I haven’t slept since 2007. I used to live in a world where I could sleep anywhere, anytime, with minimal effort. Sleep was a sport, and I won the gold medal. Sleep in a car? A bus? A train? During a football game with 100,000 spectators screaming at the top of their lungs? Try me. As soon as the eyelids were closed, my mind was blank, and sleep began. Unsurprisingly, I became pregnant and had kids and have not “really” slept since. I’m sure that there are many reasons to explain- stress, anxiety, jobs, money, kids… the list goes on for every mom. But I lived a very good life of stress, anxiety, and money problems well before then and could sleep like a baby. I’ve had real life-altering phobias since I was 8 and could still go to sleep. Now, I can’t even imagine what life is like when I felt well-rested.
A typical night begins with me going to bed at a semi-regular hour (9-10 pm) and lying buzzed and awake for several hours with a brain that just won’t stop. Lists, lists, lists. I make thousands of them as soon as my head hits the pillow. Lists that are important, lists that will never be important, but my brain just will never stop. When (and if) I do go to sleep, it will never be for long. I will wake up about every hour, either from night sweats, nightmares, or pain. I suffer from RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) that causes my brain to really fixate on my pain at night. A lot of times, my pain will wake me up out of a dead sleep which then makes it even more challenging to get back to sleep because I can’t distract myself from it. When that happens, I often have to get up and “walk it off.”
Sleep issues are not necessarily new for me; I have suffered from an over-active imagination since I was little – my brain loves to go to a dark place and stay there. When I was little, I would have active night terrors about goblins and demons that lived under my bed, and now I have progressed to active night terrors about serial killers and rapists. They don’t happen very often; surprisingly, most often when I am getting sick. When I was 14, I actually broke my wrist in my sleep because of a night terror that caused me to thrash so much that I cracked my wrist on my headboard. My doctor at first did not believe me when I showed up with a broken wrist with no explanation; he assumed I was abused at home. Instead, I was abused with my own imagination, which seems even more inescapable.
I have tried all of the “solutions” since the insomnia started: bottles of melatonin, over-the-counter sleep aids, alcohol, even getting a new bed, new comforter, new sheets. Nothing really seems to help. It appears as if a good night of sleep is unattainable no matter how much I want it.
So… how do I navigate this life with little to no sleep? Well, you can imagine the caffeine. Some days, I wish I could inject it into my veins. Other days, it actually makes me more tired after the crashes. I try always to be aware of my caffeine intake. I like to take power naps whenever I can, and that really helps me re-energize. I make a lot of excuses on a daily basis: “I’m so sorry I forgot about that meeting, I am really tired today,” and “I’m so sorry I wasn’t listening; can you repeat that?” and “Can you please re-explain that; my brain is tired.” I have just come to accept that I am always going to be a floating zombie that is tired and brain dead, and most of the people around me have learned to accept it too. My best friend, Kim, knows that she’s going to have to sometimes tell me the same story over and over again because I was tired when she told me the first two times. My husband knows that I am going to be reminded about scheduling and activities because I forget everything. Imagine how productive and focused I could be with just 5 hours of sleep a night. It’s a fairy tale.
So advice for fellow mamas struggling with insomnia? Talk to your doctor. Try everything (maybe something will actually work for you). Caffeinate. Let people know why you’re brain dead. But honestly, just try to function. Don’t be hard on yourself. I work a full-time job, take care of two kids, and my brain does not get enough time to rest each night, so I have to accept it, and still live the best life I can. I do get to binge-watch a lot of Netflix shows at 3 am so I often get to catch up on my shows without feeling guilty. I get to plan my next day over and over again with lists and lists and lists. And I also get to live with the hope that someday I will be able to sleep again. I always have to have that hope.
