If your personal answer is “my two month old” well, enough said. Go take a nap.
But our house is light on 2-month olds (though currently heavy on coughers and sneezers); my twins are now 41/2, and beyond one recent episode at my brothers’ when they woke up at 4am and insisted it was morning, everyone sleeps through the night. In fact, they sleep so well, that episode stood out for its weirdness–they were chirping away in the guest room and I literally didn’t know how to convince them it was NOT morning, aside from pointing out the no-light, since they hadn’t woken up before morning in so long.
I have so many friends whose kids are up and rarin’ to go at 6am; I’m blessed with good sleepers…the twins are usually in bed till 7:30 and my oldest had to be dragged out of bed the other day at 9:30am. Granted it was after a late night but still, I’m usually able to get a good night’s sleep, even when I go to bed, habitually, at 11 or during whatever part of The Daily Show that I tune out to.
Yet of late I have been waking up at 4am. I wander around. I go sleep in the guest room. Or not sleep in the guest room. And I worry.I worry about weird things that in the light of day do not seem as troublesome, or at least seem manageable. But at 4am they go through my head in a non-stop rush and I can’t stop them. What if all my consulting work dries up? What if my job-hunting husband NEVER finds a job and lives in my basement like a caveman forever? I start adding up numbers and dollars and thinking through budgets. Then I firmly say to myself STOP THIS. You can’t do anything about it in the middle of the night.
So then I start in with to-do lists. I have to finish x, I didn’t even start y. Why did I yell at the kids today when I was working so hard on my temper? Why didn’t I complete a, b, or c? I have to do all of these things for this client or for the conference, I have to follow up with him, or her, why didn’t I ever hear back from this person or that person? I found that if I start making a list, sometimes some of the things go away. But new things take their place.
I am totally not a grudge-holding person, at least not for most people, but what “takes the place” of those to-dos is a review of past grievances (like Festivus on Seinfeld). I rehash old fights or issues or things that made me crazy and then at 4:30 or 5:15 or whatever time it has gotten to I fruitlessly get mad all over again. And then get mad that I’m mad and even madder that I’m not sleeping.
Here’s what I’ve been told to do–read a boring book. Great, I don’t have any, there’s no light bulb in the lamp in the guest room and I never remember that till it’s 5:30 am at which point I don’t feel like traipsing around downstairs to find one. Watch a boring show to tune out. That’s easier than it used to be in that the guest room tv now doesn’t get cable so it’s informercials or early, early, early editions of whatever the “Today” show is at that point, but it doesn’t help me sleep boring or not. I’ve been trying to think of positive things but nothing comes to mind at 5:45.
Because that’s the point. The “worries”, in real life or real time, aren’t as bad–or at least, I can do something about them. They’re blown out of proportion in the middle of the night. Even if I know that, though, I’m up fretting away. And listening to the fish tank in one kid’s room, the heating system rattle away, and my own fears.
What keeps you up at night? And what do you do about it?
