such a fun family

5/19/25

Had a really hard night last night. At one point it just felt so dark, not only literally. We started bedtime at a decent hour, but Baby jumps up and down, lies down and sits back up and stands up and randomly screams and kicks the wall, asks for book after book after book until he’s finally asleep. So he finally fell asleep around 11 PM. I laid with him until around 11:20 or 30 to make sure he was comforted and asleep, then got up and went to my own bed, got ready for bed, and had to do the whole feet thing, which then took me until about 3:30 AM. Then I tried to lay down and sleep, but it was with this feeling of doom because I knew R had to get up at 5:30 am for work, so I would only get an hour or two of sleep before I would have to get up and go to Baby’s room to replace him. and I think the dread was maybe the worst part for me- lying down with my feet stinging and hurting and knowing I wouldn’t be able to rest a full night at all. so I lay down around 3:30, i think slept a little, woke up once or twice because I was hot. Then woke up a third time and fell in and out of consciousness from like 5 to 5:20 am, which by then I realized I should just get up and go down there, so R didn’t have to come get me.  I hobbled down the stairs so slowly, and got in his bed and laid down and did everything super gingerly, and just looked at the time and knew I would have to get up again in another hour or two, for work, at 7:45. then I would have the baby with me in the morning until one of my parents came, and it was all this dread. That was the worst for me, I guess – not the actual doing it (which wasn’t as bad) but the “looking forward” to not getting sleep while being so tired and in physical pain – that I almost started crying, but I was so tired that i actually didn’t have energy to spare to cry, so I didn’t let it come through. when I lay down in R’s bed, it was hard to fall asleep again, but I think I did briefly, then again woke up before my 7:45 alarm, around when baby started making his waking-up noises. Luckily dad was awesome and came really soon after I texted them that baby was awake around 9:20 am, so I didn’t have to lose a lot of energy running back-and-forth caring for him after getting no sleep. 

I hate that because of my skin, my sleep schedule is all messed up now. Like right now it’s 5 PM, but in my body, it feels like it’s 11 AM. I miss waking up on my own after a full night’s sleep in the early morning- I miss early mornings and would love to get back to them if I can, one day. 

One more thing, I was thinking: with my skin, I feel like a lot of what makes me feel physically bad, may be psychological of some sort. Akin to how when i just think of toilets, i physically cringe and feel really grossed out inside, like on more than a superficial level. in the same manner, when I think about how disfigured my feet are, that adds like 50% more cringey disgust onto my mental stress and burden. But I’m not sure what to do about that, how to lighten that burden, because that’s just how my mind works? it seems like I would have to like methodically/professionally get trained out of this kind of mind-body connection.

5/22/25

so far, the latest I’ve stayed up because of feet was in the 5 AM hour, so when I go to sleep at 3 am now (usually), it doesn’t seem as bad. It just seems normal.  

I did try the other day, to see if I could maneuver around the soothing at night so I could get to bed earlier, at a decent hour. I tried taking a shower kind of midday around 4 o’clock, and soothing afterwards took me until like 7 or so. But then, baby is here at night so I have to put on socks again with bandages and we play and eat and do bedtime, then i take them off when I go to bed and that still triggers the need to soothe, even though I just did it a few hours before. so when I try to get done it midday, I just double the time I’m doing it, instead of doing it all at once at night before bed which is more efficient (but just fucks up my bedtime). Right before bed IS the most efficient way though. 

have been doing nasal spray and eyedrops too for the past two weeks plus, and will continue to do so, because it can’t hurt, and likely might help. I usually do them in the morning and at night, and midday too if I remember. Just again, trying to do everything I can. To prevent.

Tonight, a funny thing happened among lots of funny things – it was a good day at home with my boys. R and Hunter and I were in the kitchen, impromptu snacking, and realized that all of our favorite cheeses were different – none of us liked the same cheese the most. upon realizing this, R exclaimed, “were such a fun family! We have an excuse to try all the cheeses!” and that exclamation just made me laugh really hard.