Be Careful, Sleep Makes You Pregnant

Over the past week, the Peanut Butter Kid has transitioned off home-bound schooling and back into regular school.  Her health is better and she's thrilled to be back with her classmates.  She loves her teacher, and frankly I think she's sick of me.

Yesterday was the first time in nearly ten years of parenting that I had all four kids in school for a full school day.  I did not clean.  I did not do laundry.  I did not cook.  I did not eat bon-bons and watch Oprah.

I took a nap.

It was glorious.

The sleep situation is ridiculous in this house.  I'm going on ten years of not sleeping well.  A decade.  It started with the discomfort of trying to sleep while pregnant with twins, and just went downhill from there.  I have now reached the kind of tired where mattress ads fill me with rage.

Cookie and the Pork Lo Maniac did not sleep for more than three to four hours at a shot until they were almost two years old.  (I am not exaggerating.  They had severe reflux, triggered by severe food allergies that weren't completely diagnosed until they were about 20 months old.)

Once they finally started sleeping more, I became pregnant with the Peanut Butter Kid.  You know, it's funny how that works.  Obviously, being well-rested can somehow lead to pregnancy.  Or maybe it's just that somehow, being sleep-deprived and super-cranky prevents pregnancy.  Somehow.

The Peanut Butter Kid was huge and a great nurser.  While I was still in the hospital with her, a lactation consultant showed me how to nurse her lying down.  It was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard of.  I am a huge fan of lying down whenever sitting or standing are not absolutely required.  The only downside to the side-lying-nursing position was that out of sheer exhaustion and laziness, I became a co-sleeping, nursing machine.

Please note: to say that we were co-sleeping implies that there was some kind of philosophy behind what we were doing, some kind of consciously thought-out plan.  Co-passing-out would be a much more accurate description of our "philosophy."  On the first night we were home, I nursed her once in the middle of the night, and put her back into her crib.  The second time she woke up, I brought her to the bed to nurse.

Breastfeeding causes the mother's body to release some kind of happy, dopey hormone that is more relaxing than a cup of Sleepytime tea and a Thanksgiving-size helping of turkey combined.  So if I nursed lying down, I pretty much immediately passed out.  Unfortunately, this had the effect of making the baby see me as a warm, snuggly human pacifier.

Eventually, I was able to get her to sleep in her own bed, and go figure: I became pregnant again.  Isn't it amazing how that happens?  Another one of the great mysteries of life.

Despite the fact that I didn't particularly enjoy co-sleeping, with the birth of Little Dude we nonetheless returned to the co-passing-out method of nursing and sleeping.  Weaning him at ten months to put him on a prescription elemental formula heralded the end of the co-passing-out era, but he still woke very frequently.  And when he woke he would holler for me in a flat-out panic.  Every time.

At age four, Little Dude is just now starting to sleep through the night.  At least once or twice a week, he wakes up in the middle of the night and needs help to fall back asleep.  Lately he needs more snuggling at bedtime.  The Peanut Butter Kid wakes up in the middle of the night at least once a week.  Cookie and the Pork Lo Maniac are, at age nine, usually able to fall back asleep on their own if they happen to wake up.  But not always.  Since the stress of starting the school year back up, they have both been having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  Plus the Pork Lo Maniac has been sick lately, so everything is all wrong.

I'm telling y'all this, because there are a LOT of parents out there who think they are failing, or something is fundamentally wrong, because their child didn't start sleeping through the night at six months.  Or they think something is wrong because their kid used to sleep through the night, but lately the child is waking up more frequently.


Important Public Service Announcement: Child development does not occur in a straight line.  

There are stops and starts.  There are leaps forward followed by backslides.  This applies to sleep, potty training, and memorizing the multiplication tables.  Kids are thrown off by big changes (new baby, new house) and ridiculously small things (gahhh! new brand of macaroni!)  When Steve left Blue's Clues, potty-trained toddlers all over America started crapping their pants again.  Toddlers didn't care that Joe is kind of a hottie.

I'm not talking about losing major skills: if your child loses gross motor, fine motor, or communication skills, that's cause for concern. And if your previously perfectly trained daughter starts wetting her pants eighteen times a day, throw out the damn Mr. Bubble and call your pediatrician.  But if sometimes your child is more needy than others, that's just human nature.

Today, the Pork Lo Maniac has a fever, so I'm back to having one kid home with me, at least for today.

Maybe I can convince her to take a nap.

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October is Rett Syndrome Awareness Month.  Rett Syndrome is a developmental (not degenerative) disorder that almost always occurs in girls but can be rarely seen in boys.  Rett Syndrome is often misdiagnosed as autism, cerebral palsy, or nonspecific developmental delay.  In Rett Syndrome, development is usually normal or near-normal until age 6-18 months.

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