by Leah
The other day at work my boss opened our staff meeting with a devotional about sleep: how we often prize being attentive, awakened, present--but that God gifts us with sleep as well as wakefulness:
"It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for God gives sleep to his beloved."
(Psalm 127:2, NRSV)
The word "Amen" was out of my mouth before she could even finish her first sentence.
See, after our great sleep experiment leading up to daycare, we hit a rash of routine-busting events: godmother came for a sleepover, play auntie* came for dinner, grandparents came for a baptism, dad went home for a funeral and everybody wanted to Facetime at bedtime...etc. etc. So Little Bit, rather understandably, missed the memo on sleeping consistently through the night. She'd only done it twice in the couple of weeks since we'd started her new routine. And Mama, who LOVES her sleep, was just about fed up with that. Two days before I had been so sleep deprived I had flashbacks to my nights as an on-call chaplain. I tried to nap while pumping at work, which only made me more disoriented (something not so lulling about the "whack-O, whack-O" call of the pump?). I told my boss not to give me any important decisions to make, lest my judgment, deprived from exhaustion, fail me. I even thought about napping before driving home because I was not sure I was safe to drive.
How do you moms out there DO this??
The other day at work my boss opened our staff meeting with a devotional about sleep: how we often prize being attentive, awakened, present--but that God gifts us with sleep as well as wakefulness:
"It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for God gives sleep to his beloved."
(Psalm 127:2, NRSV)
The word "Amen" was out of my mouth before she could even finish her first sentence.
See, after our great sleep experiment leading up to daycare, we hit a rash of routine-busting events: godmother came for a sleepover, play auntie* came for dinner, grandparents came for a baptism, dad went home for a funeral and everybody wanted to Facetime at bedtime...etc. etc. So Little Bit, rather understandably, missed the memo on sleeping consistently through the night. She'd only done it twice in the couple of weeks since we'd started her new routine. And Mama, who LOVES her sleep, was just about fed up with that. Two days before I had been so sleep deprived I had flashbacks to my nights as an on-call chaplain. I tried to nap while pumping at work, which only made me more disoriented (something not so lulling about the "whack-O, whack-O" call of the pump?). I told my boss not to give me any important decisions to make, lest my judgment, deprived from exhaustion, fail me. I even thought about napping before driving home because I was not sure I was safe to drive.
How do you moms out there DO this??
- - -
The night before the aforementioned devotion, when Little Bit was up again screaming an hour and a half after bedtime (I think she had an earache), I said the non-polite version of "I'm done with this," grabbed the baby, and took her back to bed with me. One boob and some cuddling later she was out cold. And so was I--at 9:30 pm. We were TIRED.
That night was a night of glorious sleep--Little Bit slept through the night and so did I. It was so restful that the next morning I was out on my run, smile on my face, before the sun was truly up.*** Hallelujah! All the next day I meditated on how sleep is one of the primary, primal gifts God gives us. It's right there in Genesis at the beginning of everything, and of course in the luscious Psalm 127. Even Jesus gets his ZZZs as a baby and sleeps right through storms as an adult. (All-nighters are for extreme circumstances only, à la Garden of Gethsemane.)
Whether you teach your child to sleep through the night at 3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, or whether she's still waking up but all you gotta do is roll over and boob her,**** get that sleep in. It's (literally) God's gift to you.
Because didn't I mention? You're God's Beloved, and you deserve some rest.
Amen.
*Southern American speak for "not related by blood but still like family."
** Little Bit's name means "Beloved" so I take this a bit personally...
***Little Bit's granddad will tell you how rare this phenomenon is even without an infant in the picture.
****All links to resources that have methods for teaching kids to sleep through the night at the various ages mentioned.
The night before the aforementioned devotion, when Little Bit was up again screaming an hour and a half after bedtime (I think she had an earache), I said the non-polite version of "I'm done with this," grabbed the baby, and took her back to bed with me. One boob and some cuddling later she was out cold. And so was I--at 9:30 pm. We were TIRED.
That night was a night of glorious sleep--Little Bit slept through the night and so did I. It was so restful that the next morning I was out on my run, smile on my face, before the sun was truly up.*** Hallelujah! All the next day I meditated on how sleep is one of the primary, primal gifts God gives us. It's right there in Genesis at the beginning of everything, and of course in the luscious Psalm 127. Even Jesus gets his ZZZs as a baby and sleeps right through storms as an adult. (All-nighters are for extreme circumstances only, à la Garden of Gethsemane.)
Whether you teach your child to sleep through the night at 3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, or whether she's still waking up but all you gotta do is roll over and boob her,**** get that sleep in. It's (literally) God's gift to you.
Because didn't I mention? You're God's Beloved, and you deserve some rest.
Amen.
*Southern American speak for "not related by blood but still like family."
** Little Bit's name means "Beloved" so I take this a bit personally...
***Little Bit's granddad will tell you how rare this phenomenon is even without an infant in the picture.
****All links to resources that have methods for teaching kids to sleep through the night at the various ages mentioned.