By: Revanche

In the dark of the night …

October 14, 2014

I don’t know about you, but 2 am insomnia feels pretty grim. I know how not to be an insomniac but doing isn’t always as easy as knowing.

If I were smart I’d be asleep right now.
If I were smart, I’d actually have stopped working at 930, and gone to bed then.

My body is stressed and it is showing in gross and sundry ways. You’d think this would teach me a lesson but instead I ponder what other new blogs I might read because I’m not going to sleep.

Willful insomnia, that completely makes sense. Especially when you consider that I’m going to be up in the morning to work again so it’s not like I’m under the impression that it’s a weekend.

I started reading Kieron Gillian’s Journey into Mystery and it’s good enough that if I pick up another volume I’ll probably not sleep at all tonight.

I consider an old Mercedes Lackey compilation, The Free Bards, because it is an old familiar friend and immediately crave cheese. Because it is firmly embedded in my mind that Rune gets cheese, bread and a carrot early on and I’m always receptive to the idea of getting a slice of cheese to have with my book’s character. Unlike John Scalzi who detests the mention of stew in these books, mentions of a traveler stopping at an inn for a slice of bread and stew just makes me want to make a thick loaf of crusty Irish bread and a pot of potatoey tomatoey stew.

PiC snores away and Seamus won’t even come into the bedroom at night anymore, preferring his living room bed (it is awfully comfortable) to the bedroom set up because my being up late keeps him up late.

I’m doing all the things you’re not supposed to: keeping the light on, looking at my phone, reading in bed at long stretches.

But sometimes you just have a hankering for your quiet alone time. I have alone time during the day but those aren’t MY hours. Those hours are for work and housework, thinking and doing. There’s so little time for puttering, pondering and just being. And maybe that’s just what my brain, and soul, want right now. While it can still get it, before an infant shatters the peace forever.

Or, more likely, I’m just not smart enough to be trusted to put myself to bed.

At least I get here. But LB is both of us at once: a night owl and a morning glory so I get the movements all night and as soon as I wake, sometimes before. I haven’t really been alone for months and LB is quick to remind me of that.

The dogs haven’t given me real privacy in years, I suppose that’s been good training for having an infant/toddler underfoot.

Everything aches from tip to tail. The counselor asked me today how the pregnancy has affected the fibro and I don’t know how to answer that exactly. My pain doesn’t come neatly categorized: these parts hurt because of the pregnancy and those parts because well, they’re just broken. This never ending backache, is it because of the new weight I’m carrying or is it just the backache I would have had anyway? And that odd hitch in my breathing and pain in my chest? Well that could be because of either.

Because everything hurts, with fibro and many things are weird as hell with the pregnancy, so how do you know? And I guess, what does it matter really? Pain is, like money, fungible. Applicable anywhere.

I don’t know if the counselor was reassured or not by my shruggy answer.

Still less, I don’t know if she actually believed me that I don’t recall the last time I had a drink because I rarely drink recreationally. I’m both too cheap to pay for alcohol at restaurants and don’t really care that much about it, is that really so unusual?

Little Bean proceeded to wake me every hour with gymnastics. That’s not a huge surprise.

7 Responses to “In the dark of the night …”

  1. Abigail says:

    I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but I think it’s pretty awesome to feel the movements. If LB wasn’t doing floor routines inside, that is.

    Sorry to hear about the insomnia. I use trazedone, but if we do try again I’m considering going off of everything. I have no idea how we’ll cope, though. On the other hand, if things don’t work out again, it’ll only be about 6 weeks and I can go back on them.

    Okay, enough grim stuff. I’m sorry people think that we can somehow categorize which symptoms come from where. The fibro is worse and I’m guessing waxes and wanes. So does it matter the cause?

    • Revanche says:

      The movements are cool in the abstract, it’s just less cool when it gets *too* active!

      I ended up going off everything because the side effects weren’t worth the paltry benefits I was getting (if any). It gave me a sense of what I’d have to cope with at least insofar as the fibro bits were concerned, not sure if that’s feasible for you.

      I suppose the only reason the source of the pain might matter is if it would indicate something to address should it be from the pregnancy. But the answer is always: there’s nothing you can do about it annnnyway so. Hah.

  2. LOL! You ain’t seen gymnastics yet. Wait till you hear yourself utter the words “Please don’t walk on the ceiling” with a totally straight face.

    Insomnia’s awful. It seems to magnify the worst of everything.

    Hmmm… This sounds like woo-woo, but what the heck: Have you tried a gluten-free diet? Recently — just a few days ago — I saw a report to the effect that celiac disease can have neurological effects. Gluten intolerance (if such a thing exists) isn’t as extreme as celiac disease, of course…but I know an awful lot of people these days who’ve tried the gluten-free fad and suddenly found themselves feeling a lot better, especially where chronic ailments like asthma and headaches are concerned. Also, my friend Ken Muhich, the chiropractor who’s peddling what he claims to be a successful fibromyalgia regimen, ultimately gets his patients on what is essentially a gluten-free or very low gluten diet. It could be a placebo effect, o’course…but avoiding wheat products probably couldn’t harm you, at least not over a period long enough to tell if it does any good.

    • Revanche says:

      Oh, we’ve had words…. hahah.

      I’d briefly considered a gluten free diet but I haven’t seen any particular improvement when my diet has just naturally been very light in gluten (more rice and potatoes, no bread or pasta). I’m not terribly convinced that it’ll be beneficial but I’ll wait til after LB arrives to experiment since actually eating enough is a bit more important than avoiding the discomfort right now.

  3. I did my best and most creative blogging at 4am. (But it was because I couldn’t get back to bed after my baby’s early morning wake up (even though he went back to sleep). I sort of miss the creativity that came from complete quiet, but I also don’t miss the blurry nature of being sleep deprived.

    • Revanche says:

      There is something about taking down those more random thoughts in the middle of the night. I can only hope that my content improves or degrades as I work later and later into the night, otherwise this place is going to get messy! šŸ™‚

  4. Maria says:

    I have no excuse but I have the worst insomnia ever too…. can’t ever go to sleep before 3am! Even when I have to be up by 7am the next day!

    Sending good jujus to you and LB.

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