My daughter Lily doesn’t sleep well.
She never has. From her birth to age six, she only slept through the night
twice. I earned my grey hair during those six years, because I never slept a
full night either, except when I was out of town. This was by choice; my wife
Robin has trouble sleeping as well, but I always fall asleep easily, so we play
to our strengths.
We
tried every method and cure on Lily, but nothing worked. We were firm, we were
indulgent, we had a schedule, we had a routine, we gave up on the routine, we
stopped all electronics, we changed her diet, fed her more fish, we went to
doctors, we did a sleep study, we even studied restless leg syndrome and iron
deficiency. She needed to sleep and so did we, so we never gave up. Then,
gradually, over about a year, she started to sleep through the night. She
simply grew out of it -- mostly. She still has some trouble, and about once a
month she wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to
sleep...like last night.
Lack
of sleep fucks with your mind. Worrying about sleep fucks it up even more. I’m
messed up today, and so is she, and the only solace is that once we get through
the day we’ll probably sleep like logs tonight. Like I tell her, there has
NEVER been a night where she didn’t eventually fall asleep.
I
also had trouble sleeping when I was a kid. My problem was falling asleep. I
think I mostly did it to myself. For whatever reason, I wasn’t tired when I
went to bed and I’d lie there awake and start to worry about what my body was
doing.
Am I sleeping now? Is this sleep? Am I
falling asleep...now?
And
I’d wake myself up. I worried myself into a state of on-and-off insomnia that
lasted over a year, and it made me afraid and anxious. I remember enjoying a
beautiful day with my family and then suddenly thinking that it would end and
night would come, and I’d be filled with dread. I was afraid of the night in
the middle of the day. I hated that feeling, yet it dominated my thoughts.
However, I consider the experience a lucky gift now because when I see Lily
experience the same dread, I can reassure her:
I
was like you. I know the feeling. It will pass. Don’t be afraid. I will help
you.
Lily’s
problem isn’t falling asleep. Her problem is staying asleep. It has many names,
and it has many causes, but a lot of people have it, and it’s part of who she
is. My grandmother had it her whole life. Our good friend Julie Murphy has it
too, and when she babysits Lily she laughs and reassures her that she is not
alone, because they share the same trait as well: I’ve never been a good sleeper either! I always wake up!
When
Lily was two years old we visited San Francisco, and when we asked her what she
liked most about the trip she said “watching TV together in the hotel bed.” I
laughed, since that had nothing to do with the actual trip itself, but then she
stopped me and said with a tear in her eye:
No, daddy. Sleep is hard for me. When I wake
up, I’m alone.
She
said that out loud at the age of two.
From that moment on, I promised her that she wouldn’t have to worry alone about
it again, which comforts her.
After
eight years of light sleep, I am finely tuned to her night patterns. I can be
dead asleep and hear a bump in her room and the floor creak, and I am instantly
awake, no matter how little sleep I’ve gotten. I lie there and listen to her.
She’ll get out of bed, creep down the hall, go to the bathroom, get a drink and
go back to bed. If I hear a sigh within five minutes I know that she’ll go back
down. This is how it works almost every night now. But once or twice a month,
she doesn’t go back down. The sighs continue. I know that the mental spinning
has begun:
I
can’t sleep. I am alone. No one is with me. When will I sleep? I have a math
test today. I can’t sleep. I can’t get comfortable. I’m too hot. I’m too cold.
My blanket isn’t perfect. I can’t sleep. My life isn’t perfect. Lila will
corner me at recess today, and won’t let me play with Carmen. I’m thirsty. I
can’t sleep. Why am I alone?
After
ten minutes, she may get out of bed and wander the house. That’s when I
remember how my own dread worked at age ten, and I get up. There’s a blanket
ready at the foot on my bed and I take that, steer her back into her room and
we get back into bed together and I reassure her, an adult man and a girl, lying
together in a small double bed:
You
are just like me. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. This too will pass. I turned
out fine and so will you. This is normal too. You ALWAYS fall back asleep. It
will happen.
We
have about a thirty-minute window. If I can get her eyes closed and her mind
calm within thirty minutes of that first sigh of dread, we can both go back
down and only lose 30 minutes of shut-eye.
If
it goes longer, things get tough. Damn it, she’s just awake. Who knows why? And suddenly I’m awake too. I don’t give up,
however. I massage her back and feet, I touch her face, we snuggle, she puts
her head on my chest and feels my heartbeat as I slowly breathe. We both do ten
breaths. We count slowly to one hundred. I tell her a boring story in the dullest
whisper I can muster. Everything I do is slow and repetitive so she can focus
on something else besides her elusive sleep.
When
she was younger and still small enough to carry, we had other rituals. I’d pace
the house with her in my arms, and she’d eventually fall asleep on my shoulder.
When that didn’t work she’d ask to go outside. The cool air would calm her and
regulate her senses. I would always sleep in sweats with flip-flops by the bed
in case we had to go outside, so I could wrap her in a blanket around me. I
have vivid memories of walking up and down our street in the middle of the
night in all kinds of weather, with the moon shining through the clouds, or
with a cold breeze blowing. The world was quiet except for the rustling leaves
from the wind, and the 101 Freeway rumbling a mile distant. Sometimes I’d hear
a train whistle, which was at least five miles further away. A police car drove by once and the
officer lowered his window, but when he spotted Lily they just nodded, waved,
and rolled on. A sleepless father and child walking in the middle of the night
is not an unusual sight for them, I guess. We’d then go back inside and
collapse, and sleep would overtake us. This is the second best scenario because
we only lose an hour or two of sleep, which is what happened last night.
Once
every few months, however, sleep doesn’t return. If after two hours of trying,
she’s still awake, we give up. I understand her frustration at that point --
the whole world is dark and she is alone and wide awake, which is irritating
and lonely, and it’s better to just do something else.
We
lie and whisper in her bed, and I tell her about my childhood, and we talk
about her fears and hopes and dreams. There’s a tall redwood tree in our
neighbor’s yard and in the past two years an owl has moved in, and late at
night if we lie still we can hear the owl calling. One night there was a
lightening storm and we went on the back porch and watched the crackling bolts
streak across the sky. We sing songs and I tell her about falling in love with
her mother, or how I would walk to school with my brother when I was her age,
and that we even took the bus downtown for karate class, which she thinks is
amazing. We pull back her curtains
and stare at the redwood tree next door and look for the owl, and stare at the
stars. She usually falls asleep before dawn, and I lie awake, listening to the
silence. For me, I no longer hear true silence. When there is absence of noise
I hear a slight ringing in my ears, which is like a background hum while I
watch her sleep until I finally pass out too.
I
don’t wish her challenge on anyone, but it’s made her resilient and given us
time together we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I want to commission a painting
of Lily staring out the window in the middle of the night, her braids on her
pillow and her mind full of thoughts as she searches for the owl in the
tree. We all have issues, and our
challenges teach us and have their benefits, and Lily is mature beyond her
years because of it.
A
few years back every night was rough and the days were sometimes rougher. I was
producing a show for Ted Skillman of Snackaholic, and he could see that I was
exhausted, so I explained my whole story. To his credit, he found my plight
intriguing and didn’t make me feel bad about my performance -- he knew my work
would get done.
He
also confirmed how typical Lily’s condition is, and may actually be normal. He
explained how sleeping eight hours straight is actually new in human history.
Before electricity, before the constant 24-hour clock, our waking and sleeping
rhythms ebbed and flowed with the seasons and the work that needed to be done.
Sometimes we slept ten hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. There was usually
an “awake time” in the middle of the night, when people would wake up after
four hours of sleep, and they’d enjoy the night for two or three hours, and
then sleep another four. They’d
eat a meal, make love, look at the stars, study astronomy, write a letter, philosophize
-- all in the quiet darkness, slow and unhurried. It was a night rhythm, like
cats padding slowly through the alleys at night. Thoughts could come, drifting
on a river of life moving deep and slow in the darkness. Discoveries,
decisions, observations and appreciations were made, all in slow time.
Maybe
there’s nothing wrong with Lily at all. Maybe she has it right, and the rest of
the world is wrong. When I told her what Ted told me, we both smiled. We own
the night. We’re in no rush.
Here’s some information on divided, or
segmented sleep:
Segmented sleep, also known as divided
sleep, bimodal sleep pattern, bifurcated sleep, or interrupted sleep, is a polyphasic
or biphasic sleep pattern where two or more periods of
sleep are punctuated by periods of wakefulness. Along with a nap (siesta) in the
day, it has been argued that this is the natural pattern of human sleep. A case has been made that maintaining such a sleep
pattern may be important in regulating stress.
Historian A. Roger Ekirch has argued that before the Industrial Revolution, segmented sleep was the
dominant form of human slumber in Western civilization. He draws evidence from
documents from the ancient, medieval, and modern world. Other
historians, such as Craig Koslofsky, have endorsed Ekirch's analysis.
This is a news report on divided
sleep:
This is on sleep and the teenage
brain.
Most of all everyone...take naps
and sleep!
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