You’d think the exhaustion of pregnancy and childbirth would prepare you for the marathon sleepless nights of new motherhood. But it doesn’t even come close. I didn’t know until I was three babies deep in it. I had no idea that just one bad night with the kids could suck my life force dry faster than the flu. Had I known, I would’ve slept straight through my pregnancies, hibernating in preparation for the sleep starved years ahead.
I recently read about a KGB captive who said, “Anyone who has experienced this desire (for sleep) knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it.” It shocked me that I could relate to an actual victim of sleep torture. When I read on about the side effects -- moodiness, lack of energy, memory loss and depression, all symptoms with the power to make POWs give up secrets, and often their will to live –- I felt like I finally understood what was happening to me.
That’s when I bitterly came up with the term Mommy Combat Fatigue Syndrome. A warped way to describe the chronically bushed state I’m in as a result of my years in the nighttime baby trenches. I know it’s a stretch, and that my nocturnal baby battles are nowhere near as severe or cruel as POW manipulation, but sometimes I swear I’m being tortured. Except in my case, the captors are cute, flaxen-haired cherubs in soggy diapers and pilly zip-up sleepers. Instead of weapons, they clutch security objects that, when lost, I’m charged with locating at all hours of the night.
The moms I trusted for advice during my first pregnancy had plenty to say about epidurals and episiotomies. But where were they when I was up at 2 a.m. soothing my first colicky baby? Why hadn’t they warned me how desperate for sleep I’d be once the baby arrived? Was I the only human pacifier reporting for boob duty three times a night? How would I survive? The mountain of parenting books I gorged myself on were just as lacking in the subject. They focused on the baby’s sleep needs, not those of the wiped out mother.
Five years and two back-to-back babies later, I slouch drained on the playroom carpet with my first born son, Aiden. I’d rather be power napping to make up for the usual bunk night with his baby brother and sister. Instead, I perk up with an overpriced Starbucks and sheepishly go along with his scheme to draw ourselves as superheroes.
Aiden, 5, recently (and sadly) nicknamed himself “Big Brother Worry Wart.” His name choice is no surprise as I watch him draw a primitive looking superhero: a stick figure big brother hugging his siblings into the safety of a protective cape. He’s got plenty to worry about, with his three-year-old brother and 19-month-old sister constantly in his face, carelessly flinging minute-to-minute toddler anarchy into his ever more ordered orbit.
“What’s your superhero power?” Aiden asks me.
“Sleep! Just sleep!" I snap. "Being able to sleep all night without the babies bugging me!”
“Aw, mom, that’s wicked boring,” he snaps back. “Can’t you have a better superpower than that?”
What? Sleep boring?! Hell, no. I think not, little man. What could be better than a solid eight in a row? In my world, sleep rises above all else. Money. Sex. Food. Towering venti white mochas. Well, maybe not the mochas. I must, must, MUST have them to stay awake and take care of the kids.
I’m embarrassed to reveal my dorky adult idea of a superhero, but here goes. Meet Queen Super Sleep, the nighttime baby shunning, shut-eye master mama. My sleep deprived muse awakened her into consciousness and there she was, in fuchsia marker on buttercream construction paper. A refreshed me that I haven’t known since before my harried days as a stay-at-home mom. A me without bed-head and concealer-blotted under-eye bags.
I lost oceans of shuteye nursing Aiden back to sleep as an infant. Aside from a rare nightmare, he’s a great sleeper now, hardly stirring during his brother’s nightly tantrums and sister’s inexplicable 4 a.m. on-the-dot crying tirades. Once or twice I’ve put all three children back to sleep while my impossible to wake husband ironically slept “like a baby". Talk about torture! Luckily, he makes up for shirking night duty by "babysitting" the kids while I snooze ‘til noon on (most) Sundays and decompress on Fridays at the yoga studio.
In my sleep fantasies, and, believe me, I have plenty, Queen Super Sleep lavishes in the deeply restorative sleep most moms would kill for. She effortlessly slumbers through baby gas, grumbles and cries without damaging her young ones’ fragile, developing psyches. All without feeling a single scrap of infamous, ulcer forming mommy guilt. Without waking the neighbors. Without earning a visit from Child Services. All while racking up eye whirling, wrinkle-thwarting REM cycles.
Keep on coming, sleep, dreamy sleep. Please, give me just one night of continuous, luxuriant sleep, unbroken ‘til the first impatient kid's mini fingers poke me awake with the rising Southern California sun. Just you try and bring it, my three knee-high midnight marauders.
Queen Super Sleep commands all sleep saboteurs to vanish into the peachy glow of the Glade Plug-In nightlight. Starting tonight there will be no monsters in the closet. No eardrum-piercing teething cries. No sweaty, hysterical night terrors. No musical bed swaps, the ones that force mommy and daddy to the edge of reason and the mattress. No dreaded chain reaction, domino effect sibling wake-ups. And, abso-freakin’-lutely no infant teeth-rotting night nursing nipple aerobics!
Where fantasy ends, reality begins. It’s like waking from a dream, when I manage in the morning to rub the sleep from my eyes and see my children for the gifts they are. Strangely, it’s those same little people who keep me up at night who also give me the strength to make it through the day. I kiss their spring-back baby fat cheeks and hug them tightly and often, knowing they aren’t mine forever. Crappy sleepers or not, they touch my life like no one else can and teach me things I could never learn without them.
Before I know it, they’ll sleep through the night, grow up, and venture out into the wild world. That’s when I’ll wish I could get back just one hectic night pressing a warm, sweet new baby against my weary chest, peeling my eyes open wide to keep from falling asleep on the job.