8 Ways to Know You are Sleep Deprived…

When my oldest was born, she awoke every 20 minutes during the night for a feeding.  I calculated the amount of sleep I was getting and it totaled two hours a night! This was a bit challenging as I was working full-time (with my daughter in tow) at a highly demanding job with a heavy caseload.

No wonder when I look back at photographs from those days my eyes are always closed – I was desperately attempting to squeeze in a nap whenever I could!

Fast forward many years later and there are still clues that I am sleep deprived.

So, how can you tell that sleep deprivation has made its entrance into your life? Here are 8 ways:

1.  You make your husband’s sandwiches for the next day’s lunch as you always do. However, when your husband arrives home from work the following day, he breaks the bad news to you – could you please remember to put the ham and cheese on the sandwiches? After all, a mayonnaise sandwich is hardly tasty, let alone healthy!

2. After you drop the kids off at soccer practice, you realize a startling fact – the sliding rear door of your minivan is left open and you’ve been driving it that way for the past 3 miles! (This happened to a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous).

3. You begin unloading the dishes on a particularly tiring day. What you don’t realize until minutes later is that you have been unloading the dishwasher of dirty dishes and putting them in your cupboards. Two words for this: EWWWW! and GROSS!

4. Speaking of house cleaning duties, you hear a clunk-clunk as you are vacuuming and discover to your horror that you didn’t realize in your sleep-deprived-state that there was Polly Pocket clothing and accessories on the floor of the playroom. Alas, those same articles of clothing and accessories have now fallen victim to a Hoover upright vacuum – known as “Big Mr. Blue.”

5. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation messes with the memory. Case in point: You get your children’s names mixed up, or call them the names of the characters in your books. Or worse yet, you accidentally mix up the names of your children with the name of the family pet!

6. You drive home after grocery shopping and drive right past the turnoff to your house, but don’t realize it until you’re in the next town. This might have happened to someone who is writing this blog post who might have been sleep deprived. But we won’t mention names. 🙂

7. We’ve all been in those grocery stores where they ask for your telephone number at the checkout. You’re so tired that you stutter about, not remembering that you had a telephone, let alone a telephone number.

8. Speaking of telephones and telephone numbers, here is one of the best measures of how to know you are just wiped out from lack of sleep: have you ever been having a challenging day and needed to call a friend for encouragement and prayer support? My friend called me one day in tears. “I really needed to talk to you, but when I called, your phone was continually busy.”

I was perplexed. After all, my landline phone can never be busy since I have call forwarding. If I’m on another line, it will automatically ring to my cell phone. “Really?” I asked.

“Well, at least that’s what I thought,” began my friend, “Until I realized that I had called my own phone number and that’s why I was getting the busy signal!”

What humorous side effects have you experienced from sleep deprivation?

8 Ways to Know You are Sleep Deprived…

When my oldest was born, she awoke every 20 minutes during the night for a feeding.  I calculated the amount of sleep I was getting and it totaled two hours a night! This was a bit challenging as I was working full-time (with my daughter in tow) at a highly demanding job with a heavy caseload.

No wonder when I look back at photographs from those days my eyes are always closed – I was desperately attempting to squeeze in a nap whenever I could!

Fast forward many years later and there are still clues that I am sleep deprived.

So, how can you tell that sleep deprivation has made its entrance into your life? Here are 8 ways:

1.  You make your husband’s sandwiches for the next day’s lunch as you always do. However, when your husband arrives home from work the following day, he breaks the bad news to you – could you please remember to put the ham and cheese on the sandwiches? After all, a mayonnaise sandwich is hardly tasty, let alone healthy!

2. After you drop the kids off at soccer practice, you realize a startling fact – the sliding rear door of your minivan is left open and you’ve been driving it that way for the past 3 miles! (This happened to a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous).

3. You begin unloading the dishes on a particularly tiring day. What you don’t realize until minutes later is that you have been unloading the dishwasher of dirty dishes and putting them in your cupboards. Two words for this: EWWWW! and GROSS!

4. Speaking of house cleaning duties, you hear a clunk-clunk as you are vacuuming and discover to your horror that you didn’t realize in your sleep-deprived-state that there was Polly Pocket clothing and accessories on the floor of the playroom. Alas, those same articles of clothing and accessories have now fallen victim to a Hoover upright vacuum – known as “Big Mr. Blue.”

5. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation messes with the memory. Case in point: You get your children’s names mixed up, or call them the names of the characters in your books. Or worse yet, you accidentally mix up the names of your children with the name of the family pet!

6. You drive home after grocery shopping and drive right past the turnoff to your house, but don’t realize it until you’re in the next town. This might have happened to someone who is writing this blog post who might have been sleep deprived. But we won’t mention names. 🙂

7. We’ve all been in those grocery stores where they ask for your telephone number at the checkout. You’re so tired that you stutter about, not remembering that you had a telephone, let alone a telephone number.

8. Speaking of telephones and telephone numbers, here is one of the best measures of how to know you are just wiped out from lack of sleep: have you ever been having a challenging day and needed to call a friend for encouragement and prayer support? My friend called me one day in tears. “I really needed to talk to you, but when I called, your phone was continually busy.”

I was perplexed. After all, my landline phone can never be busy since I have call forwarding. If I’m on another line, it will automatically ring to my cell phone. “Really?” I asked.

“Well, at least that’s what I thought,” began my friend, “Until I realized that I had called my own phone number and that’s why I was getting the busy signal!”

 

What humorous side effects have you experienced from sleep deprivation?

Mom Brain Overload!

As I headed out the door to pick my girls up from school, I remembered at the last minute that they had a basketball game right after school. As such, they wouldn’t be able to come home and get changed before the game. So I grabbed their jerseys and sweatpants.

Glancing at the shoe holder by the front door, I remembered (aren’t you proud of me for all this stuff I’m remembering?!) I also needed to take them their basketball shoes. I grabbed Doodle’s basketball shoes then reached for Sunshine’s shoes. Finally, with a full armload, I climbed in our SUV feeling rather proud of myself that I had actually remembered the basketball game considering the type of week it had been and it was only Tuesday. I reached the school and greeted my girls before handing them their basketball gear. “We have about five minutes before we have to be at the game,” I said.

When I handed Sunshine her basketball shoes, she gasped in horror. “Mom! These are TWO different shoes!!!” I looked down at the mismatched shoes she held in her hands. One was a basketball shoe while the other was a school shoe.

I saw the clock and knew there was no way we had time to go all the way back home and exchange the shoes. I noted that thankfully the shoes were both the same height so there would be no sprained ankles. “Sunshine, can you just wear those? We don’t have time to go home first. If we do, we’ll be late.”

Sunshine’s face held a look of terror before she finally responded, “Ok, Mom.” If there is one thing that is Sunshine’s pet peeve, it’s that she HATES to be late. She’s a very punctual little girl, which is helpful in a family full of last-minute unpunctuals.

“Thank goodness I didn’t grab one of Dad’s and one of yours,” I said laughing, always trying to keep a positive outlook on things.

A mugshot of the guilty mom

Sunshine was not amused. However, she gracefully took the shoes and began to put them on.

I saw a friend in the school hallway and explained the situation to her. “Don’t feel too bad,” she told me. “I forgot to bring Pickles our cat for ‘show and tell today.'” Her son was crying and she felt so bad over her forgotten task.

“I think our mom brains are just on overload. I don’t think I can even get one more detail into this crowded brain of mine,” I said. She nodded in agreement while profusely promising her son that she would bring Pickles for the next “show and tell.”

I’m amazed that we moms get as much accomplished as we do. I’m shocked we are actually functioning at all with all that we have on our minds. I always thank God we manage to get out of the door and to school each morning as that in itself is a feat. 

I’ve forgotten to put the lunch meat on my husband’s sandwiches before. I’ve forgotten to drop off the overdue books at the library. I’ve forgotten to pay a bill. Yep, I’ve forgotten many tasks, but when I think about all that I have actually remembered to do in my hectic life, I’m amazed and thankful.

Now if I can just remember to wear matching shoes myself…