I was up half the night worrying over one of my favorite topics: that Lucy will inherit the insomnia that has plagued both my mother and me. Lucy slept peacefully all night. Isn’t that ironic?
My mom was always up in the middle of the night ever since I can remember. Once she woke the whole house up laughing at Monty Python’s _The Meaning of Life_. Routinely, she would bake midnight cookies for me to bring to the teachers at my elementary school. Sometimes she would play the piano, which irritated me — I just wanted some peace and quiet!
p{color:gray}. Photo: Lucy loves to bite my chin. Is this normal? Should we be concerned?
I always just thought Mom had a thing for not-sleeping. Later, I realized that insomnia would afflict anyone with long-term anxiety problems whose husband dies suddenly and who didn’t have a lot of emotional support.
I, on the other hand, was always a fabulous sleeper. I could sleep just about anywhere — in the car, at church, at the breakfast table, even in the Sistine Chapel (seriously). Can you say “escape mechanism”? I loved sleeping. It was one of my favorite things to do growing up. When I was asleep, I was in charge.
One night, after I had graduated from college, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned until I finally fell asleep at 6 am. It really freaked me out. What was I supposed to do? Bake cookies? Watch Monty Python movies? How did normal people fall asleep, and why was I having trouble all of a sudden?
This marked a new stage in my journey of processing unfelt grief from my Dad’s death (when I was 10), sorting out new patterns of how to express anger, and drawing healthy boundaries in my relationships. Marrying Jon was one of the best things I ever did, as I finally felt safe enough in a relationship to sort out a lot of family garbage. It wasn’t pretty, but Jon of course has stuck with me and sorted through all the rotten eggs and moldy cheese. We’ve even found a few nice things in the trash that we were able to dust off and look at.
But, as it turns out, pretty much every time I encounter a new opportunity for growth, I have a hard time falling asleep. My therapist says this is healthy — it means that my system won’t let me just ignore things, that I actually have to get to the bottom of them. I am glad about this in theory, but it sure doesn’t help when I’m still awake at 3:30 am.
I’m still not exactly sure what has been troubling me so much these past couple of days. I think it has something to do with a wacky conversation I had with my Mom the other day about (guess what?) her sleep. Plus, my intense longing for Lucy to grow up without catching the crazies from me. This turns into quite a vicious circle, as the more I want Lucy to not feel anxious about anything (especially sleep!), the more I’m sure she’s going to sense that anxiety from me.
Thankfully, I have an appointment scheduled with The Amazing Christopher Miller. I feel pretty lucky to have a lot of resources on hand to figure this stuff out and a really supportive husband and good friends all around. And in my better moments, I’m thankful to have a chance to sort things out so that, whether Lucy ends up struggling with insomnia when she is 32 or not, she’ll at least have watched me try my darnedest to work through it too and have a few ideas up her sleeve (not just half-eaten broccoli).
Go Ann! =)
Hey Ann,
Love the picture!! That’s how Abby gives me kisses (also on my mouth which is kinda gross but cute at the same time). :) I think that mom’s brains are just wired, in general. So many more things on our minds. I was like you before too, sleeping at the drop of a hat. Now that Abby’s around, I stay awake longer when going to bed and have a hard time going back to sleep quickly if I wake in the middle of the night. Most of it, I think, is me straining to hear Abby, since she’s trained me to wake at the slightest noise. :) I tend to use the time to pray. Which usually puts me to sleep…is that wrong? :)
Who better to fall asleep talking to than God, Jo? That’s what I’ve always been told.
Funny thing Ann is that while you couldn’t sleep, I was dreaming that I was visiting you and Jon and we were all attending a devotional at church. Guess God put you on my mind.
I never have trouble falling asleep, it is always the middle of the night when I wake up and cannot go back down that gets me.
I’ve always had a hard time falling asleep (well, at least since high school anyway), but I think it got worse after I had kids. I don’t know if it’s just the extra stress or the fact that you know you are going to sleep only to be woken later by a baby crying so that makes it harder to go to sleep too (especially when they are really little and wake up a lot – I remember laying there thinking “what’s the point, they’re just going to wake me up soon anyway”).
I have read in one of my books on sleeping, that helping your child to learn to go to sleep on their own and put themselves back to sleep when they wake up during the night (in other words, helping them to form healthy sleeping habits) will help them to sleep better for the rest of their lives. So that, in part, has motivated me to help them learn to sleep well now so they can continue to sleep well later.
I totally agree, Nicole. One of my greatest hopes is that Lucy will have an orderly home life with bedtime routines and mealtimes and regular patterns. I didn’t have much of that growing up, since my mom was having such a hard time. I remember going to sleep at midnight routinely when I was in first grade — I would stay up watching M*A*S*H with my family. When we started to learn to tell time in school, I remember lying and marking down that my bedtime was 11:00, because I was embarrassed that midnight was so late. Needless to say, my teacher said 11:00 was still too late!
All of that to say — I’m really glad about giving Lucy some regular, normal routines at this period in her life, and I hope they lay the foundation for years of good sleep to come!
Speaking of insomnia, I can attest to Jon’s total lack of it.
Actually, I can’t attest to that since I never wake up during my 9 solid.
How would I know?
BUT, Jon is afflicted with his weird “waking sleep” state.
Maybe afflicted isn’t the right word. It could be a gift.
If Lulu ever looks you right in the eye, conveys deep, disturbing wisdom, and leaves you with a tingly-scary rush up you spine, she’s probably asleep!
Gift, or curse, I cannot say. But look for it. And try to not to scream out loud when it happens. Yikes!
Ironically, I had insomnia last night, up for several hours with what I call a “busy brain.” But Uncle Jim is mostly right. Here’s some recent “sleep talk” at our house. Ann was awake, I (needless to say) was not:
*Ann:* Jon, do you want eyeshades?
*Jon:* Is this because of my name?
*Ann:* What?
*Jon:* Because of the fourth letter of my name. It’s different because there is human behavior at the microscopic level with the human joyful expectation.
Seriously. No fiction, no editing here.
ha! How funny. James does that sometimes too. I’ll ask him a question and get a totally weird answer after which I know he is asleep.
Well at least sometimes with sleep talkers you may get some info. Andy and I were lab partners for a psych class in college. He was convinced then ( and I think he still is ) that he had dictated a portion of the paper to me. No, I angrily sat at a key board WAITING and then realized that he was asleep. Oh yes he did dictate his portion. It was just well thought out in his dreams.
Ann , I dont have a problem falling asleep. But I often find myself awake at three or four in the morning. At the end of my pregnancy with Alex and Joseph this was often when I was awake and not able to get back to sleep. Now when that happens I will often use that time to pray for women…pregnant, trying to conceive…wherever they may be in their journey of motherhood.
Chin sucking is totally normal. It prepares you for other things later. Enjoy it while you can! Pretty soon all she’ll want from you is more clothes. Oh, and you to look at her a lot while she tries them on one by one. Remember all those little plays the kids made you sit through on Summerdale? They’ve morphed into America’s Next Top Model.
You’re both beautiful. And I think you’ll likely sleep better again some day. Having babies and sleep just don’t go together.
Evan totally gave me a hickey on my chin one day when he was sucking on it. I think he was 5 or 6 months old at the time.
Jon you are brave for sharing your sleep conversation! My husband and I have many, but I am the sleep talker (and sleep walker too). I hope Ann is patient with you, as after 7 years of marriage my husband still struggles to tell if I’m awake and talking or asleep and talking. This has led to arguments the next day, when I wasn’t so nice to him the night before over his inability to follow the conversation which made perfect sense in my sleep.