Midnight ramblings

It's 12:32 and I am ... not asleep .

No big surprise here !

Last night sleep came around 1:30 and lasted for about ten minutes .

Contractions started, I was awake for a minute and then back to sleep for about nine minutes . Rewind, press play, repeat until probably four a.m. which was the last time I checked my phone to see exactly how long I had to go until morning .

The night before was three thirty I think, four the night before that, and five a.m. the night before that .

I guess you could say that pregnancy insomnia and I are starting to really get to know each other. Like on a first name basis .

For example, all of the Rice Ranch has been sound asleep for an hour or two while I've been tossing and turning and punching my pillow in frustration every night, when this conversation takes place ...

P.I. (Pregnancy Insomnia) : hey Patti, wanna pull an all-nighter again ??

Patti : well, we did that last night ... let's just party til four a.m. this time ?

P.I. : okay, I'll bring the restless legs and endless contractions, you just bring your warmed-up blanket and bowl of Rice Chex ...and we'll meet downstairs on the couch again ?

Patti : sure, just give me a minute to pull on some socks, pour my cereal, and pop my blanket in the dryer to warm it up .. see you in the living room in a few?

P.I. : sounds like a plan - I'll be there waiting !

I really don't give in that easily every night, though .

Sometimes I try to hold realllllly really still and breathe deeply and slowly, attempting to trick my body into thinking it's sleeping when it's really not. I refuse to acknowledge that I am wide awake, and resist the urge to find a more comfortable position. I count backwards from 700 all the way to zero, and count back up again . I count sheep, count my blessings, and count how many nights I have slept through the night in the past six weeks ... And I stop at one .

And then in total frustration I get up and try a warm bath infused with my favorite Bath & Body Works bubble bath, falsely named "Sleep." Smells great but does nothing to combat pregnancy insomnia in my experience. My fingers and toes are starting to look permanently wrinkled from all the baths I've had in the past six weeks, and I've gone through half a bottle of "Sleep" since Christmas ... but at least the bath offers a reprieve from restless legs and endless contractions .

I've tried Benadryl, Unisom, Chamomile tea, warm milk, cold milk, Percocet (for my kidney stone pain - helped the pain but not the PI), relaxing music, no music, going to bed early, going to bed late, reading something boring before bed, not reading anything before bed, sitting propped up, lying flat, pacing the hallways til I can't walk anymore, praying, praying, and praying some more ... and still sleep alludes me.

The nice thing about my last breakthrough (read my post Joy Comes In the Morning, a few posts back if you missed it) is that at least now I'm not battling fear during these endless nights.

I'm not spending the wee small hours of the morning contemplating all the what-ifs of this pregnancy and impending labor and delivery.

I'm not lying awake for hours biting my nails or crying or deep breathing my way through anxiety, I'm just ....

Awake.

Soooo.... since refusing to look at my phone during these long stretches of sleeplessness has done nothing to help the insomnia, I've decided to turn my boredom into productiveness by ...

Blogging.

And depending on when Miss Madison decides to make her entry into this world,

you may see a LOTTTTT of blogposts here on A Perfect Lily in the upcoming days.

I have a camera roll full of unposted pictures, and who cares if they aren't current events anyway, right ? I'll just keep reaching back into the archives of never-before-revealed Rice Ranch photos until delivery day if I have to ... and by the time this baby comes I'll have made up for all the blogposts I kept promising and never followed through on last year. If I fall asleep halfway through a post, I'll be back the next night to finish it off ... It will be like one giant Rice Ranch Marathon, from now until D day. I may bore all my readers to tears, but at least I'll have something to do for the next 20 nights until induction day (if we make it that long.)

Are you ready ? Here we go !

This series of photos was from early December. No sooner did we return from our Great Thanksgiving Getaway at the coast, when Christmas baking and decorating and festivities began .. I don't know about the rest of you, but Haloween and Thanksgiving and December all seemed to run into each other this year with barely any breathing space in between.

Maybe I'm getting older and the days are just flying by more quickly, or maybe with the varied age ranges of children now, our lives are becoming more complex - but whatever the cause, the last three months of 2015 were a blur. We tried to squeeze in every family tradition that we could, but some of them had to fall by the wayside for lack of time and lack of energy (pregnancy in my forties has been interesting to say the least!).

I'm so grateful for kids who just went with the flow, and a husband who did half the shopping this year just to help me get through the holidays without losing my mind.

And grateful for Pinterest - for supplying all those fake-it-don't-make-it holiday recipes for busy, frazzled moms like me .