Why I nap

Last night I had trouble falling asleep because my list of things I had to worry about before I let myself fall asleep has become far too long. We just realized that this baby is coming in like five weeks.

We have to figure out how to move another person into our home. Clean out a drawer or two, somewhere (?), to put all her hud, which is currently piled in her crib, which probably won’t work out too well once she’s here since she needs a place to sleep, even though most of her sleeping will likely be done in our bed because—let’s face it—I’m a little lazy, especially in the middle of the night, and don’t like getting out of bed to get the baby. And I like cuddling newborns.

I have to get a list of stuff that we need/want to Karen so that she can decide what she has room for in her suitcase (whatever doesn’t fit, Brother Tueller can bring for us). It’s hard to remember what I’ll need for such a little person. How many onesies and burp cloths did I go through per day with Rachel? Will I need more diapers?

Now that Rachel seems incapable of staying dry over night I think I might really need some more, especially of the BumGenius variety—unless I want to be the one to change every single diaper, which I don’t.
There are a few other things that I need to order online, as well, before the baby comes.

We need to get the guest room ready for an extended visitor (yay, Karen!), which will involve figuring out how usable the wardrobe in that room is. Currently it is full of creepy lampshades and empty suitcases. I’m not even sure if it has a rod in it for hanging clothes. Somewhere in the depths of my memory I recall it not having a rod, which is why we used it for our suitcases. But maybe it was us that took the rod down so that the suitcases would fit. We’ve been here so long that I just can’t remember.

We need to start stock-piling cash so that we have enough to pay our hospital bill before we leave the hospital. Won’t it be weird to live in a cashless society again?

How about living in a place where you don’t have to tip the nurses? We’re trying to figure out exactly how to do that, too. Our friends told us to tip about 100 LE for the labour nurses and 100 LE for the floor nurses. But how do we go about doing that? People here don’t like to split money, so we can’t hand one of them 100 LE and ask them to share. Chances are they’ll say, “No, this 100 LE is for me. You gave it to me. You need to tip the other nurses, too!”

That means that small bills are best. But small bills are also hardest to come by. Banks don’t spit out 10 LE bills and breaking 100 LE bills isn’t exactly an easy task, let alone breaking a 200 LE bill.

I need to train Andrew on how to coach me during labour. We really had no idea what we were doing with Rachel and the nurses had him coaching me by counting to ten and having me push as hard as I could with every muscle of my body—eyes closed, face tense—while holding my breath. Hello, Valsalva’s principle.
Obviously it worked because she came out, but I tore quite a bit and they ended up putting me on oxygen because Rachel went into distress because she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I’ve been looking at avoiding doing that again and have been practicing other methods of breathing and pushing (except not really pushing because that’s kind of hard to practice for obvious reasons). What I really need to do is sit Andrew down and teach him how to help me and get back into doing prenatal yoga everyday.

Now that it’s cooling down (oh, yeah, it’s really cooling down—yesterday the high was 36°C/98°F—today it’s only supposed to get up to 31°C/87°F—our lows are in the twenties, even) I should be able to force myself to work out more often. Also we need to start thinking about getting our mosquito nets put up. The ants are going away but that only means the mosquitoes will be making a comeback. We need to get a net for the baby.

What else do we need for the baby? My friend Jamie just offered to let us borrow her baby swing, bouncy chair, whatever else I want to use while we’re here, so we shouldn’t need very much. Her youngest, a girl, turns one in October. It will be nice to not have to worry about those big kind of things.

Andrew’s worried about deadlines for his thesis and deadlines for grad school applications and due dates for his classes. Not that due dates for his classes really matter for the next few weeks. Several classes are still holding “class” under the table, so to speak, but there still isn’t any normal schedule, which is annoying.
And since CAC isn’t in session we’re not sure if he’s going to start tutoring, but we really need him to start tutoring. Tutoring is our cash cow. At least he has another freelancing web job to make up for the tutoring that he hasn’t done yet.

I wish I could contribute more to the income but my days are taken up with sleeping and Rachel and incubating and Rachel.

I wonder how Rachel will take to being an older sister. Lately she’s been staying up until 11:30 PM, screaming—no matter what we do—and, as I mentioned, hasn’t stayed dry in about three weeks. I’m kind of going crazy and have no idea what to do about either of those problems. But I really don’t think I can handle having her scream until almost midnight after the baby gets here. Isn’t that the job of the baby?

My favorite part is that she screams, “I want momma hold me!” while I’m rocking her. It drives me nuts. So I have to put her down and walk away. And even then she just keeps screaming. My other favorite is when her bedroom light is on and she keeps on screaming, “I’m scared dark!” Anything to stay up, anything. And then she’s tired and we’re tired and so we don’t get up as early as we should and are all grumpy all day long. I wish there was just some magical answer that would come to me and make Rachel act like a little princess. That would be nice. So far, nothing.

And that’s not even half of what I have to think through before I can fall asleep at night. There are other things I worry about. Many, many other things. And then I finally fall asleep only to wake up an hour later to use the bathroom. *Sigh*

This is why naptime works so much better for me, I guess. Somehow I’m able to relax and fall asleep quickly when I take a nap, which is not something I’m able to do at night.

Naptime is a break during the day, just a little rest. I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ve figured everything out. I’m calling time out, not waving a white flag. Going to bed for the night is calling it quits; it finalizes the day. For some reason I feel like if I stay up just a little bit longer I’ll be able to solve just one more problem. Or something. I don’t know why; it’s kind of frustrating.

One day I should probably learn to relax before going to bed. Until then I guess I’ll just keep napping.