Monday, January 02, 2006
Ambien makes me a real bitch.
So I've been self medicating with Percocet for a couple months to help me sleep better at night. I knew it wasn't the best plan, but it was prescribed for me when Suzie was born so I wasn't worried about her ingesting it through breastmilk too much. The reason I've been doing it is that it usually takes me a good 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to fall asleep at night and when I'm waking up two or three times a night to nurse her those 1/2 hours add up pretty quickly. Plus I'm just a bad sleeper anyway. When I medicate I can fall back asleep within a few minutes. Everything was going along perfectly but then I noticed I seemed to be developing a tolerance. Even though I was only taking 1/6th the recommended dose, it was still worrying me. When I started considering taking two per night instead of one I decided to talk to my doctor about it.
He agreed (obviously) that doping myself on narcotics is not a good practice and instead suggested a sample of Ambien. I took it for two nights in a row and slept HARD. We live in the boonies where hillbillies make it a practice to set off m-80s (like, lots of them, for hours and hours) on NYE. I completely slept through it. That's not really a good thing when it's my job to wake up to feed Suzie before her sleepy little whimper becomes a passionate, rageful wail. I did still wake up to feed her, but I'm afraid I may have slept longer into her her cries then I'm comfortable with. Plus, as the title suggests, I'm afraid it made me a terrible bitch. I was just a grump. A total grump. If you looked up "person who woke up on the wrong side of the bed" there would be a shot of my frowning mug. As my 5 year old friend would comment "a grumpy face."
So I didn't take anything last night. No Ambien. No percocet. Only a glass of wine. I slept like hell. Suzie slept like a log, not needing me for a feeding until 6 a.m. (after 8 hours of sleep!), but I tossed and turned most of the night. I did sleep pretty well from 6:30-8. So now I'm up, and while not anything near sunny, I'm not quite as grumpy as I've been the past few days. Maybe the drug is still in my system? Maybe I'm just depressed and the pills added to it? I don't know. But if I'm going to be tired and grumpy regardless, I'd just as soon not take the pills. They just can't be that good for me.
So here's my bloggy plan. I'm going to try and write everyday. I know that's pretty ambitious and so I'm not promising anything good. I may even bore MYSELF to tears. But hopefully, over time, with patience and perseverance, my vocabulary will return and my synapses will begin firing again and something positive will come out of all this.
1 Comment(s)
He agreed (obviously) that doping myself on narcotics is not a good practice and instead suggested a sample of Ambien. I took it for two nights in a row and slept HARD. We live in the boonies where hillbillies make it a practice to set off m-80s (like, lots of them, for hours and hours) on NYE. I completely slept through it. That's not really a good thing when it's my job to wake up to feed Suzie before her sleepy little whimper becomes a passionate, rageful wail. I did still wake up to feed her, but I'm afraid I may have slept longer into her her cries then I'm comfortable with. Plus, as the title suggests, I'm afraid it made me a terrible bitch. I was just a grump. A total grump. If you looked up "person who woke up on the wrong side of the bed" there would be a shot of my frowning mug. As my 5 year old friend would comment "a grumpy face."
So I didn't take anything last night. No Ambien. No percocet. Only a glass of wine. I slept like hell. Suzie slept like a log, not needing me for a feeding until 6 a.m. (after 8 hours of sleep!), but I tossed and turned most of the night. I did sleep pretty well from 6:30-8. So now I'm up, and while not anything near sunny, I'm not quite as grumpy as I've been the past few days. Maybe the drug is still in my system? Maybe I'm just depressed and the pills added to it? I don't know. But if I'm going to be tired and grumpy regardless, I'd just as soon not take the pills. They just can't be that good for me.
So here's my bloggy plan. I'm going to try and write everyday. I know that's pretty ambitious and so I'm not promising anything good. I may even bore MYSELF to tears. But hopefully, over time, with patience and perseverance, my vocabulary will return and my synapses will begin firing again and something positive will come out of all this.
