Sleep Deprivation

Humans need sleep.  Some humans need more than others.  The Jeremelon, for example, never needed much in order to function pretty well.  Until he passed 30.  Now, he gets irritated with himself quickly when he feels exhausted.

Me, I've always needed sleep.  Food, not so much (whereas Jeremelon needed food in order to be...err...pleasant).  But sleep for me was always extremely important.  My age was immaterial.  Four hours of sleep?  Expect me to be a cranky zombie.  Bleeeeeeegh.  And then around New Years' in 2006, I got sick.  This is when I think my thyroid first went wonky, too, but I had a bout of bronchitis that left me feeling like I was drowning every time I laid down.  Coupled with nebulized drugs that didn't agree with me, I got four hours of sleep across THREE DAYS.  I developed generalized anxiety disorder (or post-traumatic stress disorder, because it's only been recently that I don't dream about it often).  My fight-or-flight switch got stuck in the ON position for three months before I got help.  Ever since, I can't sleep except during very specific conditions.

When the Berrykin was born, I got maybe four hours of sleep on a good night, for three months.  Then we got to move up to six, but it was broken up into 1.5 - 2 hour chunks.  It wasn't until he started sleeping for four hour increments at nine months that I realized just how sleep deprived I was, and how much it affected how I functioned.  Without consistent sleep, I don't dream much.  Dreaming is a necessary process that allows the brain and body to heal, but also to process information.  Especially emotional information.  Without it, a human can feel like they never get a break.

This seems doubly true for me.  I don't tend to process emotional information very well while awake, so I rely heavily on the "Flush" button that occurs during sleep.  I can tell from my dreams more easily when I'm stressed or anxious and need a break than from how I feel while awake.  The same process occurs - most often in men - while doing things that don't require much attention on physical processes.  Driving, showering, playing video games.  Jeremelon needs his game playing in order for this process to do its work; I need sleep.

Berrykin has been doing a smashingly good job with potty training, but he wakes up frequently at night when he has the urge to go.  Because he insists on more milk to fall back to sleep, he has the urge to go every hour or two.  Which means we're back to having a newborn sleep schedule.  It's been killing me. I can't sleep.  I can't think.  My emotions are everywhere, at all once.  Any time I have to interface with people in an emotional way, either I have no emotions to give, or they're all that at the same time, overloading every system I've got.  Most of the time, I kind of feel like I'm going crazy.

And that is the big effect of sleep deprivation - the feeling that the world has grown so big and overwhelming, there's no stopping it.  That one is going to be crushed beneath the sheer weight of life, and it's all one can do to get through the day.

Jeremelon let me sleep in today.  He slept on the Berrykin's floor most of the night (because Berrykin is also dealing with shifting from cosleeping with me, which makes sleep even more difficult), got up with him, took him to the store.  I got up at noon.  NOON!  I remember three dreams from this glorious stretch of sleep, and all of them were processing dreams.  I feel so much better - and saner - because of it!

Lesson Learned: If life seems overwhelming, sleep on it.