A good night’s sleep? I think I just about remember what that is. Somewhere in the recesses of my body is the muscle memory of a full night of uninterrupted shuteye. But now? Now, it’s something I only hear about second-hand with great smugness from non-parents and students.
Researchers have told parents they can expect their sleep to be disrupted for up to six years after the birth of their first child. Well, six years is a major underestimate, I can tell you. It’s almost 30 years since my baby was a baby and I’ve not had a full eight hours of deep sleep since his arrival.
Add his son, my toddler grandson, into the mix and you can imagine why. Did I mention they both live with me? Family members often remind me that in the years BC (before children), when I slept I was dead to the world. You could stick six alarms clocks by my head and I still wouldn’t wake up. But those were easier times, times I took for granted, times before the mini tenants came along.
In my past life I practically lived in the bed that’s now a receptacle for laundry and hugs. I’d sleep all day given half the chance. Then again I was a teenager – so what do you expect?
I was 17 when my son arrived and like every new parent, my sleep was the first thing to go. For a teenage girl, this was a particularly rude awakening. The first few days were a nightmare, when the little git decided that sleep was for wimps and both of us could survive on a few snatched hours each night. My son used to wake up every 30 minutes – even if he wasn’t hungry or needed changing.
It’s not like you don’t get a spoiler for all this. The realities of sleep deprivation and sleep regression are one of the worst kept secrets during pregnancy, when it’s drilled into you to expect months of sleepless nights; to get used to grabbing an hour here or there during the day; and above all, to nap when the baby does.
Nap is the appropriate word. Scientists have identified four stages of sleep that we all go through nightly:
1) Drowsy sleep: the kind that’s choppy and shallow, when you can still hear things and your brain has dipped into sleep but you don’t feel you are asleep.
2) Light sleep: you can be woken easily but your body is processing memories and emotions and your metabolism is regulating itself as your heart rate lowers.
3) Deep sleep: This is very much when the body is rebuilding and repairing and it essential to maintain a healthy immune system. This is key sleep, people.
4) REM: When the brain is at its most active but your body its most inactive.
At least, we’re told there are four stages. Sometimes, it feels as though I’ve hovered around stages one and two ever since my son was born. I honestly thought I’d get to stage three when I stopped worrying he was going to succumb to some ghastly baby related illness overnight.
It never happened (the illness OR some truly restorative kip). Becoming a parent is a one-way pass to a world of worrydom. As my son grew up, I stopped waking up in the middle of the night to check if he was still breathing, and started waking up with fear I hadn’t got him off to school on time.
When he was a teenager and started to socialise, I worried about his empty bed. Or something happening to him on a night out. Raising a young black boy in London has many pitfalls, from random acts of unprovoked violence and knife crime, to stop and search, arrests and racist incidents outside nightclubs – both by police and the security staff who are meant to be there to protect.
All this has turned me, of all people, into a light sleeper. I can hear every snore, every change in breathing pattern, every creak and every closing of a door.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve always been an over-protective mum. But now that I’m a glam-ma, too, with a new generation under my roof, it’s hard to break the cycle. And maybe, deep down, I don’t want to, as that would mean relinquishing my role of dominant parent in the household. An uninterrupted night’s sleep might be a thing of the past, but I think I’m actually okay with that.