Hobson's Choice
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Sleep
Here we are in the midst of our bi-annual (or is it quarterly?) sleep refresher course. Although perhaps "refresher" is not the absolutely appropriate word choice since Chris and I cannot remember the last time we slept all night. We try not to drool and mainline caffeine. We try to remain upright and comprehensible to other adults we meet in the course of the day.
Periodically, our offspring forgets how to sleep through the night. It's as if all the work we've done over the last four years has been erased, and she must now figure out again how to sleep all night.
The time between these sleepless periods gets longer and longer as she ages, and the overall nightly disturbance diminishes. The parents of a five month old, or even a toddler, would be jealous of the amount of sleep we are getting now. Eleanor's just waking up at 4 or 5 a.m., and then not going back to sleep. That's much better than waking at 11, 1, 3, etc.
For those of us who may have been lulled into the luxuries of three months of good sleep, it borders on torture. I remind you that sleep deprivation is a frequently endorsed torture method.
I think it's all part of the insidious plan of children to keep their parents sleepless and confused, more apt to agree to hours of tv-watching, toy-buying, and candy-snorting. Even once a child is old enough to relish sleep, she needs to destroy the parental sleep pattern every few months just to keep us on our toes. Or off of them, on our backs on the sofa watching _Family Feud_ before falling asleep, agreeing that children should probably drink lots of Gatorade and eat tons of chocolate.
Eleanor better get her sleeping act together soon though. Otherwise, when she turns teenager and wants a late curfew, I'll say, "Sorry, honey, but I need at least two years of consecutive good nights of sleep before you can stay out until midnight."
8:50 p.m. - 2006-06-05
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