Go to Sleep!

My granddaughter, Sarah Grace, blissfully asleep on a sofa cushion

I have a reputation for reading strange how to books. How to make a meatloaf, how to breastfeed your baby (3x), but likely the strangest one was The Sleep Management Plan, by Dale Hanson Bourke. It came out in 1990, when I was 35 years old, and struggling to keep up with life. Our kids were 14, 9 and 7 and I was as busy as a one armed wallpaper hanger.

I don't have the book anymore, but I do remember reading it, taking it very seriously, and trying to implement the plan. Basically the book proposed that you could get used to living on less sleep, as long as you did it gradually. The author didn't say you could ultimately live on 3 hours of sleep a night, but she did suggest that you could live on less than you thought you needed, as long as you slept according to a certain schedule and found out what your optimum amount of sleep was.

I hit a point of getting five hours or less a night, and it would have worked great - I had all this extra time to get stuff done - except I was completely exhausted. I've come to find out I can manage on about 7 hours a night, as long as I throw in a night of 8 hours here and there, and ultimately I function best with 7 1/2 or 8 a night. If I go for too many days on less than that I'll come down with a cold almost every single time.

I'm not sure if that's a more recent situation, due to being in my sixth decade, or if it was always like that and I just managed to live on the edge for too many years of mothering. Come to think of it, back when our kids were growing up I seemed to catch a lot of common crud that was going around.

I do know that now I don't stay in hotels that are so cheap I know ahead of time the mattresses will be horrible, and my back will complain for days afterwards. I drag my pillow with me wherever I go. I sleep on high quality sheets, in comfortable pajamas, and when I wake up at 6:30, after staying up until midnight reading a good book, I make myself go back to sleep for at least another hour.

I wish I could go back and tell 35 year old me to take better care of myself. It wasn't worth it to try to squeeze a few more hours of awake time, trying to get it all done. I'd have been so much better off to just get a good night's sleep and wake up with enough energy to get through what the day held for me.

Dale Hanson Bourke wrote another, much better, book called Everyday Miracles: Holy Moments in a Mother's Day. I've also read that one - absolutely beautiful writing - and absolutely recommend it to all those young moms struggling to keep up with life. Read a few pages before bed, then turn the lights out and get a good eight hours of sleep.