the monster within

I have a problem. I think I am two people. One normal, typical mom, and one monster. This monster of a person rears her ugly head sometime between midnight an 4am. It usually happens when Alex has only let me sleep for an hour (or less) since his last feeding. Sometimes this crazy monster person shows up several times in a night, like last night. This horrible person showed up at like 1:30, and again at 4:30, and then at 6:45. Alex starts crying in his pack-n-play and I can't believe he's crying already, even though I just finished feeding him (or so it feels like). So I let him cry it out for a few minutes, thinking that maybe it's just gas, so angry and frustrated at the fact that he's crying. again. already.

It's not gas, of course, he is hungry. Again. And I don't want him to keep crying, I want to meet his needs, but, at the same time, I am. So. Tired. And I don't want to wake the hubs up before it's his turn to deal with the little one. So I get up, grumbling, frustrated and ready to pull my hair out. Who the heck is this person? How could I not want to tend to my little one's needs? How could I wish for just a few more minutes of sleep, when my little guy is hungry and needs food? Every night when I put him down to sleep, I listen to him breathe because I'm so afraid of that terrible "S" thing that I can't even write, and here I am, wishing that he would just go to sleep already. Well, what if he fell asleep and never woke up? This thought comes barreling into my mind as I'm slowly getting up to get him, which guess what? Makes me feel even more terrible.

So I sit there, half asleep watching bad television so that I can try to keep myself awake. (By the way, Saved By the Bell is on really early in the morning if you're up and nursing and need something mindless to watch.) I kick myself for getting mad that this tiny little person who is so dependent on me for his every need actually needs me, and that it interrupted my sleep. I worry about how I am ever going to manage going back to work, since we typically stay in bed until about 10:00, although a lot of that isn't me sleeping, it's me waiting for him to fall asleep.

And, eventually, he makes his little contented sigh, pulls off and falls blissfully asleep. That is, until I go to move him, of course, and then the whole cycle starts again.