An Exploration of One Mother's Sleeplessness
Are my children insomniacs? A deep dive into my exhaustion, circadian rhythms, and the real reason I don't sleep.
I had BIG goals to write a beautiful narrative essay to illustrate what I am about to say here, but yesterday was a cross between a dumpster fire and a sob story. It started with screaming, and crying, and gnashing of teeth. It ended with 104 fever. So here we are with something that is not beautiful narrative nonfiction. Here we are with regular ‘ol everyday life nonfiction.
For four years and four months, I have been exhausted. If you are the type who makes comments in your head (or aloud) as you read along you might say, Of course, you are exhausted. You have small children. We are all dying out here. And you would be correct. We are all, in fact, terminal. But for the last couple of months, I’ve had this suspicion that my exhaustion is more extreme than it should be. When my white blood cell count came back abnormal on my lab work in January, I was bracing myself for a serious diagnosis.
It turns out, I was just B12 deficient. This was not news. I am chronically B12 deficient. I should take a supplement, but my daughters always put the B12 dropper in their mouths after they’ve had their fish oil, and I’d rather be B12 deficient than drink cherry-fish-oil flavored B12. (If you’re commenting along, you’re saying why don’t you just get your own bottle? I did. They licked that one, too.)
I go to the IV lounge to get a B12 injection. The IV lounge has a medical spa feel, but it smells like a poorly ventilated hospital. Unlike the hospital, however, they cannot admit me overnight for observation, so I will go home to spend another sleepless night with my children.
B12 injections always make me feel better, but not energized enough to run a marathon or raise a third child, so I must trek on towards the resolution of my daughters’ sleeplessness.
Recently (probably in the middle of the night), the thought occurred to me that maybe my daughters’ have some kind of circadian rhythm disorder. I take the girls to my parents’ house so my mother can watch them while I do a deep dive into circadian rhythm.
I learn the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) is responsible for coordinating circadian rhythm (with input from nature, of course). I also learn that—while pretty much every other part of a fetus is still developing at the halfway point of a pregnancy—neurogenesis of the SCN is complete by mid gestation. In English: the growth of nerve tissue in the part of the brain that controls circadian rhythm is complete by 20 weeks of pregnancy. This means I can’t blame their prematurity for their insomnia.
I may be able to blame the neonatal intensive care environment for scrambling their internal clock, but it’s been four years. We’ve spent a few thousand hours in the sunlight. We have thoroughly mitigated the effects of living under fluorescent lighting. We have all recovered.
Or have we?
My eyes widen at the thought of the hundreds of nights I spent sleeping in a chair at my daughters’ bedsides. It was never completely dark. It was never completely quiet. I never completely slept. When we came home, I slept even less. Without nurses to feed and change my daughters, I was the one responsible.
No one tells you when you become a mother that it doesn’t matter how much help you have, you will always feel the weight of your role. There were as many as three other adults in my house overnight, willing and able to care for my girls, but when I heard a cry at three o’clock in the morning, the shot of adrenaline—or maybe cortisol?—went straight to my gut, forcing me to wake up and investigate. It still does.
Technically my daughters sleep through the night. They sleep a good, eight-hour stretch before they stir. Preschoolers, like all humans, wake up during the night. They just have more to say about it than older children and adults. I have been wanting to define sleeping through the night as sleeping 12 uninterrupted hours, because that might give me eight uninterrupted hours. But would it?
I wake up more often than the girls do. My children sleep six to eight-hour stretches before they wake up for a few restless minutes. They fall right back to sleep, but I don’t. I toss and turn. Sometimes I get up and jot down a note, or get a sip of water, or wipe the kitchen counters.
It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem.
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