Today, I am celebrating 20 weeks of recovery from insomnia. The work of sleeping well is ongoing, but since I never expected to become a sleepless person, I am equally surprised at the work and time it takes to become a well-rested person again. I call it work, because the best and most refreshing sleep appears to be cultivated like a garden, chosen like the perfect wave. There is an ecosystem of sleep habits, environment, and simple props that help us succumb to slumber.
There is also negative space: the absence or corralling of thoughts, sounds, and other influences that stimulate or bring anxiety. Our 18mo Sylvia’s sleep has been more of a puzzle than it was for our other daughters. It feels much more complex than a good wind-down routine…the difference between her being content to drift off or beside herself is a kind of tightrope we walked for many months.
Thankfully, most of the time now, she is content, the master of her own ship, as she heads toward the land of Winken, Blinken, and Nod. But there is an ebb and flow between her desire to move her body, and the desire to rest. There was a burst once she began crawling, when every attempt to catch the next wave of sleep seemed futile: she wanted to be everywhere at once. Being invited to crawl into her bed on her own sometimes helps. Other times, she relaxes only when placed there.
I have come to expect that I will experience some parallel journeys with our children, and this is one of them: this time last year, I was on the road to becoming an insomniac. I kept explaining away one or two nights a week with 0-3 hours of sleep. When I noticed my health and parenting were suffering from this lack of sleep, I finally decided to call a spade, a spade. Just like Sylvia, I hit some developmental milestones sufficient to disrupt sleep patterns that worked before. And it was not as simple as one variable. My metabolism is slowing in my forties, and things I used to get away with like eating after 7pm, late screen time, allowing critical or anxious thoughts to wander and race, lingering too long in bed in the morning (a temptation after a poor night’s sleep), and associating the physical space of the bed with too many other things besides sleep all played a part.
I am not unlike a hiker who, walking through a familiar patch of woods at dusk, becomes suddenly disoriented, and has to backtrack to something unmistakenly familiar in order to find the way home. When I cannot find the contours of sleep, paradoxically, I have been learning to get out of bed and do something quiet that I find relaxing, until I am again tired.
Dr. Maria Montessori has been helpful in this quest for sleep, especially in reframing my expectations. Our other three children were beautifully and gently sleep-trained by 4 months, with only minor hiccups along the way. Sylvia, at 5 months, was still not reliably sleeping through the night. Montessori writes in her book, The Child in the Family (Ch. 9 pp.54-55):
“We cradle the child, we help him fall asleep… but we do not hear his spirit crying out for help!
If, however, the child is active, we see immediately that he requires much less sleep. His eyes are bright and intelligent and manifest the first signs of sociability. He wants help and will turn to anyone who will give it to him. People often say that the little child does not love his mother as much as the breast that nurtures him, just as he will later love anyone who will give him goodies. No: already in those first steps of life he will love anyone who will help him to perfect his spirit.
It is manifest that children seek the company of adults and try in every way to take part in their lives. The child is completely satisfied only when he sits at the table with the family or warms himself before the fire with them. Those human voices that speak of peace and tranquillity surely make the most beautiful music. Nature offers us this means to learn to speak.
The second principle is this: We must support as much as possible the child’s desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent. Until now the first words and the first steps always served as visible and almost symbolic milestones of childhood development and were the earliest proofs of progress. The first word indicated the development of language, the first step attested to the ability to stand upright and walk. These were, therefore, the most important events in a family, and the wise and intelligent mother made a note of when they occurred.
But walking and speaking are rather difficult accomplishments. It requires a great deal of effort before the child succeeds in keeping that tiny body with the oversized head in balance and in standing up on those short, little legs. Even that first word is a rather complex means of expression. Certainly these two conquests cannot be the first in the child’s life. His intellect and his sense of balance have already come a long way, and the word and the step are nothing but the most apparent stages; but the road that has already been traversed in order to arrive at these two conquests merits all our attention.
It is true that the child develops naturally, but it is precisely because of this that he must get a great deal of exercise. If he lacks exercise, this intelligence remains on a lower level; I would almost say that there seems to be a kind of arresting of the development of those children who from the time they were infants were supported and guided. Those who do not care about little children are those who brutally shove the cereal spoon in the child’s mouth from the very first meals after nursing. If, instead, one sits with the child at his little table and allows enough time for eating, he will see immediately that a little hand will reach out for the spoon to carry it to the mouth.
[An aside, I don’t share her judgement of parents who spoon-feed their children. It’s more likely that a parent who does this cares deeply, but doesn’t know that the child is more capable than she realizes, of learning to feed himself. However, having watched children be hampered by well-meaning adults, I do understand her frustration!]
This is a great achievement for a mother, and it requires great love and patience. She must simultaneously feed the body and the spirit, but the spirit takes precedence. She may even have some notions- certainly the most praiseworthy concerning cleanliness, but in this instance they are quite secondary; the child who has just begun to eat by himself will not know how to do it and as a consequence will get messy. One must simply sacrifice cleanliness to the justifiable impulse to act; in the course of his development, the child will perfect his movements and learn to eat without dirtying himself. Cleanliness achieved in this fashion represents real progress, a triumph for the child’s spirit.”
The triumph of the spirit, in our case this year, has been helping Sylvia to choose sleep for herself in a floor bed. During a season of travels, we used the portable crib, but returning to the freedom of the floor bed makes choosing when and how to rest truly her work. Mine is the work of releasing expectations for longer naps, or a full, 12-hour night of sleep like our other children used to get. Once I let go of my urgent expectations for her sleep patterns, it was as if she became free to sleep longer, and 10 hours gave way to 11, then a full 12 hours most nights. Sylvia, who wakes between 6:30 and 7am regardless of how I have slept, is always eager to get moving.
There is the ongoing, messy, intense work of gross motor development and fine motor concentration, as well as new language explosion, in all of Sylvie’s waking moments. The more I learn to observe her, prepare the environment, expect mistakes and messes, and to marvel at her love of working constantly and being near me, the less worry I feel about exactly how long she is sleeping or how much time I am losing by giving her freedom. We often enjoy cleaning up spills together, and it is connecting us at the very times I am tempted to overfunction, either doing it all myself, or doing life so fast that there is no time for her to practice.
Paradoxically, all of this work is taking me toward a deeper enjoyment of rest. And the enjoyment of rest is causing work to get done, more enjoyably. Somehow, I have managed to slip out of my season of insomnia into more predictable sleep patterns again. A “bad” night is 5 hours, rather than 0-3. When I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep, I quietly enjoy the company of a good book, which I then feel compelled to pick up during the margins of my day, where my children see this habit regaining prominence. It inspires them, in turn, to work at reading, too.
I have read nearly a book a week these past few months. How is that possible? Just as the child who is always working, always progressing in toward that monumental first word or step, the sense of accomplishment I earn from the effort of a few pages, or a chapter, is adding up. Suddenly, I have developed a habit of reading again, and a habit of sleeping well most nights. I hope to do the same with writing. So, here is an effort, a blog post, which is simply the exertion I can offer today. It is not the destination in itself, but it is a step on the journey. And, as I near its completion, I feel tranquil, rested, and a deep contentment in spite of the effort.
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