In the past few weeks, since Christmas break when Slade was home to set a bad example by doing the same, I have been indulging in an extremely no no guilty pleasure that I haven't done for a long time. Napping during the day.
The reason I haven't napped for years now is that I have been seeing a neurologist who ironically seems to never have encountered insomnia. So one strategy he has suggested is using principles of 'sleep hygiene' which in theory are an attempt to replicate the sleep patterns of a normal person. I have always been suspicious that this doesn't work, but there are few good options, and now that I am not taking any medications that work, none.
So since Christmas break I decided that I couldn't stand it anymore, esp with the pregnancy and total pharmeceutical sobriety it just didn't make sense to get no sleep. So this week being the most extreme example, I have been endulging in glorious 3-5 hour naps in the day. I figure I have no kids at home so it is not like I am one of those white trash mothers that lets their kids watch tv all day while I sleep. Victimless crime. At least while I have the chance. And while I am alone with a newborn it may be my only chance to sleep at all to catch catnaps while I can, since I won't be able to do the 8 hour Ambien thing then either.
So for the moment I am chucking the goal of sleep hygiene. In fact I am practically sleep filthy. I really don't buy it in theory anyway. Because Slade sleeps like a baby any time he wants even when he has had a long nap. I am just different, and I won't be able to sleep at night whatever I do. It is kind of like when people assume that because people produce less of a certain amount of hormone X when they get older it means that they should boost the heck out of it supplementally. It just likely doesn't work that way.
People's bodies probably produce less of estrogen or DHEA or whatever because their body doesn't NEED it anymore because obviously we don't stay young forever. In fact producing less of a certain hormone that is usually associated with reproduction when we get older is probably safer for our bodies because we don't need it and our bodies probably can't handle the potent hormones as well for those extra decades. We are one of the only species to live significantly longer than we are reproductively active and it doesn't make sense to try to keep an unnecessarily high level of youth related hormones when we age because it will probably kill us.
It is like why dogs get cancer when they are ten. They didn't get it from chemicals in their environment and can't cure it by getting rid of them. Their body is just programmed to age faster. So my body just doesn't go to sleep at night and sleep for eight hours, and replicating that behavior by trying to force that on myself is ridiculous. I am not going to start magically sleeping because I don''t nap in the day. In fact I find that I sleep MORE at night when I nap. So whaever, mr 350/hr neuro. I think I will just get some zzs but thanks.
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4 comments:
Hey, I just wanted to make sure you saw my CONGRATULATIONS!!!
(I was waiting until you made the official announcement, but then I didn't check as much as usual over the holidays.)
I hope the napping continues to be glorious. I know I love it more than almost anything.
Can't wait to hear if you are having a boy or girl.
Just in case anyone is bracing for it to be a boy because they assume I am one of those family balance people, I have absolutely no preference. The only thing that makes me want it a little is for Sadie, but for me personally I have loved parenting boys because it seems that the genetic abilities/assets that we have to offer them are a better deal.
Also I don't really LIKE sleep like Slade and others do, I much preferred it when I got no sleep and didn't seem to miss it. But I have hated this thing the last few years where I have to just lay there at night because I am not allowed to do anything productive during the hours designated for sleep (another sleep Nazi rule) and then was a zombie during the day that wasn't allowed to catch up. It led to zero productivity anytime and general bad health. I wish I could just go back to staying up for days and not even noticing, but I guess this kind of decline is inevitable, it is just my most dramatic example of it. When I started realizing that I was wigging out and that this had probably been going on for years to a lesser degree, that I would lose it and do things that I either didn't remember or didn't remember why I did it, really freaked me out so I tried all of the drastic measures, from medicine to lifestyle changes but it is just a hard problem. I can't just change something so fundamental about myself, especailly having adjusted my whole life around it.
The only good news really is that I know now that it isn't something more serious. What seemed initially to be really strange behavior problems that could have had a much more complicated explanation and worse prognosis could have remained unexplained or it could have turned out that I really was crazy, because by the time I discovered the problem -- started adding things up when things showed up at my house that I didn't remember buying and having Slade go back over things that I did to check and see whether I remembered them, it was really scary for a while there. But it turns out that the actual weird thing was that I thought that no sleep for days would actually have no consequences. And I actually do much better than most people on no or little sleep. If Slade had to stay up for four days in a row who knows what would happen. It was that I functioned at all and only had subtler changes like acting strange though functional that was the weird thing, it isn't really weird that I need to sleep like everyone else. I was just in denial based on my life being built around only needing (or so it seemed) to sleep once or twice a week.
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