WOH and sleeping issues
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WOH and sleeping issues
| Sun, 05-22-2005 - 10:34am |
We were at a dinner party last night at the home of one of dh's coworkers. They have 2 boys, 6 and 4. They have a bunch of sleeping issues (kids 'scared' at night, won't fall asleep in their own bed, won't go to bed without mom or dad cuddling them, etc.) The mom blames herself because since she works all day and misses them so much she tends to cuddle with them late at night and they fall asleep in a pile on the bed all together. She said that if she SAH, they wouldn't have the same issues.
I sah. For us, bed time is a rigid, welcome respite at the end of the day. Dh has no desire to keep them up either, lol.

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I probably shouldn't have said extreme sleep deprivation as that makes me think of soldiers in the trenches and medical school students. What is less extreme than extreme? Serious sleep deprivation? Prolonged sleep deprivation? I don't know the terminology, admittedly.
I would say I meant the kind of sleep deprivation you get when you've slept fewer than say half the normal hours needed for your body and you've done it for more than say five days at a time. (I'm making this up, not like I have a real formula.) It's probably more about how many times you never got to the truly restful stage of sleep than anything and since that depends on a wide variety of factors, it would be hard to measure outside of a sleep clinic. And that (how many times you never got to the restful stage of sleep) is very different for each person.
My dh found out last year that he had a horrible sleep debt even though he was sleeping up to ten hours a day. It didn't matter how much sleep he was getting, it was all about the kind of sleep.
Ok...that makes sense. I think true sleep deprivation is understudied. I thought I was abnormal for having halluncations when I was not getting enough sleep for days on end (and add the emotional stress). I actually thought I was losing my mind. I literally could not even remember if I had slept and I had not. I had to get people to drive me places during the last three months of his life.
It has been my only experience with long term sleep deprivation and I was never able to crash like I had in college or when the kids were babies. I think the longest I slept was three hours at a time. I would fall asleep and then jerk awake thinking there was a spider on the ceiling or on top of me. It was bizarre.
I don't know how POW's handle it. I really don't. It was hellish.
Your poor DH must have been miserable.
"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." -- Pat Robertson, 1993
&nbs
I can't imagine doing it long term. I really can't. I have no clue how your in-laws, your SIL and your DH cope.
I told my mother the other day that no one tells me I look young anymore. I used to get carded regularly and people thought I had Zak when I was 16 (instead of 21). Since Devin died, no more getting carded. No more anyone thinking I look young. Vain of me but I decided the whole thing aged me.
Then, I was at the pool with Zak and one of his swim team friends asked if I were his sister. I think I glowed. Zak rolled his eyes and said, rather loudly, "No. She's my mom and she is going to be 30 in July!" Got to love it.
At my cousin's wedding, one person could not believe I was almost 30 either. She thought I was 25-26. I just might still have it.
&nbs
I agree that part of being in a marriage is not having to always carry stress alone. But I also think that part of being in a marriage is not always sharing stress unneedlessy. When DD2 broke her arm to call DH would have been sharing the stress unneedlessly. There would have been nothing he could have done so no reason for him to be stressed just because I was.
A miscarriage is something that I would have tried to contact DH about not matter where he was. Loosing a child is a totally different situation then having an ill/injured child who will recover.
I totally agree that a spouse should feel free to reach out to their spouse any time during the night. DH and I both do it all the time.
Your criticism is unwarranted. I think we parents are all a bit better off for admitting sleep deprivation is an issue in the first instance and then discussing it honestly. I don't prefer your solution: recognize a problem and do nothing about it. "Suck it up!" is no solution. That's the opposite of a solution. Sweep it under the rug? That doesn't solve anything.
<> Do you really have to tell a woman who attended law school and then worked in a private corporate law firm what sleep deprivation is?
Why did you raise the issue of your having 4 children? I had 3, and I solved my sleep deprivation problem within months, three times over. I had a problem, I found the solution.
And there's just no way sleep deprivation to a sahm means half of what it means to a wohp. There's just no comparison. For you to tell her to just suck it up even if you had 10 children would be pointless. Your "advice" or criticisms are baseless. You have no idea. You don't have an employer and colleagues to answer to everyday nor are you responsible for delivering work worthy of a paycheck.
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