From Pillow to Post

As an aside - can I have an aside if I haven't started the body of the post yet?  Damn skippy I can! - As an aside, one of my pet peeves is when people misstate common figures of speech.  I have a dear friend I love like a sister, but she has the most unfortunate tendency of using the phrase "to the tilt" instead of the more correct "to the hilt" or "full tilt".  I know exactly what she means, but I still find myself having to sit on my hands so that I don't leap up to choke the bejesus out of her while yelling, "To the HILT, dammit, the HILT!"  So now that I've titled this "From Pillow to Post" I feel compelled to point out that I'm making a clever play on words, not screwing up, mmkay?  IT'S A PLAY ON WORDS!  GET IT?!?

Being middle-aged, and a late arrival to motherhood, and the possessor of a house and cars and a job and a spouse and a cat it seems rather pointless to note that I am tired.  I'm a little self-conscious even bringing this up lest I seem to be falling into the usual mommyblogger litany of not-terribly-interesting topics (diapers, daddies, and playdates, oh my!), but my current state of exhaustion is notably different from usual thanks to the sheer depth and breadth of my tiredness.  The girls seem to delight in playing tag-team wakeup on nights when Warren is away on business and I counted a total of five wakings between the two girls last night.  Right now I am forcing myself to (mothering.com members, please avert your eyes here) make Celeste cry it out, having allowed us to fall into the bad habit of fetching her in the middle of the night.  Yes, I knew better (hangs head in shame), but in my defense Celeste was an incredibly tenacious cosleeper.  The only reason I still don't have to hit the sack with kid in tow at half-past seven is because I steeled my spine and started putting her in the crib and not caving into her demands for maternal company. I've trained her out of night wakings before and it is always a painful week of midnight sobbing sessions interspersed with pleas for "Muh-MUH ... muh-MUH" that would melt the heart of the most Draconian among us. Unfortunately, it's the only thing that seems to work, Ferber, Pantley et. al. be damned, or at least it does until the next episode of teething/tummy upset/night terrors, etc., and then it is back to square one and a lot of screaming.  I will say that Celeste does seem to be handling it much better than past efforts, when she would spend the daytime hours clinging to me like a curly-headed limpet after sobbing her little heart out for hours the night before.  This time her screams have more of a quality of annoyance rather than abject loneliness about them, so, progress!

I have become something of a martinet about bedtime a la Julia.  I've always believed in strict bedtimes, at least as a rule, but now I am a true radical convert - as if the nice Episcopalian lady down the street suddenly started frequenting the local Pentecostal church to wrastle snakes and speak in tongues.  Seeing the light is particularly necessary since we are coming up hard and fast on the "A" word (that most scarlet of letters in the teacher's alphabet standing for August, not for adultery).  I know none of you Argentinians will be crying for me, what with the enviable summer schedule we teachers enjoy, but you will just have to take my word for it that August always seems to come rushing at one with the speed and single-mindedness of the 5:27 express train. August is the time when every committee, task force and working group suddenly snaps out of its July torpor and gets down to cases, so my month is just about solidly booked already.  Add preschool orientation for India and teacher orientation for me and any number of close family members' birthdays and suddenly the lazy days of summer are looking rather more hectic than may be absolutely desirable.  So short story long, I have to get a handle on this bedtime thing if I don't want to spend my days in a state of mobile sleep deprivation and topping the list is getting and keeping the girls in their beds all night, every night.  I am resorting to the time-honored tactic of bribery with India, having procured all manner of craptastic trinkety stuff at the local dollar store for her to earn (as in, No, India, you cannot take just a little tiny peek at the Jasmine book, you have to earn five smiley faces first.), but my options with Celeste are limited to a) having her cry it out, or b) caving in and being woken up every night when she happens to roll over and wake herself up. I find everything goes much, much easier if we have a smooth bedtime at the beginning of the night, so I have started watching the clock with a gimlet eye and not varying from the routine by as much as a nanosecond.  Where I once gave the girls ten minutes here and five minutes there because they were playing well together, or because dinner was late, now I adamantly refuse to bend.  Of course I am finding that in the end, better to go to bed ten minutes too early than ten minutes too late because, well, kids need their sleep (DUH) and the line between tired and overtired is razor thin for the ankle-biting set (and for me as well). 

Sleep and rest and exhaustion have been heavily weighing on my mind, as I've taken the girls to my parents' house for several extended visits this summer.  I've seen, much to my dismay, that my parents are noticeably less energetic now than they were even four years ago when India was a newborn.  When you are the child of an older mother who then becomes an older mother herself this is something of an inevitability, but it is a bit disheartening all the same.  I can't help but envy families with grandparents who are only in their late 50's/early 60's themselves and who can take the kids for long weekends without a second thought.  My parents love the girls and us to pieces and bits, but they simply do not have the energy or the stamina to do a lot with the kids other than quiet pursuits like reading books or coloring, and certainly not for solo visits.  We also have a number of extended family members who are experiencing the vagaries of ill health that seem to come so much more frequently to older people.  We went to visit a family friend of Warren's who is having sudden and serious health issues and she looked terrible, very drawn and frail and, well, old.  She was facing something of a Hobson's choice in that the only way she and her husband could afford to retire was by taking up residence in a winterized summer camp on land the family owned on a remote hilltop (really more of a small mountain) just outside a small New England town.  Now she is in ill health and has to undergo and recover from a number of medical procedures just in time for the cold weather to set in, and did I mention that their house is heated solely by means of a wood stove?  We're not related to these folks by blood, but even still I find myself lying awake and mulling their situation over and over, wondering just how well they really planned for their older age, living in a situation that demands maintaining a certain threshhold of health and well-being that may be somewhat unrealistic for people who are middle-old and heading toward old-old.  Then I think of my own parents, who are better off than that but who are still one piece of bad luck away from having to change their entire living situation themselves and suddenly that phrase "sandwich generation" seems less like a sociologist's catchphrase and more like my reality.

Perhaps there's a reason why I'm meant to spend most of my time in an ambulatory sleep deficit.  I should consider it training for the future, when my daughters hit their teenage juvenile delinquency phase just as my parents enter their twilight years. Dang. I'm going to bed.

Comments

[Cheryl Burgess]

My parents are in their early 70's while my husband's parents are in their early 60's. I see a big difference. My in-laws, God bless them, can and do take the girls for overnights from time to time. My parents have a hard time babysitting for a few hours. Of course, one issue is that they live farther away and see my kids less and thus do not want to make them follow any rules lest they be seen as meanies. My in-laws don't worry about that (neither should my parents, but they do).

Sleep deprivation has got to be one of the most painful things ever. During the school year, we are pretty good about getting everyone to bed by 8 a.m. but we let things slide a bit during the summer. If my 3 year old falls asleep during the day, it takes a while to get her to sleep (i.e., I have to snuggle with her) and I usually fall asleep in her bed and then wake up at 11 and have no evening to myself (or evening to do my freelance work). That's my last hurdle to sleep issues--getting my youngest to fall asleep on her own.

Good luck with the sleep stuff!

[madge]

*click*

That's me tapping my heels together and raising a hand to the fuhrer of all Sleep N@zis: Dr. Weissbluth. I am an absolute fiend about bedtime. When in doubt, make it earlier!

In fact, I have (in the event of a short or missed nap) put The Boy in his crib BEFORE 6pm. No matter when he goes in there, he sleeps until 6:30-7.

[Toasty]

I'm with Madge. Dr. Weissbluth is highly revered in this house! Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is our BIBLE.

[leolabeth]

Still laughing at "curly headed limpet." Perfect.

In the I-cried-because-I-had-no-shoes vein, I confess envy for your August hell to come. Here in picturesque Midcoast Maine, where the state budget is busted like my china closet glass door--thanks to my seven year-old slinging a hairbrush in the living room--there appear to be no teaching jobs for high school English or phys. ed. teachers.

Ah heck, I wanted to move south anyway.