…It would be sleeping! I’m serious! This is one of the few things I’m genuinely, naturally good at. And yet, it’s not a skill I take for granted: life tends to get in the way. Nevertheless, I believe that, as with many skills, practice makes perfect! I’m also convinced that with sleep, although one can subsist on less, more is far better. I know that could be perceived as slothful but, like any parent, I’ve been down the sleep deprivation route and it didn’t make me a better person. I realise it’s crazy to call sleeping a skill, after all, everyone can do it, right? It’s as natural as breathing. Well, yes, but… getting a good night’s kip is not exactly guaranteed. I’d even say that getting the recommended 8 hours between 10pm and 6am is a bit of an unlikely holy grail. I mean, who actually does that? If it’s you, loyal reader, kudos to you, you’re even better at sleeping than me!

Babies don’t do it, but they aren’t too fussed because they can catch on their zzzz any time. That does indicate that sleeping at night isn’t so natural after all. The term sleeping like a baby shouldn’t really be used to describe an uninterrupted night’s sleep!

Like all hapless French babies of the era (5 decades ago) I was sleep trained from an early age. Obviously I have no recollection of this. If this was traumatic, I hereby forgive my parents. I’m guessing I got the hang of it quite quickly though, being as I am such a natural! But even as a child, I was always a bit of of a night owl, and would regularly be caught reading late into the night ( https://midwifemotherme.com/2024/02/13/too-many-books/) or doing my homework late on the night prior to the deadline. Apparently that’s not a good thing, one is supposed to be a morning lark (which smug morning lark came up with that data, I ask you?) but it stood me in good stead when I worked shifts, especially nights and on-calls. Frankly, it’s a good thing we’re all different. Morning larks are not great on a late shift and suffer horribly on a night shift! But us night owls have had years of brutal practice getting up at morning-lark O’clock, can naturally handle lates, and will manage a string of nights without frantically combing the job section of the newspaper on the commute home every morning!

I went through the typical teenage perma-zombie, sleep-deprivation-due to-unnatural-school-hours stage, obviously. Even at weekends, I’d be brutally hijacked ftom the land of nod by a mega-decibel rendition of Carmen (growing up French, you got to rise and shine while being grounded in the French classics). This was traumatic, FYI, I’m gonna have to work on letting that one go!

This pattern showed no signs of abating as I went on to university. Since student nurses have 37 hours of lectures a week, it’s a miracle I survived. At least I was spared the unhappy song/operatic wail of the dying diva at the weekend. There’d be the odd all-nighter, which only a night owl can pull off (with a little help from caffeine) to write essays. The peace and quiet, coupled with the lack of any distraction (back in the days when the Internet was in its infancy and TV had 5 channels not all of them broadcasting at night) meant that I could focus on such dull yet essential tasks!

My regularly last minute efforts paid off and I qualified as a nurse. That’s when my sleeping superpowers really came into their own. Now my shifts were properly all over the place. Earlies would follow lates and vice versa. And there’d be nights every 4 weeks or so.  Survival meant being able to fall asleep AND stay asleep for around 6 hours day or night. I could do that! Better still, I could stay asleep for much much longer if I’d accumulated a of bit of a sleep deficit, thereby maintaining an nice steady average of 8 hours in any 24 hour period. That’s a super power! Technically, I was sleeping like baby! I realise the research suggests that my sleep hygiene was all wrong (and I won’t downplay the health implications), but sick people kinda need vigilant night nurses and babies don’t adhere to a convenient daytime schedule to be born. My powers reached peak-genius when I became an on-call homebirth midwife. While I really didn’t love the shrill sound of my pager at 3am, I could just get up and go. And I could fall into bed any number of hours later and catch on those missing zzzz  and be right as rain the next day.

This excellent system was knocked for  six when I became a mother. Obviously I could handle broken nights sleep as well (or better) than the next woman, but my cunning ability to catch up on sleep went down the drain. Turns out that sleep is for wimps, you can survive on far less than you thought. They tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps… hahaha! The only reason a baby sleeps during the day is because IT KNOWS that you’re awake.  Once that baby gets wind of the fact you’re about to take a wee nap, or maybe turn in for the night, it somehow achieves peak alertness. Go figure! You know it’s true! My lovely 8 hour average was toast. Not gonna lie, I found it hard. My saintly mother showed me how to sleep train Firstborn Son (see Emily Ostler’s Crib Sheet for balanced discussion about pros and cons of sleep training) and that was a game changer. Up til that point, we’d coslept (see Lullaby Trust for guidance on how to do this safely) and I hadn’t (couldn’t) put him down except in a moving pram or closely supervised in his bath. Reclaiming my nights allowed me to function as a mother thereby greatly increasing the odds of his survival! What’s more, he doesn’t hold it against me: he doesn’t remember! I did, unwittingly, learn to live like the morning lark. My sleep hygiene was textbook. Firstborn Son didn’t know about weekend lie-ins so maintaining a sensible bedtime was my only sanity saving option. It wasn’t natural, I never learned to like mornings; instead of being thrilled by the day’s endless possibilities, I’d have a dull achey panic about how I was going to survive til sundown.

Going back to work added a whole new level of complexity to the sleep conundrum. Now I was on call twice a week but no longer had the luxury of catching up on work related sleep deprivation because on my so-called days off, I was awake with the larks… and the baby. But you can’t complain if you’re not actually working because,  you know, how hard can it be? The baby naps, right? I mean, sure, but it’s more like a lunch break. The kind that you work through to catch up on stuff you cannot do with a baby who is awake. Which is pretty much everything.  You remind yourself that sleep is for wimps. You power on. And then, you conceive another child. So now you are up with the sodding larks, on-call at night and have the bladder capacity of a shrew. Oh Em effing Gee! This is when you miraculously epiphanise (yup, I just conjugated a noun, you’re welcome) that sleep is a highly over-rated lifestyle choice which you do not, in fact, need. I’m kidding, of course. I apologise, it wasn’t funny. Nothing is funny at this point. You power through, you have no choice. You think if you can just make it to this second round of maternity leave, you’ll survive…. hahaha! Nope, Firstborn Son, who is still years from figuring out lie-ins, has chosen this moment to drop his daytime nap. Now you are nine months pregnant, getting up with the larks (and a sleep deprived toddler) with the bladder of an elderly pygmy shrew.

Longest. Days. Ever.

You power through. Needless to say, things do not improve with the birth of Middle Child.  Now you are up at 0200 and 0600 with the baby (but you have the improved bladder capacity of a guinea pig), and the toddler starts his day at 0700. You are so scared of letting the baby wake the toddler (because the thought of having to read The Gruffalo at 0200 while soothing a fretful baby would be the last straw) that sleep training is not even an option. Only after a bout of flu so bad that you thought you had TB (there’s still a part of you that wonders…) do you realise that :

A) the now 8 month old Middle Child will never figure out sleeping through all by himself;

B) his failure to do so thus far (and the resulting overwhelming sleep deficit) has not enhanced his mother’s well-being;

C) said mother’s mat leave is nearly over, and she needs to stop haemorrhaging sleep and start banking some hours;

D) ergo said baby will need a wee nudge…

Loyal reader, he figured it out in 2 nights. Just like Firstborn Son, who, it turned out, was not even remotely disturbed by his baby brother’s short-lived nocturnal protests. Not gonna lie, Middle Child is very much a morning lark.  He genuinely believed that sleeping through til 0530 was acceptable. Obviously he was wrong (let’s just say it shouldn’t be a default setting, it’s just not civilised) and compromise was reached following a second round of training to modify factory settings to align with the toddler. Still pretty damn early! For years, he remained the irritating reason why everyone in the house was awake at sodding-morning-lark o’clock. No amount of begging, education, bribery, punishment or training, would incentivise him to get up quietly. His sister’s arrival cost me less sleep than that child’s early morning shenanigans! Only Daughter nailed the sleep thing early and hasn’t looked back. Being a night owl like her mother, she was an early adopter of the lie-in.

Happily, once Middle Child hit adolescence, the special sleep hormones kicked in (it’s truly the only silver lining where pesky hormones are concerned) and finally peace and harmony reigned. Not even the thought of dastardly retribution (however richly deserved) would have persuaded me to wake up earlier than the kids to regale them with some awe-inspiring, mind-improving, harmonically-pleasing, majestically-symphonic noise-I-mean-opera. 

It’s taken me a few years since the re-establishment of lie-ins to eliminate the sleep deficit. During those deficit reduction years, I religiously avoided any unnecessary morning commitments. Weekday school runs and my fortnightly Sunday labour ward shifts were, as far as possible, the only exceptions. I knew I’d finally broken even when I found myself not only acknowledging the hours prior to midday, but also using some of them productively. Look, I’m still a night owl! That’s my default setting. I think these settings can be slightly modified to maintain optimum health AND productivity, but there are limits.

I don’t take sleep for granted though, and will readily implement any sleep enhancing precautions in an effort to protect my current (precious) sleep surplus. Because honestly, this feeling that my battery is nicely topped up is such a gift. I know how lucky I am.  I’m all too aware that as middle age looms large, it can’t last. I’ll keep practicing!