I have always had an uneasy relationship with sleep. Even as a child I used to have wakeful nights, especially after a bad dream (there was a recurring one about an abominable snowman that was particularly terrifying). For several nights after an especially vivid dream I would have trouble getting to sleep. In the room that I had to myself after my eldest sister moved out, probably when I was 8 or 9, there were two single beds. I discovered that I could dispel the demons from the bad dream by moving over to the other bed. I used that technique many times over the years until we moved away from my childhood home in 1975 when I was 14. After that I had only the one bed, no choice but to stick it out, but I don’t remember having too much trouble sleeping again until I became a parent. Of course being pregnant made it difficult to sleep, especially since I had been a stomach sleeper, but it was after Erica was born that the troubles began in earnest. I have often wished I had taken after my Mom, who could sleep whenever and wherever she wanted to. A cat-napper par excellence. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
The night Erica was born (at 12:28), the nurses whisked her away to the nursery once I had held her, in order to let me sleep. Instead, I stayed awake all night wondering why they weren’t bringing her in to be fed and because I kept expecting to be woken up I couldn’t relax, and started fretting that they were bottle feeding her, which I was dead against. It turned out that she had slept all night and I had wasted my last opportunity for a good night’s sleep for the next many years.
So, motherhood brought with it, along with many wonderful aspects, familiarity with broken sleep. Erica had trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep and as soon as she could climb out of her crib she started toddling into our room to join us in our bed; on my side of course, since she knew she wouldn’t get much of a welcome from the other side! In the early days, when Erica would cry into the wee hours, Dave would tell me to go to bed and he would walk her around for awhile, but often I wouldn’t be able to relax no matter how exhausted I was, out of worry, guilt, and the feeling that I was in way over my head.
I remember distinctly that at some point after Travis was born, when Erica was about four, I finally suggested to her that she didn’t have to wake us up if she woke up herself, that she could entertain herself in her room instead, and miraculously she took the hint. The night time visits became considerably less frequent. Travis was a much more consistent sleeper so things got a bit easier, but broken sleep became the norm after the kids were born. I’m long since resigned to it now, and I’ve read that everybody has a few wake-ups during the night, though they might not realize it.
Once I hit perimenopause, the insomnia really set in. This was in my mid-forties, and since then there hasn’t been a time when I slept consistently well. Things improved when I was on HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy), but took a slight nose dive when I weaned myself off. The sleep got worse, but at least the hot flashes didn’t come back. Oh, the joys of womanhood!
My mind and body have always tussled over sleep. The anxiety that insomnia produces creates a vicious cycle so that I find myself “trying” to get to sleep. The irony is that sleep arrives just when you stop thinking about it. I’ve tried everything, but the things that have actually helped me the most are the things that distract my mind from the attempts to fall asleep. Sleep stories and meditation. And of course, drugs, but I try not to rely on them too much. Lately I’ve been trying CDB oil, with mixed results. Not sure whether it’ll make a difference long term, and if it does, am I going to take it for the rest of my life? That’s an expensive proposition.
This morning, while watering the garden, I noticed a hummingbird visiting the bee balm and black-eyed Susans, the first time I’ve ever seen one in the Tranquil Garden. I was amazed and fascinated watching it fly about. I reached for my phone, but I it wasn’t in my pocket and anyway, there’s no way I would have gotten a good photo of it. I could only enjoy the moment, and so I did. That exquisite moment reminded me to take each day as its own little unit, not expecting a pattern to emerge, when it comes to sleeping, or practically anything else. I did have a great night’s sleep last night (possibly because the two nights previous had been crap), but I don’t expect to find the secret of how to make that happen every night. I can only be supremely grateful when it does, just as I was grateful for the hummingbird’s visit. I might get a hummingbird feeder, but I know there’s no guarantee they’ll come back, no matter how hard I try.
*The Photo of the hummingbird was found on Pexel and is by Harrison Haines, Toronto, ON.
Enjoy this beautiful cover of a Nick Drake song that I had never heard before Erica sang it for us on a recent Youtube Livestream. If you haven’t yet subscribed to her channel, her next subscriber will be her 100th, so that could be you!
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