The Sleepless Years

"Here you go, mommy" my daughter whispered to me in the blackness of my room.  She was snuggled against the back of my neck, pressing every bit of her body against mine, reaching her hand around my face, and dangling her generous gift within millimeters of my closed eyes.  I grabbed it from her and opened my eyes to focus and try to make it out.  Her day-old, used bandaid.  Awesome.  Thanks.  I rolled over to toss it on the night table and felt her sippy cup dig between my ribs.  L's favorite spot at night is right in the small of my back.  Or literally on my back.  Or sometimes nose to nose, her hands cupping my face and her hair blowing into my nostrils with each of her deep, sleepy exhales.  At this particular time, it was 5:00 in the morning, and I had spent the past couple of hours serenaded by her croup-coughing into my left ear.  Our youngest son had wandered into our room three times that night also, crying with leg pain that could only be forgotten with--I kid you not--a full deep tissue massage.  There were moments when I wanted to ask him if he wanted cucumber infused water or green tea with his massage, but I was still half asleep enough that my mouth wouldn't move to say the words.  The night before that, the waking culprit was ear pain from his cold (that he clearly lovingly shared with his sister).  Before that, it was probably run-of-the-mill sleep walking or rousing us to inform us of his need to pee.  Our middle son has nightmares from time to time, and when he does, he will circulate from bed to bed attempting to wake up all the people and give each of them a complete play-by-play of what happened in his head while he was sleeping.  He cannot get back to sleep without this catharsis.  Our ten year old son, by comparison, has the whole sleeping thing pretty much mastered at this point.  I'm told that before long, I won't be able to get him out of bed before 1pm.  I'm gonna need that in writing.  One down,  t-h-r-e-e  to go.       

If you ask anyone in my family what my favorite activity is, without fail, they will unanimously answer sleeping.  I love sleep.  I miss sleep.  Want to go out and have a kid-free night on the town with your husband or your girlfriends?  As long as I'm back by nine, because sleep.  What about getting up early to hit the gym before work?  Um, no.  As a side note, I got up once to go to a 6:00 (that's a.m.) exercise class once and nearly didn't live to write this post.  I lay there on the mat, staring at the ceiling, pretending to do crunches, wondering what I had ever done to deserve that self-inflicted torture.  What's wrong with those people?  I'll tell you: not enough sleep leads to complete delirium.  Clearly, they're delirious.  i.e. I got up early that day to exercise with a bunch of crazy people.  Someone needs to take those poor people and put them all to bed for a good 12 hours, and I promise you, their compulsion to run on a treadmill or lift heavy things or just generally be awake enough to move their legs before 8am ever again will magically subside.  Because sleep is the best, and once you get hooked on it, there's no turning back. 

Then you have kids and go through a decade or more of withdrawal, which you learn to survive barely with the help of coffee and decent makeup.  (By the way, the whole coffee thing took me nine too many years to discover.  Why did no one tell me it gives you super powers?)  Most mornings, I am grateful that my husband leaves the house before I get out of bed, because if he were to be forced to interact with the monster he actually married, he might not be my husband anymore.  My kids don't have a choice in the matter, so they're pretty much used to it.  Plus,  I'm pretty sure they think I'm just a monster anyway, by default.  Or so they tell me.  (Or will tell me once they're in therapy as adults).  At any rate, I typically roll out of bed so as not to disturb my stiff joints, avoid the mirror so as not to terrify myself, and slap myself a few times so my eyes will stay open long enough to pick out which sweatshirt to wear over my pajamas while I drive the kids to school (way easier than putting on a bra).  What I'm getting at here is that I'm not approachable except between the hours of 10am-9pm.  Before that, well, I'm asleep, even if I'm upright.  And after 9pm, I have to prepare myself for the nighttime olympics of "put your kid(s) back to sleep."  If you see me during my off hours, please excuse my personal presentation or total lack thereof.  Maybe sometime within the next 100 years, I'll get my sleep mojo back and have time to lament over the fact that I indeed miss these sleepless years.                                     

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Activity Burnout: Why Doing Nothing Is Really Something