Varieties of Insomnia

One might assume, considering I've been an insomniac from my earliest memories, that I might deal with it gracefully. No. I pout, I stomp, I cry, I lie in stone-faced despair wondering if I will ever sleep again. It's not pretty.

For some reason, the last month has been a bad stretch. Not the worst--still nothing comes near the time when I was getting 1-3 hours of sleep each night for months on end, only because I hated my job--but bad enough. I get three or four terrible nights in a row, and one good one. A terrible night might be one in which I can't get to sleep until after 2, or it might be one in which I wake up around midnight and can't fall asleep again until after 3:30, or it might be one in which I wake up around 1 or 2 and stay up for the day. A good night is one in which I fall asleep no later than 10:30 and actually manage to stay asleep until I have to get up at 6. It's still not a full night's sleep for me, so every night, good or no, I have been falling behind. This is with no caffeine after 3:00 in the afternoon, with or without the iPod, with or without reading in bed, staying up until I feel exhausted (you're not supposed to go to bed until you feel like you can sleep, if you have insomnia, or you'll learn to associate the bed with wakefulness--like all other bits of sleep advice for insomniacs, it has proved to be next to worthless).

It has been thoroughly unpleasant.

Tuesday was one such bad night. I fell asleep at 9:30, so exhausted from the last two nights that I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. At 1:00 am I awoke to the sound of Frances coughing. Erik went in, but she coughed for the next hour anyway. At 3, when she'd been asleep again for an hour and I was still wide awake, I gave up and came downstairs (throwing the obligatory mini-tantrum in the privacy of the front room) and went on the computer. If I'm stuck awake, I might as well use the time.

At almost five, I was finally feeling like I might be able to fall asleep again; I was debating whether or not to even bother going back to bed, seeing as I had to get up in an hour, when I heard Frances wail. In a minute I was upstairs with her, resting my head beside hers on the pillow, wrapping an arm around her. It didn't help. She sobbed, and coughed, and wailed, and hacked. I picked her up and brought her with me to the rocking chair, settled her onto my chest, and tried to comfort her.

"I ... want ... to .... come!" she'd cry.

"Come? Come where?"

Heaving with tears, she'd point an insistent finger at her bedroom door. In those moments, I fell in love with her all over again through her arm. Soft and strong, small, round, dimpled at the elbow, with a tiny hand and its determined index finger, rather like a small and cuddly Ghost of Christmas Future. And loud, very loud.

She would not be comforted in her room; I brought her into the hall, where Erik joined us. As a thoughtful souvenier, Frances's infant reflux left her with the tendency to vomit--hard--when she has a bad cough. In fact, just after supper before she'd gone to bed that night, a coughing fit left her dinner all over the floor, and Erik, and Frances. So when Frances has a bad cough, we do whatever we can to keep her calm and happy, because crying makes the cough worse, which makes throwing up more likely.

Eventually, around 5, we brought her into bed with us, both lying still with our eyes closed, pretending to sleep in the hopes she would too. No luck. She'd snuggle into my side, head tucked under my chin and hand on my mole, feet wriggling. "Shhh," I'd say. "Mummy," she'd say, "Can you tickle my back?"

"No. Sleeptime. Shhh."

"I want to get Dora."

"No. Shhhh."

Erik and I whispered about whose turn it was to stay home, and whether she was really sick enough, while Frances rolled back and forth. She lightly grabbed my nose. "Daddy!" she squealed. "Did I tickle Mummy's nose?"

Here is what I want to know:

At 3:00 am, with the hope of decent sleep before me, I hated this broken body of mine.

At 5:30, all hope of sleep gone for the day, with my wee girl rolling and bellowing over me, I was happy.

Why is sleeplessness in the service of Frances so much easier for me to tolerate than any other kind of sleeplessness? Why do I go out of my mind with anxiety over sleeplessness due to mere stress or weather when Frances waking me up is ok?

Yesterday I came into work just long enough to get some files and go home again, and I worked from home while Frances played or watched TV. All day she coughed, hard. She finally--after I put her down at 12:45--fell asleep for her nap at 2:20. At 3:30, so did I. I was so tired I could not see; my vision blurred and I slipped three times climbing the stairs to my room.

Last night was a good night. I slept from 9:30 to 6. I wonder what tonight will bring?

Posted by Andrea at October 12, 2006 11:24 AM under Me

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