healing skin, hormones, and hot nights

It’s currently 3am and I’m awake despite the little one actually having been asleep since 830ish.

“Why on earth are you awake?”, you may be asking yourself, and rightly so.

Well let me tell you, internet reader. I am hot.

Now though the ambient temperature in the room feels cool, I know I set my thermostat a bit high (in my defense, with the skin disorder I’m usually always freezing, and the baby likes it warm too). However, I am not sweating. I’m just really warm. Warm enough to sleep in just a t-shirt and underwear, which I haven’t done since before my skin declared mutiny on my body (circa 20013?).

So as I’m over here pondering my existence in a semi-lucid state at 3 in the morning, the question that keeps popping up on the forefront of my mind is: this heat, what does this mean?

What does this mean? I’ve got a few theories.

1. My skin has shown an unprecedented amount of healing lately. I have soft skin on my face, stomach, back, and thighs. Perhaps I have done the majority of my topical steroid withdrawal pemance and am finally seeing the results, aka having skin of normal thickness and elasticity and with the ability to retain heat and moisture.  Maybe. Or, maybe,
2. I have finally hit the point where, despite still breastfeeding (which can delay this), my hormones are kicking back in, and I am soon to rejoin the ranks of menstruating-aged women. In which case, hormones could be the culprit for my heated sleep body. Or, perhaps,
3. My circadian rhythm is so butchered from having to wake up at all manner of times during the night shift for the last 7 months (more if you count pregnancy months too) that my body doesn’t know what to do with un-externally regulated sleep interruptions, and so in a desperate attempt to keep its new status quo, it’s driving me awake via continued thermoregulation fluctuations. Maybe that’s it.

Or maybe it’s some culmination of the three of those things because as is often the case with complex systems like humans, we don’t always have a simple solution.

At any rate, I’m enjoying the fact that my little one is getting so much sleep, and that I’m getting some silky smooth patches of skin. I’m not stressed and as I am awake I am making sure to hydrate, so I’m sure in time I’ll learn to sleep again. So c’est la vie et bonne nuit (that’s life and good night).