Why am I not sleeping?

I'm on mom duty this weekend and in every sense of the word she is like a precious newborn baby. She has come a long way since her stroke 2.5 years ago. She is slowly becoming herself again .. minus the regular memory lapse, full-time care, feedings through her peg tube ... ok, perhaps she isn't quite there yet. But she still brings a warm smile to your face when you're with her.

Mom has a crazy bedtime of 1am (set by my sister, the super-human, full-time caregiver). In a sense this would be doable, but in mom's case she cannot sleep so she just lays there for hours. If mom's awake, you're awake. I sleep with one-eye opened worried about her pulling out her tube (which she has done on occassion and resulted in 4am ER visits), there's also the diaper change every 2 hours, not to mention her need to "spit" every 10 minutes. So by the time I cycled through all of the above it was past 4am and at last mom has fallen asleep. Time to catch some zzzz's (still with one-eye open in case ...). Just as I drift into REM my alarm goes off. Time to start the morning routine with a 7am feeding and pill crushing.

Now would be my real opportunity to close my eyes just for a bit before the next feeding. But I guess today I can manage beautifully on 2.5 hours. I must say that I shouldn't even be complaining about my "weekend shifts" with mom. My sister is the goddess amongst us women. She does this 24/7 and still runs a tight ship at home. Right now she's in Oregon with her family trying to have some normalcy in her life. And I'm getting ready to the do the next diaper change ...