Sleeplessness
Once those twins popped out of my wife I was able to kiss any sort of sleep pattern I had goodbye and welcome the fresh new hell of sleeplessness. From my previous post I noted that at the time of writing my kids are 2 years old so this story will be in hindsight, but by no means through the rose colored glasses that some say you put on when the past is pleasantly behind you. I’m writing to let you know that if you are a parent with a newborn that won’t sleep or going to be a parent soon — not sleeping is hard, really hard, you want to cry maybe, but it will and does, end. If you have experience in functioning on lack of sleep, good for you, I did not and thought I was prepared for what was to come. I don’t have any citations but I would venture to say that what I do know about the brain is that it feels great to get continuous, uninterrupted sleep on a frequent basis.
I’ll start by saying that any advice that people give you when you’re a parent expecting is completely for the birds. Toss it out of your mind. The only thing that would make sense to take to heart is to remember that the day you and your partner are heading into the throes of delivery labor is the day you’re going to start getting sh!t for sleep, in my case for the first 6 months. Now is a good time to remind the reader that I am speaking solely to the parents of twins as this is my experience, and I would expect other multiples, and am fully aware this could be different to each parent. I digress, the only preparation I had for sleep loss up to the point of my kids’ delivery was college and video game all nighters, “partying” until the sun came up and the occasional sickness that would keep you running to the bathroom every few hours. These occasions had one thing in common — I didn’t have to continue to fight through the brain fog and eye sting to take care of multiple human lives that couldn’t feed themselves. I was able to do the irresponsible thing of calling in sick to work and sleeping off the hangover, recover from all nighter after I took the test, or hopefully my orifices would calm down enough to allow me sleep. The common phrase you might hear when expecting twins is “Get your sleep in now while you can!”. When I hear that now, this is my face ಠ_ಠ.
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What might be more helpful to hear is “Feel free to give me a ring when you need to take a nap for an hour before you pour hot coffee on your lap to try to stay awake”. Regardless of the “helpful” tips you get from people with “fur babies” is that it just isn’t helpful. You can’t bank sleep hours and summon rest when you’re feeling tired. You don’t magically feel rested because you slept 12 hours a day weeks before you started getting consecutive nights of only 2 hours of sleep. When the kids come there is a feeding schedule, babies with inconsistent sleeping tendencies (yes, even between twins) and the constant nagging in your mind as a first time parent of “Are they sleeping or is something wrong with their breathing” that will prevent your brain from getting the rest it so rightly needs. I am not in the business of giving advice as I feel that every family’s situation is different, every parent has their own way of dealing with things and every child is different but having gone through the crucible of that 6 month period I have a few considerations that may be of use:
- Your community. Loved ones, or all the people who said “I would love to help babysit” or “Call if you need anything” — time to get them to pony up. Doing everything with just you and your partner is admirable and good on you if you can make it, but without much rest a little off your plate goes a long way. Finding the things that will make your life easier and delegating that out can help focus your attention more on your new screaming bundles of joy. My wife and I were lucky enough that we transitioned to formula almost immediately and brought in our parents to help feed and change the kids for 3 hour increments during the day while we napped. In the state we were in, this felt like sleeping for a week.
- Preparation. I know what my character is like on little sleep and perhaps more importantly I know my wife’s character on little sleep. This helped me prioritize the things that I would need to help get done, where I would be best helpful (or more importantly, out of the way) and what we would need to keep ourselves going. Hydration and snacking went a long way for me. Oh and what no one really mentions is that delivery in any form is a major medical event and mom is going to be recovering hard, so you might have less hands than you plan for.
- Yourself/your partner’s self. I feel like this might be the most important of all to bring into consideration. You nor your partner are no good to anyone, much less two new lives, if you’re struggling. Tempers will be short, things will be forgotten, accidents might happen. Self awareness of your situation and humility will dictate your actions which can mean the difference between happiness and seemingly endless suffering.
In the end, I feel it important to reiterate: the sleeplessness ends. Hell, there may even be some upsides. My twins were born at the beginning of spring, right when the weather was turning into summer. In the 6 months it took my kids, and us, to adapt to life on the outside of the womb I was able to see more beautiful sunrises than I had in my three decades of living up to that point. Though I did consider myself a morning person, I was never an early riser. Since then I have changed my sleeping patterns to wake up just a bit earlier, so I can take time for myself and enjoy the quiet mornings before it is filled with the sounds of a pair of two year olds running a muck around the house. But as they start sleeping longer, so will you, and the toil you felt during that time does end up slipping into distant memory.
