On Sleep, Exhaustion and Breakdowns

That's my new body pillow. It took me till the third pregnancy to get one! The best $20 investment in our lives I've made in a long time.

I have been reading a lot of blogs by mothers who have been burnt out and are dealing with (or have dealt with) depression and other various delightful effects of exhaustion. Most of the blogs I read happen to be written by Christian mothers. Some of these mothers have one child and some of them have a whole lot more, but the theme of exhaustion seems to be fairly universal.

This reading definitely comes at a great moment for me. With this ever growing belly and with my husband having been out of town this week, I've been thinking about exhaustion and breakdowns and how sleep or lack of it plays into these periods of extreme rundown. A little over a week ago, I wrote about being a nighttime mean person which is very much linked to how much or how little sleep I get. I've honestly been too tired this past week to finish a single post. So...very...tired.

Here's a little history of my experience with sleep and exhaustion...

During my high school years I swam a lot, seven days a week, several hours each day. I was a very competitive athlete and made sure that my body had sufficient rest in order to perform. It is funny to me that I knew what my body needed for that stage of my life, but as I moved on to the next stage, I forgot that sleep and rest were part of the equation. I began making up other reasons for why I must be so tired and feel so loopy and why it eventually became almost impossible to fall asleep on my own.

The first time I hit my breaking point was when I was in college. At the time I wasn't sleeping. Really, I slept almost never. Sometimes this was because there wasn't time for it and other times it was because I couldn't get to sleep. I stayed up multiple nights in a row and when I did try to sleep, I never got more than three hours at a time. Ambien only made me feel more tired, but wouldn't really help me get to sleep. The only thing that worked to lull me to sleep was watching a movie that I had already seen dozens of times and eventually watched probably hundreds of times. I was taking 21 units my senior semester and running a program that was part of a large christian group on campus. I thought I had to be a part of everything and do some of everything else.

I went home one weekend and nearly in tears told my mom that something wasn't right. I didn't know what was going on in my head, but something wasn't right. I wasn't happy and I was very tired all the time. I don't even think I could bear to utter the word "depression." I wasn't sure what triggered the open moment with my mom. Looking back, it was probably utter exhaustion, because I should have known what would happen when I told her these feelings. My mom's reply was a very frustrated, "well, what do you want us to do! Take you to a shrink?" To my christian mom, everything was either black or white and grey was just another shade of black. What I took away from that moment was that in her mind the act of going to see a doctor for emotional issues must be the crazy thing as those issues we were taught were related to our relationship with God. It took a long time for me to open up again with either of my parents about how I unsettled I had felt during those months.

When I should have just made every effort to take better care of my body, I instead spent hours trying to find spiritual reasons for my exhaustion. I tried to read my Bible more, pray more and serve more, more, more. At the time I was having a lot of trouble reading anything written by Paul (I still have issues with Paul). Reading his words with the literal-lens I'd grown up looking at the Bible through, caused much confusion and frustration. I would become so sick to my stomach that I actually threw up on a few occasions. And I rarely throw up (the last time I threw up was while I was in labor with my first child). My best friend tried writing out a whole book written by Paul on some pretty stationery hoping that it would help if the words weren't read from a printed Bible. I still have the paper somewhere. It was such a beautiful gesture, but it didn't help. I still thought my unsettled feelings might be spiritual and I continued to look for signs and ways to be a better, stronger, more mature christian thinking that would give me the peace of mind and spirit I needed.

That same semester, I had what I now think was a stress or panic attack. I felt like I was dying. It was nighttime and all of my housemates were sleeping. My heart was racing and my chest felt like something large was constricting it. I was sweating and the words "heart attack" kept running through my mind. I felt terrified. I remember creeping up the stairs and thinking about waking up one of my roommates, but in the end being too embarrassed to wake them. I was 21, there was no way I was really having a heart attack, I thought.

The next day happened to be Valentine's Day. That morning, my dad happened to be in the area (rare). He stopped by to drop off a Valentine's stuffed animal and a card. He wasn't expecting me to be home because I was supposed to be in class. When he rang the doorbell and I crept downstairs to answer the door. I thought it was a miracle. I hadn't gone to class because I was still feeling pretty bad and I was shaking from being so tired. Since what I was feeling was physical, I had no problem telling him how sick I'd felt all night. He insisted that I come home with him and go to the doctor. The doctor took an xray of my chest and said he didn't really see anything, well, maybe my heart looked a little swollen but it wasn't anything to be concerned about. By then I was feeling a lot better so he didn't see any reason to do any other tests. I was embarrassed enough that I didn't ask any more questions and tried to forget the whole incident. Again, I thought maybe it was spiritual, an attack of some sort.

This moment of openness with my mom and my Valentine's Day malady occurred only a few months before I met my future husband and joined a different church and its affiliated group on campus. The group was very charismatic and actually prayed for people's illnesses like I'd read about in the New Testament. My new friend/future husband prayed one day that I would sleep that night. He said to call him and have him pray again if I wasn't sleeping. And I slept. Now I was convinced that it was spiritual! Looking back, I think in reality I was terrified of calling him that night and telling him that his prayers didn't work and somehow willed myself to sleep. But, really I slept and thought it was a miracle. The next day I dumped all the rest of my Ambien down the toilet. The way it stuck to the bottom of the porcelain even after many flushings made me wonder if it stuck to my insides the same way.

Although I slept that night, I wasn't all the sudden sleeping perfectly, but I slowly started to sleep better until I got enough sleep most nights. My schedule had significantly lightened. Attending a church that seemed to have all the answers made me feel more content spiritually. I worked full time and commuted, but there was plenty of time for sleep most nights since the new church wasn't asking much of me yet.

Almost a decade later, after much careful examination it has become painfully and thankfully clear that my unsettled feelings were directly related to sleep and exhaustion. I know my limits. I know what I can physically commit to and I know where my body and mind start to break down. I no longer have the guilt associated with not being the good christian pressing me to do more or be better. I don't have pastors and disciplers telling me I need to serve at this or that event.

I do want the best for my children and my husband. And, I need sleep and other forms of rest to be able to be the best mom and wife for them that I can be.

I'm still and probably always will be a light sleeper. I don't know that that's changeable. It is difficult with young children to get enough sleep. But I know it is essential to try and find a way. Looking back at the last thirty years of life, I know that the hours of good sleep I get, directly relate to how well I function, how nice of a person I am and how much peace I feel.

I'd love to know how moms of young children figure out how to get enough sleep or even just a little more sleep. Aside from my new body pillow, the only thing I've come up with is to go to bed as soon as the kids do. Not something I look forward to most evenings since I can get so much done then. And, it means no late night posts, which means a LOT fewer posts!

Off to bed...