Ten Tips for a Good Night’s Sleep
From a Well-Rested and Emotionally Stable Mom
At the exact moment your newborn baby is falling asleep each night, sing her the same lullabye. It will become her narcotic and you will feel like a witch casting a spell. Five years later, you will sing the first three notes, watch her yawn and shift into her snuggly sleepy place, and thank your past self for being such a genius.
As you watch your child yawn and snuggle, try not to yawn and snuggle along with her. The pull of sleep emitting from a drowsy child is an undertow and you will emerge an hour later, 30 miles down the shore of reality, unable to speak English or complete any of the tasks you promised you’d do “after the kids go to bed.”
The first time you think I should go to bed for real this time, you should have gone to bed an hour ago. If your next thought is I’ll just watch one episode of this compelling British police procedural—(or, let’s face it, Love Is Blind)—and THEN I’ll go to bed, slap yourself across the face and throw your phone across the room.
Your kids will never really sleep through the night, but they will SUPER not sleep through the night on any night that you stayed up late watching three to four episodes of a compelling British police procedural Love Is Blind. Crawl into bed and steel yourself for nighttime visitors. They’ll wake according to their personality—the younger one will pound down the hall, burst into your room, and torpedo into your blankets. This is jarring, but so is the way your older daughter will wake you: by standing stick-straight at the edge of your bed like the girl from The Ring and whispering mommy Mommy MOMMY until you come to with a start.
When your older daughter appears next to your bed for the third time, do not yell-whisper OH MY GOD, WHAT?!? She’ll run back to her room sobbing and you’ll be left alone to stare into the darkness of your soul and wonder why you’re such a shit mom.
If you’re awoken for the fifth time that night by the loudest crash you’ve literally ever heard, reassure yourself that it’s just the kids’ bath toys clattering down into the tub, the suction cups finally giving up the fight. As you breathe deeply and slow your racing heart, do not dwell on the implications of your husband sleeping soundly through the noise. He would definitely wake up if a serial killer was breaking into your house. Definitely.
When your cortisol levels have finally unspiked, and you’re about to drift off, under no circumstances should you think about that tiny interpersonal issue where you said something that—you see now, in retrospect, at 3 a.m.—was a totally awkward and inappropriate thing to say and will now create a flare of panic in your gut whenever it crosses your mind.
After you’ve relived every embarrassing and unkind thing you’ve ever done, definitely don’t check the time on your phone, which will have cheerfully queued up meeting reminders for the next day, a totally cool and non-stressful thing to see at (fuuuuuck) 4 a.m.
When the city-lights-addled robin outside your window starts his morning song at 4:15, resist the urge to climb up into the tree and ring his tiny adorable dumb neck.
When you check your phone again at 5, just give up. You’ve lost this one. Pull on your running clothes and head out into the night morning. Keep a steady pace and you’ll be lulled into a trance that is almost, almost, like sleep. When you finally climb into bed at the end of the day, you’ll be so bone-tired that nothing—not a child, not a serial killer, not an errant thought—can break your stride as you gallop into dreamland.
