Sloppy Copy Mommy, WebMD Edition
My name is Jessica and I am battling MIS. Mommy Insomnia
Syndrome. It’s a medical term coined by me, a high school reading specialist
and mommy. Please wait a moment while I put on my white lab coat so I can
explain the signs and symptoms to you.
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The first signs of MIS become apparent as soon as the mommy
wakes up in the morning. Patients have
been observed craving coffee while they lay awake cursing the alarm as early as
5am. Often the mommy has woken up several times during the night, usually
following the pattern she started when she became pregnant for the first time,
though sometimes other people and animals just wake her up. Over and over. And
over. Even when the parasites who feed off the mommy every other stinking
waking minute of the night during infancy start to sleep through (3 long years later), the mommy
continues the pattern of waking up periodically ALL NIGHT LONG. This prevents the afflicted mommy from
obtaining a decent night’s sleep for several years, particularly when she continues to have children.
Patients suffering from MIS are exclusively female, and
exclusively mommies. Some daddies claim to be suffering from MIS, but they are
misdiagnosed, and are actually pathological liars. Real scientists know men don’t
suffer from MIS because one of the side effects of MIS is the absence of snoring loudly enough to make
the floors and walls rattle, sleeping through a baby’s cries, dozing through a
barking dog, or snoozing through a louder-than-normal television program.
Other signs of MIS include, but are not limited to:
- the inability to lay down at night and go to sleep after others in the family are in bed. Mommies surveyed in our test group (just one) say the reason for this is that the house is quiet and nobody is touching them, so they want to make every second last.
- Other reasons cited for not sleeping include:
o having no fights to break up over sharing a McDonald’s
toy; this toy can finally go in the trash while the kids are in bed and no one
is looking.
o no one is available to request more to eat or
drink, to receive said food or beverage, and then ask for something else.
o the need for quiet time to read or watch something that
does not include Dora, a Sesame Street Character, or Pinkalicious.
o desire to “just be on the couch” without
somebody asking to her to wipe their bottom.
o desire for time to secretly gorge herself on the
junk food stash.
Symptoms include:
- general unpleasantness
- desire for a Coke, even when the mommy knows they use the same chemicals to make Coke that they use to make toilet bowl cleaner
- having a sleepy feeling that won’t go away
- inability to sleep the next night, or the night after that, or the night after that
- yearning for nap time and jealousy when the mommy’s children or husband take a nap
- the mommy developing an unhealthy love of her cell phone’s flashlight app
Treatment of MIS is controversial, since patients often don’t
mention it or realize how little sleep they’ve had, and since others who
encounter the patient don’t really care if mommy slept or not.
Our survey group
(still just the one person) has tried the following:
- going to bed early (yeah, right!)
- melatonin (cured night terrors for child, but mommy forgets to take it and doesn’t want to overdo it, either)
- taking a bath before bed (nice for a moment, but then you’re still lying there awake 30 minutes later)
- wine (induces a headache)
- doing laundry right before going to bed (This did NOT work well.)
- doing dishes right before going to bed (Also didn’t work.)
- Benadryl (works, but then mommy can’t get up the next morning.)
- time to adjust sleep patterns after children start sleeping through the night (Still waiting…)
Anybody else suffer from MIS? Any tricks or tips for treatment?
photo credit: dvanzuijlekom via photopin cc
