Ever since my first son was born… Scratch that. Ever since I became pregnant with my first son, sleep has been something that has eluded me. While I was pregnant, I couldn’t sleep for lack of a comfortable position and aggressive nasal congestion. When my first guy was born, we spent a lot of time up at night with him eating and me watching baseball. I’m pretty sure I saw every inning of the Red Sox west coast swing in 2018.

Eventually, we got him on a pretty good sleep schedule. Even though he would wake up in the middle of the night and call, “Mama! Where are you?” until I went and got him. All he wanted was to cuddle, and he’d go right back to sleep. 🤗

With my second guy, sleep eluded me again because I was as big as the mansion Derek Jeter rented to Tom and Giselle when they first moved to Florida. He was better at sleeping through the night, though. The first and only night we spent in the hospital — because COVID — he slept through the night. I popped up and checked him multiple times to ensure he was okay because he hadn’t woken me up. He was great sleeping in the bassinet next to our bed for the first six months. When we eventually moved him into the crib, falling asleep took playing “Tennessee Whiskey” by Chris Stapleton on repeat before he would drift off. Whenever that song comes on, he says, “You singin’ Whiskey, Mama.” 🥰

Even with all the sleep training and regression articles, I’m still never prepared for those periods. Just when I’ve gotten used to them sleeping mostly through the night, they come storming in, demanding that I wake up and play. It’s mostly my big guy. His sleep regressions turn him into a high-energy Chatty Cathy. As I write this, I struggle to keep my eyes open from last night’s foray into midnight chats about dinosaurs.

I feel like a zombie walking through the day as I play with my younger son. All I can think about is sleep. What would it be like to get a full eight hours one day? Is brain fog a permanent condition of motherhood, or is it just a temporary state that will last until my kids decide that they will stay in their bed the whole night, and discussing dinosaur attacks isn’t a pressing matter that needs to be discussed at 2AM?