I have a great deal of respect for the people here who are surviving through really tough times. My biggest and hardest experience of my life is happening right now. My wife had an epileptic seizures while she was at the playground with the kids (6 months and 2). Everyone was fine, but it meant no more waking up at night for her. So for the last 4 months I've been waking 3 to 5 times a night then going in to do a full day of work on our company's biggest project. I've always been terrible with sleep deprivation and I have felt on the verge of breaking down in tears for what feels like forever. I have put on weight, I look older, I have zero libido and I don't have any conversation other than "I am so tired". I also find myself narcissistically craving sympathy and for people to say "well done, you're amazing". But I am blissfully happy. I watch my daughter drop off to sleep and look forward to her 3am screaming so that I can get cuddles. Everything is just right in life and I am completely satisfied. I will miss this time of my life. When people ask what it is like to have kids I am not even attempting to answer any more. It makes no sense.
Hey, I think you deserve a parent of the year award. Sympathy and praise have their times, and now is one of them :) Some things that help me sleep: Flux(This helps A LOT, especially on the more extreme settings) Mindfulness(esp. helpful if it takes you a while to get to sleep, /r/mindfulness is helpful) Staying hydrated Exercise Doing things I should already have done Also, how's your wife? My brother was diagnosed with epilepsy ~2 years ago, he's only had one seizure and his medication works well.
Thanks so much! Really kind of you. I'm actually totally fine at getting to sleep when I need to. I read about 3 pages on my Kindle paperwhite and I'm down. I ended up taking a day off work not long after posting this, and slept until 12pm (had a meeting at 2pm). I should have done that long ago. Also we have got a cleaner and we have a calorie-controlled meal delivery thing going on ("lite n easy") which have both been SO helpful. Plus the baby is now on formula so is generally sleeping better. So I'm not sure if that's what you had in mind by "doing things I should already have done" but that is exactly what I did! :) My wife is now doing well since she stopped the night feeds, it seems like she only has two major triggers: lack of sleep and antibiotics (for some reason). I've only witnessed one seizure but it was completely terrifying because I assumed she was dying of a stroke (she already had a stroke for unknown causes at age 20 so she can't use her left arm). After it looked like she was going to survive the 'stroke' I assumed she had lost the baby. Finally we heard the baby's heartbeat on ultrasound after several hours. My wife was super chill through all this but I was pretty anxious to say the least. Turns out babies are very well cushioned in utero and can survive all sorts (she is a wonderful 2-year-old now so she turned out ok). My wife is on lamotrigine (various brand names starting in lamo-) and it is generally very well managed. She has a lot of petit mals but grand mals are very rare (every few years really). What got you into mindfulness? My wife is a psychologist and is very familiar with it and we do some mindfulness exercises together. I just checked out your 3 questions post (text only) - have you started the IBM internship yet?
Good to know things are doing better, seems like you're well on top of them. When my brother had his first seizure, we wrongly assumed he fell and hit his head, it was very scary not knowing(Ha, I did a lot of googling while my parents were with him at the hospital), there was quite a bit of residual shock too if that makes sense, I can only imagine how terrifiying it must have been for you. I did WE a few months ago yes, I learned a lot and it was very fun. Here in Ireland, Work Experience is a little bit different to an internship, they typically only last 1-2 weeks, are more often unpaid, and are more dedicated to being a learning experience more than getting you to actually do work. It would have been cool to have contributed a little to an IBM product, but I'd need more than 2 weeks of learning the internals before I could be able to -- I did get a similar issue as one of the engineers and solved it, so maybe I can pat myself on the back for being slightly helpful? :P. Anyway, I might go again in August, it is a fairly large building with a few huge projects, so there's still a lot to learn. I noticied that I can think way 'clearer' after going for a run or having just woke up, so I just looked up "Mediation reddit"(My google-fu is... unique) to try and harness the clarity without any of the spiritual stuff, and found /r/Mindfulness. I'm not sure if I'm doing 'it' right, but it definitely clears my mind and helps me program :D. This I find helpful
Haha, good job. Raising kids is no easy task, and wanting some sympathy isn't selfish. We all want to connect with people.