Can't Sleep

I’m a sleeper. I can sleep through almost anything; parties, rock concerts, lights on, TV blaring, vicious poking, none of it wakes me, and if it does, I usually come up swinging. My husband hates that I can sleep through anything. I sleep like I am dead. It is a gift derived from being the daughter of two young parents of the 60’s, who partied on into the night with frequent guests long after they put their only child to sleep. It was the gift of a mother who worked late nights and had to bring me along, putting me to sleep in a back office while she worked behind the bar. It was a gift given by a father whose apartment was over a bar that he owned that played loud music well into the wee hours of morning. I have slept through many alarms including very important ones that meant the difference between ski racing in Europe or going back to college.

We were racing World Cup in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. On the last night, we all went out dancing and ended up going to bed late. I know what you are thinking, but I was 18 and drinking at a World Cup party was not a good idea given that all my coaches and many of the U.S. race organizers were present. I was perfectly sober when I went to bed. I set two alarms and promptly slept through both of them. I missed the bus to Boston where I was to catch a plane that would take me to Zurich, Switzerland with the U.S. Ski Team. As I mentioned, I was 18 years old and I was in a world of trouble. Luckily, a very nice person that worked with the race committee took pity on a desperate teenager and agreed to drive me the 127 miles and two and a half hours to Boston. I remain repentant for this deviation of responsibility even 26 years later and forever indebted to the person that saved my budding ski career. I enlisted my future roommates to make sure I was awake by encouraging them to throw things at me. I set multiple alarms and set them earlier than anyone else’s using my friend’s alarms as backups. I was mortified of making the mistake of missing a ride to a World Cup race or crucial airplane connection for most of my career. And on the days I got to sleep in? I slept until lunchtime……while my teammates threw stuff at me.

This all changed when my daughters were conceived. Pregnancy was unkind. I was either too sick to sleep or too hypoxic. I couldn’t breathe when I was pregnant due to the shortage of real estate in my abdomen and frequently woke up gasping for air. Once the girls were born, I woke easily with every squeak. Of course, skunks mating under our porch didn’t wake me, but when one of the girls made even just a little sound, I was up with a start. The girls woke frequently throughout the night, needing to be breastfed or changed or both every two hours. Once they were toddlers, they were little nightwalkers, trying to come sleep in our bed with us, with me eventually having to walk them back to their own beds. Later, they had nightmares and would cry out in their sleep and when these resolved, it was time for potty training and the complimentary nighttime bed-wetting. I swear, I didn’t sleep for seven years, until last year, whereupon I finally returned to sleeping like the dead.

When you have a hip replacement, it is vitally important that you do not allow your affected hip to rotate inward. This is why they want you to sleep with the “abductor pillow’ between your legs at night, in case you roll to the unaffected side. Rolling to the surgical side is possible from a range of motion standpoint but with a gigantic, painful incision along the affected side, this side isn’t really an option for sleeping on either, which leaves only one viable sleeping position: flat on your back. I don’t sleep well on my back. I sleep, and I sleep deeply, until it’s time to move to another position, which is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours. If I am unable to change position effortlessly, I wake and then, I don’t sleep anymore. Instead, I become painfully aware of my restless muscles.

Two weeks post-op means I haven’t done anything in the realm of exercise. My muscles are antsy, stiff, and sore and want to move. It is midnight and walking with crutches in the dark is not necessarily the best plan. I try to do my range of motion exercises but they are quite painful and make me no more tired than the 438 sheep that just jumped over the bed. As I lay awake, I think of all the things that need to be done that aren’t getting done with me laying around waiting for my tissues to heal. The girls have book reports, science fair projects, soccer, and homework. I have a mountain of projects like organizing photos, contacts, managing one daughter’s soccer team and photographing the other. I have big plans for PT and workouts of non-hip-related parts. I need a shower.

My mind won’t turn off and sleep is not coming easily. Non-essential thoughts are taking over like where did I put my pocket knife last week and I wonder if we have any zip ties. Which day are the library books due, Monday or Tuesday? Oh crap! Wednesday is Zoe’s share day, which means two food groups for 37 kids. I’m trying to remember what we have in inventory. Graham Crackers and apples will have to do. She’ll want something obscure like black olives. Please let this not be the usual battle with six year-old drama. Can Marek cover all these bases? And work? He’s already making me look bad by being better at mothering than I am…….

In an instant, it’s 2am. Daylight is an eternity away. I readjust my pillows and blankets and pray to drift off into peaceful slumber. I consider Benadryl and decide that if I haven’t gotten to sleep by 3am, I’ll do it. Drugs are such a slippery slope when it comes to sleep. They are more of a crutch than a strategy and lead to rituals of sleep that are impossible (or dangerous) to sustain over time. I worry that this whole ordeal is going to turn me into one of those pill-popping, desperate housewives with the jeans and the hooker heels and the diamond, bedazzled, rodeo belt. Soon I’ll be indulging in pedicures and lipsticks in multiple shades of red and wearing those stupid slippers with the feathers while petting my little Yorkshire terrier or Shih tsu puppy with the little bows around their ears. I try to conjure my inner badass to get my mind off of my tiara fate. I am so tired. My body is exhausted and my legs ache. All I need is sleep but my mind keeps racing away with desperate housewife thoughts and this week’s to-do list. 2:44am. It’s still black as black outside. I reposition again, trying not to wake my husband all the while cursing him for not helping me get to sleep. I am on my own, praying for the Sandman’s visit. I try to remember what life was like with my husband without the kids. The kayak safaris, the travels, the love affair……..

I awake at 6:50am with first light coming in through my bedroom windows. As it turns out, my husband helped me get to sleep after all. Only 4 more weeks of sleeping on my back. Less, if I can tolerate sleeping on my healing incision, or if I’m careful, on my left side with two pillows between my legs for safety. For now, I am glad that I did not resort to the Benadry, but I don’t see an end to the pain meds anytime soon. My incision still feels sharp and raw and my right leg muscles feel like they have been run over by a tractor. It’s getting better, day by day. I feel like each week, I take 4 steps forward and 3 steps back. I’m still going forward, but the idea of slipping backwards even slightly, taunts me. If I can fall asleep on my back for awhile, it serves me well. The restless legs, the aching and the sore, right side are somewhat diminished enough that I feel I can walk around our porch an extra time or push my PT regimen. However, I feel a sense of dread as the day ends, wondering how long I will be awake with my thoughts before drifting off. Necessity is the mother of invention. I figure out a way to turn on to my stomach. Perhaps one position change is enough to get me back to sleep sooner. I remain hopeful that I will one day sleep deeply, unstirred and undistracted, with the possibility of sleeping through an alarm or two and possibly breakfast…….