Are you sleep deprived, if you never got to sleep in the first place?

Last spring I was dealing with a newborn infant and was unable to get a lot of sleep with everything inherent in that.  Over last summer, between the heat and overall stress, I was having difficulty sleeping.  That led into overall anxiousness of “I hope I can fall asleep tonight”, which makes it difficult to sleep when the mind just won’t shut off.  I got over that hurdle with a bunch of relaxation techniques around year end.  Shortly after that, my daughter started waking up nightly with requests like, “I can’t find Bootsie [her stuffed cat]“,”I can’t find my blanket”,”I can’t get my music turned on”, and “My water bottle is empty”.  So, at least once every night she would walk to our room, walk all the way around the bed to the side I sleep on and ask for help.  Not once, did she ever take the shorter route to my wife’s side of the bed.

Now, put on top of that the fact that I get up for work around 5:00 AM every morning.  When I leave everyone else in the house is asleep.  The only member of the household who gets up when I do is the dog, and he goes back to sleep while I’m in the shower.  Most nights I don’t get to bed until 11:00 PM.  The only person awake at that time is my wife.  So, if everything went perfectly, I could get 6 hours of sleep which brings me to last night.

For the previous few nights my son kept waking up screaming because he’s teething.  I’d get him back to sleep and along came my daughter.  Since its warming up outside, lots of critters are becoming more active at night.  The dog has been telling all of them to stay away from the house by growling, barking and howling at them.  So, before my son went to sleep I gave him a dose of ibuprofen.  I gave my daughter a new bottle of water and set her CD player to repeat.  I then put the dog in my bedroom where he can’t see out the windows.  I set my alarm to 5:30 to get a little extra sleep.  I then collapsed, exhausted at 10:00 hoping to get at least 7 hours of sleep.  It worked perfectly.  No screaming toddlers.  No barking dogs.  No scavenger hunt requests from the 4 year old. 

Nothing but nice sound sleep.  It was glorious!  However, my quest for a decent night’s sleep was ultimately denied when my pager went off at 4:00 AM — have I mentioned I’m on call 24/7/365 and that includes when I’m on “vacation”.  Not much I can do but call the vendor and tell them to fix their problem ASAP.  But, I was now awake and I still only got 6 hours of sleep.

I don’t know what the plan is, but somebody doesn’t want me to get a decent night’s sleep.  Perhaps they like my perpetual crankiness.  Perhaps they really want me to keep the local coffee roasters in business.  Whatever the reason, it’s working.  I can’t remember the last time I got 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Is that really too much to ask?  Just once?