No Sleep, No Smile
by Melanie Bettinelli in Health on Monday, September 14, 2009 6:00 AM
It’s almost 4 am. I try to snuggle him close but he squirms, kicks, and flails. Turning on the light reveals his eyes bright and staring. He’s neither hungry, wet, nor gassy. He’s simply not tired. I, however, am exhausted and frustrated. I’ve been struggling with my six-week old baby for almost two hours and all I want is to put him down ball so that I can sleep. I’m in tears and snap at him, “Benedict, go to sleep already!”
Fortunately, at this point my husband comes to my rescue, taking the small, cuddly baby from my arms and bouncing him up and down. I pull the blankets up and bury my head into the pillows as I listen to his “Shhh, shhh, shhh.” Eventually Ben gives in and his father lays him down tenderly in the bassinet.
On Edge
The next afternoon my husband forwards me a timely article from the Boston Globe on sleep deprivation and negative emotions. A new study shows that “after being deprived of just one full night’s sleep, people not only have stronger negative emotions the next day, they are much more likely to remember bad experiences than good.”
As a mother of a newborn, that caught my eye. Ben is an especially easy baby compared to his two older sisters. He is regular in his sleep habits and generally lets me get a decent night’s sleep. But the past few nights he’s been wide awake after his 2 am feeding and it takes a couple of hours to get him resettled. Those middle of the night sessions aren’t the worst sleep deprivation I’ve ever had; and I didn’t connect them to my recent bad moods. But they do leave me on edge. I’ve snapped at the kids, been irritable with my husband. In fact, the next morning I found that I’d become a nag. All I could do was find fault, focusing on small messes, minor situations that most of the time I would overlook were suddenly magnified: molehills into mountains.
No, I have not been a pleasant person to be around. Indeed, I have been focusing on the all the negatives and forgetting all the really good stuff in my life. Reading this article helped me to put my experience into perspective and to see why it really is important that I get to sleep at a decent hour, hard though that is for us night owl types. Though I know that sleep is important, it is so easy to forget exactly how much being short of sleep can affect not only myself but all those around me.
And I wonder if this link between sleep deprivation and negative thinking isn’t a contributing factor to post partum depression. The article concludes: “If you were living a life of four to five hours’ sleep a night, you might after a while only remember the bad things that happen. If that’s not a route to depression, I don’t know what is.’’ That certainly sounds like the lot of many women with newborns. I know that depression is a complex medical condition. Still, perhaps for a woman prone to depression but normally able to cope, being sleep deprived (and, let’s not forget, caught up in that post-pregnancy hormonal surge) might be enough to push her over the edge. And for the rest of us, sleep deprivation certainly doesn’t help us to deal with the trials and tribulations of motherhood.
Redeemed in Christ
On the other hand, let us not forget that biology is not destiny. Going short on sleep does not necessarily mean I am doomed to be a raging Mrs. Hyde. My dear friend Katherine wrote to remind me that if we invite him in, Christ can conquer our weakness and redeem those lost hours:
“I have found that on the nights that I have struggled with a baby during the night I have woken up tired and frustrated. However, when I have approached the time in the middle of the night as a time to keep vigil and pray as I calm the baby, I have woken up refreshed. I guess that is to say that even trials can bring fruit if they are approached prayerfully. Then we can give thanks in all circumstances. Even sleepless nights.”
Indeed last night I did remember to pray as I bounced my sleepless little Ben. I am certain that my prayerful attitude helped make today a calm and pleasant day all round. I was able to stay centered in Christ and to turn to prayer constantly throughout the day. I was patient with the children and generally quite positive about everything even though I was short on sleep. Such rich fruit to harvest from such a small sacrifice as a few Hail Marys whispered in the night!
—Melanie Bettinelli is a yawning wife and mother of three who writes from her home in Massachusetts. Read her blog at The Wine Dark Sea.
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