Where Did all the REM Sleep Go>
I blame my children.
There was a period of my life during which I could sleep at any time, in any place. I could sleep in the car, on the couch, lying on top of a pool table in the middle of a busy bar. I was even known to occasionally catch a brief, drunken nap on the blissfully cool floor of my bathroom.
Giving birth to my first child signaled the beginning of the end of my ability to sleep for any sort of extended period of time. We all know the routine of getting up fourteen times in the middle of the night to take care of the baby, and praying for two consecutive hours of shut-eye. To make matters worse, my oldest daughter had colic for the first six months of her life. I went from being a lean, mean, sleeping machine to being so sleep deprived that I could barely function. But I was young then. When the opportunity to sleep did arise, I was able to attack it with gusto. I could put the baby in her mechanical swing, wind it up, and fall to sleep almost immediately. Despite being sound asleep, I could actually sense when the swing was winding down, wake up to rewind it, and fall right back into a delicious slumber.
Then daughter number two came along, followed quickly by daughter number three. If the ability to sleep was a habit, I had officially broken it.
The day finally arrived when all three girls slept through the night. That day should have been a momentous occasion. A choir of angels should have heralded the event, or at very least Bon Jovi could have thrown a small concert in honor of the occasion. Sadly, while my three little cherubs were now able to sleep, uninterrupted, for eight solid hours each and every night, I had no such luck. Oh, sure, every once in a while I would awake at five am and realize, to my surprise, that I had been asleep since ten pm, but that was a rare occasion.
I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stay asleep. I awoke, ready to face the day, at three o’clock in the morning. Or I would dream, busy dreams, that left me feeling as exhausted as if I had been hard at work all night.
My daughters are now all in their mid to late twenties, and the problem has not improved. I am beginning to suspect that it is no longer fair to blame them for my insomnia. It’s only a suspicion, though. Nothing can be proven.
So yes … I blame my children.
There was a period of my life during which I could sleep at any time, in any place. I could sleep in the car, on the couch, lying on top of a pool table in the middle of a busy bar. I was even known to occasionally catch a brief, drunken nap on the blissfully cool floor of my bathroom.
Giving birth to my first child signaled the beginning of the end of my ability to sleep for any sort of extended period of time. We all know the routine of getting up fourteen times in the middle of the night to take care of the baby, and praying for two consecutive hours of shut-eye. To make matters worse, my oldest daughter had colic for the first six months of her life. I went from being a lean, mean, sleeping machine to being so sleep deprived that I could barely function. But I was young then. When the opportunity to sleep did arise, I was able to attack it with gusto. I could put the baby in her mechanical swing, wind it up, and fall to sleep almost immediately. Despite being sound asleep, I could actually sense when the swing was winding down, wake up to rewind it, and fall right back into a delicious slumber.
Then daughter number two came along, followed quickly by daughter number three. If the ability to sleep was a habit, I had officially broken it.
The day finally arrived when all three girls slept through the night. That day should have been a momentous occasion. A choir of angels should have heralded the event, or at very least Bon Jovi could have thrown a small concert in honor of the occasion. Sadly, while my three little cherubs were now able to sleep, uninterrupted, for eight solid hours each and every night, I had no such luck. Oh, sure, every once in a while I would awake at five am and realize, to my surprise, that I had been asleep since ten pm, but that was a rare occasion.
I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stay asleep. I awoke, ready to face the day, at three o’clock in the morning. Or I would dream, busy dreams, that left me feeling as exhausted as if I had been hard at work all night.
My daughters are now all in their mid to late twenties, and the problem has not improved. I am beginning to suspect that it is no longer fair to blame them for my insomnia. It’s only a suspicion, though. Nothing can be proven.
So yes … I blame my children.
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