I never realized that the ability to fall asleep was something you could lose. I definitely took it for granted.
For the vast majority of my life, it's taken me 1-3 hours to fall asleep at night, but I was always able to do so eventually. It wasn't until recently that I really started to understand how bad insomnia can get. Despite how exhausted I get, my body can't seem to figure out how to fall asleep anymore. It doesn't take me 3-4 hours to fall asleep, it takes me 3-4 days.
Once the absence of sleep started having a worse effect than sleep medication would, I started taking sleeping pills. Using prescription sleep medication, the longest period of consecutive sleep I get each night is usually 2-3 hours. Then I usually get 1-2 hours of restless sleep punctuated with several wakings up. Without sleeping pills, I just can't fall asleep at all.
It's a battle I'm sick of fighting, but the alternative is to just give up on sleep, which isn't an option for two reasons: A) I'm just so stinkin' tired, and B) the effect lack of sleep has on my mental state is pretty bad. I become really irritable, easily frustrated, and generally just have a really hard time coping with the unexpected. It makes me want to give up on life.
So. I have to keep trying to sleep. It sure gets frustrating, though, and there I times I go "AUGH! I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT AGAIN!" and I become very tempted to pop 6 sleeping pills all at once.
I don't, though. I know that the single sleeping pill and choppy sleep are the best solution for now. It gets me just enough sleep to keep me functional and it keeps the medication to a reasonable level. I know this will make me sound like an addict, but Ambien is one of the things I'm most grateful for these days.
This wretched insomnia was one of the biggest surprises I've had post-baby. The other big surprise was a pretty happy one, though. Turns out, I'm way more patient with my baby than I've ever been with anything else in life. I'm generally a very impatient person, so I was prepping up to really work hard at being a patient mother, but so far, it's been much easier than expected. I don't think I've ever gotten angry at the little guy. What happens instead, when things get feather-ruffling difficult, is that I get really angry at the rest of the world. I get angry at my sweet perfect Gary and at my happy-go-lucky puppy and at the poor unsuspecting door salesman and at my car and the sink and the cabinet doors, etc, etc, etc. So anger-control is still something I get to work on, but at least none of it has been directed at Gregory. So that's nice.
The other day, Gary asked me how I'm doing on a scale from 1 to 10. Most of the time, I'm a 10. I can't imagine having a better life or being any happier. I sure love my little Gregory and I love being his mommy. But sometimes, usually correlated with how poorly I'm sleeping, I'll take a drastic plunge down to a 2. "I can't do this," I think to myself. "I'm just not enough." Not strong enough, not good enough, not capable enough, just not enough.
However, I almost never get down to the suicidal 1 anymore, so I'm sure doing a whole lot better than I was a few months ago. Woot!
So that's how I'm doing. Great with an occasional not.