If you go to bed with the children... (continued)

So.... where were we?

Ever since I was precipitated into the maelstrom of motherhood a little over a decade ago, two questions have repeatedly surfaced like scum on the surface of my grey and exhausted mind:

1. How can my babies, who have the exact same nights I do (i.e. broken, broken, and broken some more), wake up in the morning looking and obviously feeling amazingly refreshed, rejuvenated, rested, cheerful and ready for a long adventure-filled day, whereas I (who have the exact same nights they do, i.e. broken, broken and broken some more) wake up feeling like I was run over by a bus, a tram, a train and a construction roller, consecutively and repeatedly? 

(And what idiot ever coined the expression 'to sleep like a baby'???)

2. How could Mother Nature have gotten something this important this wrong? I've mentioned this before, but seriously: How did we manage to survive this long as a species? Our babies require consistent and intensive care for at least four years before they are ready to hit the town on their own and bring home some bacon, yet our babies' mothers drag themselves through life barely able to lift their feet or remember their middle name, let alone forage for and find food ('... Hey, is that a sweet pussy cat or a sable-tooth tiger peeking at me through the bushes?... Don't know. Don't care. I just want to close my eyes for a minute, OK, just one minute!!!!').

Seriously? How, people, how? We should have become extinct aeons ago, all grand-mother hypotheses notwithstanding...

It goes without saying that I did not ponder these questions for very long, due to general bleary-eyed exhaustion, but they did recur. 

Anyway, back to my recent despair, and going to sleep at 7 pm. As soon as I started doing that, things got better, dramatically better, fast. In fact, within a week I felt not just OK, but absolutely bloody fantastic. I would have been the last to admit it, since one can, I have discovered, get quite some brownie points for 'heavy night baby duty', and I was reluctant to let go of my advantage in the perpetual war of the sexes, but looking around, I began to suspect I was feeling 'more rested' than most regular 'rested' people of my acquaintance (the non-baby owners among them).

Which is when we took ourselves and the 'formerly good sleeper' to the local baby check-up station (known as the consultatiebureau). The wonderful woman who runs it looked at the baby, looked at us, and asked: 'How is sleeping going?'. 'Terrible', I said. 'Terrible!' 'He stopped sleeping altogether about two months ago now... Wakes me up every 45 minutes. On the dot. We were hoping you could tell us what is wrong with him...'

She looked at me in a way that made me feel that maybe she had not registered for the secret brownie point system, and said, not unkindly: 'You don't look very tired...'. 'Well that's because I've had to take drastic measures', I blurted out. 'I've been going to bed with him...'

She smiled, folded her hands, and told me the following story: That starting around age 9 months, babies begin to dream in the same kind of way that we do, and that from this point onward, their nights tend to take on the following pattern:

They fall asleep sometime after sundown and sleep very deep for 2.5-4 hrs, without waking up. This first deep-sleep phase is essential to restore their physical functions, repair anything that got damaged during the day, and grow (babies and children grow almost solely at night). This one stretch of deep sleep satisfies all their deep sleep requirements for the night, and they spend the rest of the night doing their other important work, which is to dream their way into processing and integrating every single bit of new experience they had that day. They do so in dream cycles of 45-60 minutes, and most babies, although not all, require some soothing and a dose of sleeping drugs to help them move through the crest of each dream wave into the next one (hence the 45 min. nursing cycle that had gotten me down on my knees in the first place). 

'Ok,' I said. 'But what about  me? What about my needs for deep sleep? What about my basic requirements of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep???'

'You are not going to like what I tell you next.' said the friendly lady with a friendly smile. 

But she was wrong. 

I loved it! (and readily gave up all my saved brownie points for the privilege of hearing it...)

She said that I (and probably you too, if you happen to be human) have the exact same sleep needs as babies. That I too, need to start the night shortly after sundown with a single period of deep sleep (of 2.5-4 hrs) to repair all physical damage, etc. And then I too need a series of lighter, dream-filled sleep cycles of 45 to 60 minutes to process and integrate my socio-emotional development of the day. 

Here comes the magic bit: In my cheeky workshop materials, I was unwittingly telling the truth when I said babies teach us to sleep, and help us sleep better. Amazingly, they really do. When I synchronize my sleep with my baby's, by going to sleep at the same time that he does, we have our deep sleep phase at the same time, and we ride the waves of dream sleep together, emerging from each at more or less the same time. Every time I nurse him at one of these junctions I get a good solid dose of endorphins, oxytocin and whatever other hormone cocktail night-nursing gives me, which puts me right back to sleep, allowing me to stay in bed, asleep for a full 12 to 13 hours. 

And wake up feeling amazing. Ready to forage and fight the sable-tooth tigers of the modern world...

There, that was quite a lecture, but this has been such a life-changer for me that I had to put it down somewhere, for future use. And for sharing.  

Here is to sleeping like (and with) a baby! Cheers!