doze for another 10 minutes.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nMore noise from the living room at 7. Give up and get up.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nTime spent in bed: 9 hours. <br \/>\nSleep: just under 6 hours, broken into <s>3<\/s>4 pieces. <br \/>\nDozing: around 1 hour.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSomehow I still function surprisingly well despite this constant shortage of sleep. Mothers have been doing this for hundreds of years, after all.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIngrid&rsquo;s recently discovered ability to fall asleep in the bed has meant a huge improvement in this regard. I used to have to wait until the weekend for a chance to catch up at least part-way. Now I can get an extra hour or so, if I&rsquo;m lucky, during her morning nap. When the morning nap didn&rsquo;t work (this weekend) I was reminded again what a difference it makes. I was so relieved when I managed to get her to sleep in the bed again today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Thursday Ingrid was due for her 4-month immunisation. For some reason I was totally sure that Friday was the day, and only found out I was mistaken on Friday morning, when I wanted to check the exact time. Today I was on my way to the Estonian embassy to get a passport for Ingrid. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingrid_johanna","category-observing_the_self"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}