Sleep

My sleep habits seem to be defined by stages in my life--by my current priorities and worries. How well I sleep, how often I sleep, how many hours I sleep--all impacted by what events are important in my life at the time. I remember being in college and pulling those "all-nighters" during finals week. Or meeting someone new at a party and staying up until all hours of the morning talking and flirting and perhaps heading to the International House of Pancakes (open 24 hours) for coffee and Belgian waffles. Finding a potential "Mr. Right," staying up all night laughing with and confiding in the closest set of Gal Pals I have ever had, and getting good enough grades to keep my scholarship, were the priorities for which I would go without sleep back then.

Eventually, children came along, and I slept the sleep of an expectant mother--someone who was "new at this." I was awakened every night at 2 am while pregnant because the growing baby inside me always chose that time of night to be most active--a portent of the fact that once he was born, he would awaken at this time of night for the first six months of his life wanting an additional feeding or some attention. I never minded (because I was "new at this," and it felt good to be "needed"). Then I progressed to the next sleep phase--the phase of "Working Mother Determined to Breastfeed Despite Having a Full-Time Job." Even after my babies started sleeping through the night, I still got up at 2 am to dutifully express breastmilk for them to have during the day while I was away. I'd go back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to start my workday, feeding the baby on the couch before I left, wearing nylons, high heels, business-like skirt, and my pajama top. During the night, I could awaken in a split second at the slightest sound, yet fall back to sleep in mere seconds, too. Nothing kept me awake except for my childrens' needs. Once they were satisfied, I slipped right back into dreamland, although this often meant that babies slept curled beside me in my bed because I couldn't be bothered to put them back in their cribs. I couldn't bear the "cry it out" method either--I worked full-time--I needed my sleep, so Mom's bed was baby's bed because it was just easier that way. Baby #2 came along, and while her older brother had been banished into his own toddler bed, there were those nights when he wandered back in to Mom's bed, where we slept as a family through fevers and head colds, bad dreams, and separation anxiety. I had a husband who worked the night shift, so there was always plenty of room in the bed for the 3 of us, although hindsight tells me that, over time, my children, my husband, and I began to exist in separate groups of 3--again, perhaps, a portent of things to come.

My children have never been "easy" at bedtime--they were always wanting "one more story" or a song, or a glass of water, or needing to tell me about something "important." Because I was afflicted with Working Mother's Guilt, I always acquiesced because I knew that bedtime was the one time of day that my children had my undivided attention. When I arrived home from work, their father left for work, so I was running errands, doing housework, and fixing dinner without help, all while trying to keep an eye on them. I was unable to provide them with my full attention--I was always multi-tasking or pre-occupied or distracted. Bedtime became their one opportunity to have me to themselves. It was the only time I sat down and stopped thinking about other things, and that was okay, even if it meant that my kids' bedtime would begin at 9 pm but always truly be 10 pm, even on a school night. That extra hour of their bedtime routine is important, and I don't have any desire to change it, even though it means my bedtime becomes midnight or later, and I survive on 5 hours of sleep a night.

Now that my children are older, the hours between 10 pm and 5 am are no longer dictated by their needs--night-time feedings, childhood illnesses, and nightmares--leaving me free to sleep uninterrupted for those 5 hours, right? Wrong. Because now I'm a grown-up, full of grown-up responsibilities, and I am shouldering them single-handedly with no one to share the burden. My restless mind is tortured by sleep. I would lie in bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep because of the worry--the fears. If I did manage to fall asleep, I had dreams that bothered me--filled with confrontations with two men in particular who left me with much unresolved anger--anger I was either unable to express or prevented from expressing. It would be manifested in my dreams, and I would awaken, agitated, pissed off, and ready to fight, even though the altercation was completely fictitious. In my dreams, I got to scream, and yell, and say ugly things I would never have said while awake. But, those confrontations were not helpful--they only left me upset--too bothered to go back to sleep because they were not real. If I were worried about a particular problem--like money--I would wake up, groggy, and not thinking clearly, start thinking about the problem and then, because I was only half-awake, the problem would become horrifying and insurmountable, and would keep me awake. I would eventually fall back asleep, and once I had really woken up, had my shower, and thought the problem through, I realized that my night-time panic was irrational and ridiculous, and that my sleep-deprived state had given that particular problem far more weight than it deserved. And I would be angry that I had been deprived of sleep that I undoubtedly needed because I don't possess logic and reason at 2 am.

So, for the last few years I survived on 2 or 3 hours of sleep most nights, catching up occasionally, from sheer exhaustion, a few days each week--usually on the weekends. That began to change last summer, when both my custody battle and my money issues were finally resolved. My sleep patterns changed yet again. I sleep 5 hours a night without any problems at all. I have no trouble falling asleep because my worries are, for the most part, under control. I still have the occasional "freak-out" moment like Thursday night when the hot water line to my kitchen sink burst and flooded my kitchen, and for some odd reason, I was panicked about getting a hold of my landlord the next day to have it fixed. Why I was so reluctant to call my landlord is beyond me, but at 2 am it seemed like a horrible thing. I was worried he might be out of town, and I'd have to call a plumber and pay an exorbitant amount of money before I could have hot water again. I was pissed that I was so flipping "helpless" and ignorant about plumbing, that I had to call my father to figure out how to turn off the water. I was feeling desperately like I needed to buy a house of my own--and SOON, but I'm not ready because I haven't saved up enough money yet, and the idea of packing all of our stuff up and physically moving it is daunting. I was angry at the houses for sale in my neighborhood that are 25 years old, made by a cheap-ass builder, and they all have hot water lines and cheap pipes that burst for no good reason, leaving me with no option but to buy a more expensive house in a newer subdivision with a dinky lot and a backyard devoid of landscaping that I will hate. These are my 2 to 4 am ramblings.

But last night, I slept okay. My landlord came over and fixed the water line while I was at work. The kids are at their dad's for the weekend. I spent the evening with some other Cub Scout moms, drinking Hurricanes and assembling all of our sons' various patches, badges, neckerchiefs, and other Cub Scout memorabilia into lovingly-arranged shadow boxes, to be "presented" to them when they have their "cross-over" Ceremony next week and become bona fide Boy Scouts. (So, you see, there was a plus side to my kitchen flood because while frantically yanking things out from under the sink, trying to locate the valves to shut off the water, I found the Pat O'Brien's Hurricane Mix I had purchased in New Orleans last summer! Admittedly, my son's shadow box is not yet completed, but I've got a week to finish that up without being under the influence of rum.) I slept a full 8 hours last night and my dreams consisted of mundane things like walking past my bathroom mirror and catching a glimpse of myself, only I was thinner and in better shape--perhaps a portent of my future self, now that I am diligently trying to exercise daily. In another dream I had a glimpse of the back of my friend M's head, and his hair was thinning, and I teased him about it. Again, perhaps a portent of things to come?

But at least my sleep is filled with peaceful, non-threatening images, for a change. Everyday things that really could happen, instead of crazy "drama" that I hope has been banished from my life, leaving me free to sleep, without interruption, for the first time in a decade.