Flashbacks

I think I might have post-traumatic stress disorder. No, I was never in a war, serious accident or bank robbery. Yet, I feel as though we have been waging a war in our house for the past couple of years and it is from this that my PTSD has arisen. It is an exhausting, trying and merciless war we thought we once defeated, but alas it seems to have returned, taking with it another prisoner. What war you ask? The war of sleeplessness.

After raising a first born who refused to sleep for the first year of his life (and intermittently since then), we were elated when number two came into the world with a different viewpoint on sleep. She welcomed it with outstretched arms. We spent the first month waking her to feed (from her enormous size now, perhaps we should’ve let her sleep more). But in the last month, she has decided that following in her big brother’s footsteps might not be a bad idea. Thankfully she has not taken to waking as often as every two hours, but her sleep is still less consistent than it previously was. For a girl who entered the world as a champion sleeper, she has begun to fall quite short of our early expectations for her. I once thought that by this age, she could actually be sleeping through the entire night. We were well on our way with her giving us five, six, seven and even an eight-hour stretch in the early months. But then something happened. With little notice, the war we once fought, sneaked back into our lives, waging itself on a new terrain—our little Kenna. It quickly ripped from her the nice little sleep pattern she had developed. I find myself grieving a great loss, still in denial and wondering why it had to happen.

Now, I’ve read plenty of books, so I know that babies can go through stages of restless sleep and this could merely be one of those. But then I hear voices, my mom’s in particular, telling how I slept all night from just a couple weeks old. Matt was much the same way. And it seems as though all my friends’ babies have gotten it together as well (but then again sleepy eyes tend to see the world with less clarity). I try to quiet those voices and remind myself that this could be a stage. Yet, every time she wakes at 2 am and again at 5 am and 7 am…my mind races back to the countless late night nursing sessions I had with her brother. Suddenly I am filled with anxiety. “Are we raising another bad sleeper?” I ask myself. “How is this possible? What are we doing wrong? How can two parents who adore sleep birth two children who fight it?” These thoughts race through my mind as Kenna drifts off to sleep and I lie awake trying to figure it all out. Perhaps this is just a developmental stage. After all, she has grown a few inches (and pounds), learned to sit up and roll all over the place in the span of a few short weeks. Her mind and body are developing exponentially and that can sometimes affect sleep patterns. I try to remind myself of this, but at 3 am, the sleep pattern that most concerns me is my own. So I pull the sheets back up, bury my head in my pillow and try to quiet the flashbacks. “It’s just a phase,” I try to tell myself. “It’s just a phase. It’s just a phase.” And as my mind begins to settle and drift off to sleep, the war once again rears its ugly, haunting, intrusive head and I wonder …but what if it’s not?