Column: Savagemama

Sleepless in Arlee

By Jennifer Savage, 10-04-07

Eliza has never been much of a sleeper. I think she considers it overrated, the hours and hours of lying quietly, sewing together the loose threads of a busy day, letting her body settle into a deep place of restfulness. I think this because at a year old she still hasn’t slept through the night.

I have friends who have newborns, babies just barely six weeks old, who talk about six, seven hour stretches of sleep. At night. I wonder what that feels like.

When Eliza was tiny, we tried everything. We wrapped her tightly in blankets to make her feel secure, we played music, ran a fan to create white noise in the background. We tried putting her to sleep in a Sprout Pouch, a backpack, totally uncovered and lying alone. No matter what we tried, she still didn’t sleep for longer than a few hours at a stretch.

When we brought Eliza home we thought she’d just sleep wherever she was comfortable and that we’d work out the logistics as we went along. We had a crib if she preferred to sleep there but we were open to the family bed concept if that seemed right for everyone involved. So she slept with us, in the beginning.

After the first few blissful weeks of not wanting her any farther than six inches away from me, I realized I wasn’t getting any sleep with Eliza in our bed. I woke often wondering where she was in relation to Seth, the pillows, the down comforter. We had to try something else because even though she slept for a few hours at a time like a newborn should, I didn’t sleep at all. I wondered if I was a bad mother because I couldn’t seem to get any rest with my tiny baby next to me. How will she ever feel loved or a sense of commitment and attachment, I thought.

So, despite feeling like a mama with no attachment skills and, because of sleep deprivation, a limited ability to make it from one end of the day to the other, we put Eliza in a co-sleeper at night where she continued to sleep only a few hours, grunting the whole time. Sometime in the deepness of night she ended up in our bed where again, I didn’t sleep. When she started eating solid foods we packed her full before bed thinking she might sleep longer on a full stomach but we only awoke to a baby with a tummy ache. We had moved the co-sleeper across the room by this point, hoping for a little distance between us and our little primate grunting her way through the night.  Eventually, when she out grew the co-sleeper we transferred her to a crib, still, she only slept a few hours at time. She’d stopped grunting by this time and started thrashing. While she slept she tossed, she turned, she put her butt in the air, she flopped, she sat up. We finally figured out the way all new parents do – painful-at-end-of-your- rope trail and error – that she was teething. She has six teeth now and still trashes. I still don’t get more than a few hours of sleep at a time.

I’ve been desperate many times. And each of these times I’ve consulted the stack of how-to books on my bedside table. These books bill themselves as “complete” and provide “everything you need to know” which from everything I know now is a complete pack of lies. They told me what I already knew – newborn sleep is restless and that getting a baby to sleep more than a few hours at a time is challenging, breastfeed babies don’t sleep as long as formula fed ones. You think? What I wanted from these books was a list that read something like: 1. Read her a story 2. Put her in a certain sleeping position 3. She will magically fall asleep and stay that way until you are well rested and ready to rise in the morning. I never found such a list. 

Strangely enough, I wanted a similar list for birthing. Something, that if I followed it, would guarantee I would survive the process. But, instead, I relied on a little thing called instinct and that’s what I find works best with my sleepless child.

Last night Eliza went to sleep around 9:30 p.m., woke up once around 3 a.m., ate, and went back to sleep in her bed until 6:30 a.m. This is a schedule I would welcome every night.

On my good days, I look at her asleep for her brief 45-minute morning nap and think that she will probably grow into a centered young woman who loves yoga and quiet walks in the mountains behind our house. On my bad days, I move from coffee to Coke by noon and think this child is trying to kill me slowly, one two-hour stretch at a time like the twisting of a dull knife jabbed squarely into the center of my gut.

When I can think about it with a clear head I remember that Seth and I both like to say we have our asses on fire. We work hard, we get things done and when we met, I felt in zing of attraction when I realized he walked as fast as I did. If given the choice of taking a steep, rocky trail or a winding, gentle one to a beautiful mountain lake, we’ll take the steep, rocky one every time. Somehow, in our house, winding and gentle translate into boring, steep and rocky into adventure.

So it’s no wonder that Eliza, a combination of us, doesn’t sleep. She may one day enjoy those quiet walks through the woods in the mountains behind our house but it won’t be because she’s experienced so many of them with her parents. If I make until she is able to walk up mountain trails, I’m sure I’ll be proud of our little spirited adventurer and then, maybe then, I’ll take a nap.

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