Sleepless in Toronto (Episode 19)

The sisters attempt to reframe sleepless nights — a problem which comes from a listener. They both agree it’s a hard one especially given that Nat hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in eight years. 

Bec asks if sleeplessness could be reframed for new mothers as doing hard things? Like the cold plunge from the spa — a good shock to the body’s system?

They discuss how the constraints imposed through sleepless nights could lead to generating…something! For Nat it led to the writing of a PhD! Why not write down the wild and awesome thoughts that come in the middle of the night?

Bec reads an excerpt from Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. They discuss finding some companions who are experiencing the same thing. They ponder the transformations that mothers go through; maybe “nightbitch” is one such iteration.

They discuss the need to stay open to wherever community comes, and painfully for Bec it might not be another soulmate mother. It might be your dad shopping for formula with you! You don’t always know where care will come from and who will surprise you!

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Transcript

Rebecca
The person I most like to be analytical and self-deprecating with is my sister. She can take it. She tells me to reframe. Everyone could benefit from a conversation with her. She’s who I go to when I need to dissect the hard topics that I wake up obsessing about. I’ll ask tons of questions and she’ll sister us through, via text or wine or coffee — all useful vices, since the Davey sisters are a strong cup of coffee. So come here if you can relate or need some sistering yourself. There’ll be lots of laughter and a whole lot of reframing as we work our way through some of life’s big and small stuff together.

Rebecca
Hey, Nat.

Natalie
Hey, Bec.

Rebecca
We were just getting very specific there. Measuring mic distance with pens.

Natalie
I know, I liked it. I’m into specificity, you know that.

Rebecca
Although maybe we need a measuring tape instead. That would be next level. Going beyond a pen.

Natalie
Yeah, let’s up the ante here. I like it. I’m editing at my new desk, in my new office, my corner office, which is just in fact my window in my bedroom for online teaching. But I actually really like it. I’m going to get distracted here, Bec, I can’t even help it. Like, my neighbour just walked past with his dog, and it’s like, what? -18 or something with the windchill, and he’s still wearing shorts. I’m going to somehow get back into the zone.

Rebecca
That’s crazy. Or that’s, what? That’s something else. Could we call that brave?

Natalie
Or we just call it specific. It is very specific to his style. So just like we’re being specific with our mics, who am I to critique?

Rebecca
You don’t love your neighbour, do you Nat?

Natalie
It’s fine Rebecca, it’s all fine.

Rebecca
It’s okay. We don’t know where you live.

Natalie
Yeah, that’s better that way.

Rebecca
So what do we want to do today?

Natalie
Well, I think we got a message. Not actually I think — I know. In fact, it’s sitting right here on my phone and I’m staring at it. We got a message from a friend of ours who has decided to write in and ask us to reframe something. So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna reframe sleepless nights.

Rebecca
I’ve been gearing up for this one because it seems really hard.

Natalie
Another title could be Sleepless in Toronto. You know, a movie? Sleepless in Seattle? Anyways.

Rebecca
That’s a good old reference. That’s dating us big time.

Natalie
I’m okay with that.

Rebecca
When was the last time we probably watched that movie? 20 years ago?

Natalie
Oh, more. Oh my goodness. Totally.

Rebecca
30 years ago?

Natalie
Yeah. Meg Ryan’s, you know, not young anymore. And that means neither are we. That’s okay!

Rebecca
I don’t believe it. I still don’t believe that I’m not really young. It’s that weird thing about you feel young inside. And it’s so true. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I’m like, “Oh my goodness. That face is so much older than how I feel.” Do you have those moments?

Natalie
Oh, yeah. I remember grandpa. He said that, that he would be like he’d walk past a mirror and just be shocked. Like utter surprise at who was sort of looking back at him because it’s just not how he felt in his body. Until he did, right. So I think these days, I’m having moments where I feel my age in various parts of my body. But yeah, in general, I feel pretty youthful. Like you taped something I think for our Sister On Instagram the other day, and I was just teasing you about something to do with our kitchen. I think I called you the B word. Anyway, it was cute. It’s in our Instagram stories. But what I actually was struck by was my lines on my face. Which are beautiful, right? It means I’ve lived, and I can do all that reframing work on the spot. But it took me a second. I had to take a moment before I could reframe, because I was just struck by “Ok, I am definitely 43. And that’s good, but it’s 43, it’s not 25 anymore.”

Rebecca
Although it’s definitely not what I saw in the picture, which is interesting. Who was that model I introduced you to, I can’t even remember her name now. Paulina…?

Natalie
Oh, yeah, it’s a longer last name. They just did a whole big Time article on her. It was trending on…

Rebecca
Paulina Porizkova.

Natalie
Yes. And she’s in her 50s.

Rebecca
Lina Porizkova, and she’s very wrinkle line/aging positive. Which is really nice.

Natalie
Yes, that’s right. Interesting, right. So you had just shown me her, and you’re right, and I’m celebrating that as I look at her. But then my immediate response to my own face and its changes, it took me a second. Which is, I think, just very human. It’s ok, to sort of recognize that aging is a bit of a surprise.

Rebecca
Yeah. Let’s just take a moment of silence for aging.

Natalie
But anyways, the woman who we’re reframing is not aging. She is in fact a young mother. So we are looking back to something. So as I reframe her piece…

Rebecca
Are we helping people remain anonymous, so we should give her a different name? Or do we just use her name.

Natalie
Well, it’s our friend Laura. So if anybody doesn’t need to know Laura’s last name, but Laura has specifically asked us to reframe this problem.

Rebecca
Ok, hit us up.

Natalie
Ok. So Laura’s message to us was: “Here’s a thing that I’d love reframed. How does one reframe consistent sleeplessness as a new parent, with seemingly no end in sight for a full night’s rest ahead? I attempt to tell myself at all waking hours of the night that this won’t last forever. It’s a season. I want to respond to my baby, but I’m effing tired and really struggle to stick to that type of thinking in the depths of exhaustion. Thoughts to get through it with some hope?” Which I thought was a really great message to send, and obviously it goes back in my mind to our hashtag hope from last episode, Bec. So the hashtag lives on. I really relate to this topic obviously, because I have not actually slept a full night’s sleep since Frankie was born. And that was seven years ago.

Rebecca
Really? A full night’s sleep.

Natalie
No, absolutely not.

Rebecca
Is no longer for you.

Natalie
It is no longer a part of my story.

Rebecca
Because he’s not a good sleeper?

Natalie
So I reframed it, I think a long time ago.

Rebecca
Don’t even reframe it. Just tell me the facts.

Natalie
He’s a good storyteller is what he is. So sleep is not high on his priority list. And he’s telling so many stories in his mind that he wakes up telling them like it actually happened sometimes. He literally will wake up, and the story was like, “He went to sleep mid-sentence, and he wakes up and he’s still going.” So I just think…

Rebecca
Which is charming, really? That’s lovely. Except maybe not in the middle of the night. I don’t know, is it?

Natalie
I think it’s actually pretty great. Because I mean, there are moments when he’ll call out for Violet, like they were mid-story and he’s still just trying to tell her whatever it is that he was telling her, but it’s in his mind at night in the middle of the night. So they’re discussing whatever Lego adventure is happening in his head. I am often dozing next to him, because I still sort of fall asleep next to him as he falls asleep. The other night he said to me, “Mommy, I think it’s time. I think it’s time that I try this on my own.” And I was like, “Ok, you know you don’t need to, but ok.” So I walked away, and then about ten minutes later, he called back and he said, “I’m not ready.”

Rebecca
But the trying on his own was: I’m going to try to fall back asleep on my own?

Natalie
Just fall asleep, yeah. So yeah, he is a sporadic sleeper. That’s the language that I would use to describe. I think that as school has gotten more intense over time, then that has helped to kind of wear him out. But his mind is just really active, so he’s just got a lot of storying happening up there. And sleep is not totally high on his priority list. So I really do empathize with Laura, and I really liked that she used that language of this being a season. I mean, my season with Frankie has turned into like, all season tires, it just keeps going. Just keeps rolling. I don’t know, in the end, we got him a bigger bed. When he was little, I was like, “How do I climb into this crib with this kid, so at least I can find some way to nap.” It was that or like, bring him into the couch and kind of like sleep on my side. So eventually we just decided to get him a bigger bed and that changed a lot of things because then I could just at least doze.

Rebecca
And it’s usually you that goes?

Natalie
Falling asleep it’s me. In the middle of the night, whoever he calls for tends to go. So if he calls for Clifford I give a, “Woohoo! It’s Clifford’s turn.” But you know what, these days, Clifford gets up with the cat. So the cat has become our new toddler. None of us sleep in this house very much. I’m amazed at how pleasant we all are with each other, to be honest, all the time.

Rebecca
Like, given the…

Natalie
The lack of consistent hours of sleep together. Any of those articles out there that talk about, you know, your goal should be to get eight straight hours? I guffaw in the face of those headlines. I don’t actually really know what they mean. So, I don’t know. I think it was hard at one point. But something did shift in me, where I just sort of recognized that maybe the eight hour piece wasn’t quite so necessary.

Rebecca
Ok, so Laura, we are now telling you: just accept that it’s bad from here on in. According to Natalie.

Natalie
No, but has that been your reality Bec?

Rebecca
Well, I would say it’s more through the night than yours. So Laura, I can offer you something different, but it’s just different. But don’t you think there’s also that thing of possibly… because you have just one child. And we’ve talked about this a bunch, even on this podcast. You may be more willing to do certain things if you had several kids. You might be like, “You just need to learn to sleep.” You might have a different attitude towards it. So there could be that, too. If you were just like, “I’m sorry, I can’t.” But he would learn that and there wouldn’t be a right or wrong about it, it would just be different. So that is something, right? But also, I find it interesting, because do you think — is sleeplessness just, you know, this idea of doing hard things, getting uncomfortable? Are you really attuned? Or new mothers in general are really attuned to this, doing lots of hard things. Is that a good reframing? Like, “Look how I do hard things,” like Glennon Doyle’s whole podcast, right? I do hard things.

Natalie
Yeah, that’s true. I think the idea of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is a reasonable way to reframe — certainly a season, right, however long that season lasts. I think that when we are uncomfortable, we learn new ways through struggle. So yeah, I can get behind that completely.

Rebecca
Yeah. I mean, my experience, I do remember at a certain point. I don’t know, Laura, what your situation is, and how you did it, Nat. But I would always get Simon to get me the baby. And then Simon would bring me the baby, and then I would breastfeed, and I do remember, you know, moments when it would just feel like torture. Just being half-asleep, and having this thing sort of prodding at you. So that wasn’t your experience of it? So you go through different seasons of being willing to be tortured, too. Laura has no choice in the matter.

Natalie
Not at this point, no.

Rebecca
Yeah. You perhaps have more choice, or you have a really high pain tolerance.

Natalie
But I wasn’t happy at every single moment. I’m just saying that, I don’t know, didn’t you say one time it’s kind of like the idea of torture as being getting into the freezing cold tub, but it’s like at the spa, right? I mean, at Ste. Anne’s Spa.

Rebecca
Yeah, it’s true. You have to go to spas to create that torture, and we can just have it in our own beds!

Natalie
Well, and if you think about it, that kind of torture is technically supposed to be good for you. The plunge, the cold plunge, is supposed to wake up a whole bunch of parts of your body that you wouldn’t experience if you just hung out in the warm pool. So it’s like a good shock to the body system. So for Laura, it could potentially be that there is some sort of shock, like a shock and awe kind of time at this point. If I’m completely honest, I would say I wrote my whole dissertation in the middle of the night, because I was awake anyways. Frankie would go to sleep for a few hours and then I’d be up. So now I’m awake, and so I’d write. You’ve teased me in the past about how fast I got that done. But when you’re grabbing every single hour you can get, I think I got a lot accomplished in those hours because they were hours that I claimed since they were, in many ways, torturously imposed upon me. So I might as well take my power back by using them.

Rebecca
And you do hear about many mothers who are very productive actually, in these sleepless years, because they are grabbing every hour. When you have these huge limits imposed on you, because there’s that other thing of as your days get more open, as the kids grow up, you have to create your own limit. So whether or not that’s hard or easy for you, right now when the baby is so little, there’s so many limits. But if you can do something within those —

Natalie
Really constrained times. Yeah.

Rebecca
I’ve tried to self-impose my own kind of torture with getting up early to write. I’ve done the 5am writers club. I see that on Instagram, have you seen that Nat?

Natalie
No, that sounds interesting to me.

Rebecca
I know. And I maybe want to try it again. But I’ve definitely gone through phases where I will try that, and then I get soft, like soft for torture. I can’t get up.

Natalie
You don’t want the cold plunge, the 5am cold plunge.

Rebecca
I don’t want the cold plunge. So it’s interesting, because I’m at a stage where I get to choose that. So Laura, I know you’re not choosing right now. Right now, I think my tolerance is low, and maybe it’s the pandemic moment of super fatigue. Violet called out the other night, and she was like, “I’m having a bad dream.” And I just kind of lay there and I couldn’t make my body go. I was like, “Oh, you are?” And I just kind of waited to see what would happen because in that, she was basically saying, “Someone please come.” Eventually I think I got her to come to me. Do you do that with Frankie? Are you just like, “Come to me instead? Or you will —“

Natalie
No, he comes now. He’ll just run in? So there’s no getting up to go to him these days, definitely. He’ll just sort of run into the bed, and sort of jump in between the two of us, and find some moment to say hi to the cat, and then plop down. Then one of us will eventually bring him back to bed. I will say that at seven years in, I’m no longer going to his bedroom. I take that as a win.

Rebecca
Because if you were walking happily to his bed, I would say I don’t know that we can keep doing this podcast together because I don’t understand. I can’t relate. I’m the angry mom that won’t go!

Natalie
No no no, I’m not going anytime soon.

Rebecca
You know what? You know how I’ve joked about wanting another baby? The sleep is a really good one for me, because when I lie in bed —

Natalie
To mitigate that joke, you mean?

Rebecca
To just be like, I literally don’t want to, and refuse to get out of my bed. That is no longer fair to a child, if your mother is just completely unwilling at this point. That should be a sign that it’s —

Natalie
You’re past that time for yourself, at this point.

Rebecca
I might be past that, yeah.

Natalie
I mean, unless you were just going to do the whole co-sleep thing forever, which is another way. Lots of people do that, as a way of functioning, right? To not have to get up.

Rebecca
That’s the thing though, I still feel angry. I remember the angry moments.

Natalie
Don’t dive back into that pool, Bec.

Rebecca
Yeah, maybe not.

Natalie
That’s the wrong plunge pool.

Rebecca
I wanted to read you this little excerpt from this book. Laura, actually, I really recommend this book. It’s called Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder. And she has some really funny stuff about being woken up in the middle of the night with her baby. So I’m just going to read you a little excerpt, and also say that maybe one of the best things I think Laura could do for herself is to find some companions who are along the way, who are experiencing this. So maybe books, whatever, support groups — are there mothering sleepless night support groups? That specific thing. Not just a general mother’s group, but specifically tortured sleepless nights. I mean, that should be every mother, but not every mother maybe would be experiencing it that way, right?

Natalie
Oh, but these groups must exist on Facebook. I mean, everything exists on there, they’ve got groups for everything. Or Reddit, I mean, there’s subreddits for everything. So, it’s all on there, it’s out there.

Rebecca
Ok, so this is it. “She lay there as long as she could without making a sound, a movement. Her child’s screams fanned a flame of rage that flickered in her chest. The boy cried and cried, and her husband did nothing and nothing. The fire roared large, larger, blistering hot, until it threatened to consume her entirely, and it was then she rose with a great howl, flung the sheets from her, reached for the bedside light, in her haste knocked the lamp to the floor and heard it shatter, moaned with rage and staggered around the bed, found the other bedside lamp, then turned the switch to find her husband sitting in bed, holding the cowering boy, binky now in mouth.

“Her hair was long and unkempt and, suspended within it, small bits of leaves, a dust of cracker or bread, unidentified white fluff. She breathed heavily from her mouth. Smears of blood painted her path around the bed, tiny shards of lamp base now embedded in the tender skin of her feet, though this the mother did not notice, or perhaps she did not care. Her eyes narrowed, and she sniffed the air. She skulked back to her side of the bed, wrapped herself in the blankets and, without helping, without offering a hand, without care, promptly plummeted into a hard and drowning sleep.

“In the morning, she stood, disheveled, in the dirty kitchen, drinking coffee, a load of bloodied sheets churning in the washer, her feet washed and bandaged. The boy played with his train set in the living room, cooing and babbling and laughing. Her husband, such a chipper man, buttered a piece of blackened toast.

“‘You were kind of…’ He paused, thinking, then continued: ‘…a bitch last night.’

“He chuckled to show it wasn’t meant meanly, just as observation.

“‘Night bitch,’ she said, without pause. ‘I am Nightbitch.’”

That’s the end of my excerpt, by Rachel Yoder. “I am nightbitch.” I just find that funny. In the book, she thinks she’s becoming a dog. So that’s kind of —

Natalie
Play of that on that word, too.

Rebecca
Yeah, and the throughline in the book, what is this mothering doing to her? I feel like I would have found that so comforting during those years to just admit, maybe I am nightbitch. Who knows what exactly your transformation will be as a mother. And maybe there’s a period of time where you are nightbitch. And I don’t know, that’s okay.

Natalie
I think it’s okay. There’s one friend that you and I both share, where she told me one time that basically, she and her husband agreed that they would not rehash the things that they said in the middle of the night. Basically, it’s sort of their delirium of dealing with their girls. And I thought that was a really wise thing for that family. I mean, the reality is, it’s the four of them. And that’s what they were navigating. And the nighttime thoughts are real. I remember when I first met Clifford, he was working as a security guard on the night shift. And he used to talk about how nighttime thoughts, even though you’ve trained your body to be awake at that time of night — because that’s your job, right, if you’re working that shift, then that’s your job — but that there is still something kind of physiologically different about what’s happening in your brain. That’s been his experience anyways. In terms of what’s happening in the world around you, just simply because it’s darkness. Perhaps in parts of the world, where the sun — where is it, oh my gosh, it would be in the northern or southern hemispheres, right? Where you might end up with dark for a while, for a period of time.

Rebecca
Oh, like in the Yukon, yeah. It’s dark for most of the hours, and you just get a few hours of light.

Natalie
Yeah. And then the flip. And how it can do things to the mind in terms of the way that you live through what would be considered your day or your night. So I think that the idea that, to recognize and honor that those thoughts are real means that you’re not having to, like somehow feel bad about them. It’s just your body talking to you.

Rebecca
Waking up and saying, “Let’s just acknowledge that, in the middle of the night, I’m not perfectly rational.”

Natalie
But I also think that you said something in relation to that Nightbitch piece — when you were telling me about the book, you had said it would have been cool if you had just kept a notepad there so that you could have jotted down some of your really wild, awesome thoughts in those moments. Because they would have been really interesting fodder for creativity later.

Rebecca
Oh, yeah. And I would say, Laura, grab a notebook. You are an artist. So keep that beside your bed and use it.

Natalie
Well, that’s it. That’s why I was saying about me doing the doctoral work at that time. I think I got out some stuff that I might not have thought about if I was sitting in this very sort of definitive, like — “Now I sit down to my desk, and I sit with my tea.” There’s just a different type of almost ‘good frantic’ churning out of ideas that happened in the night time because of not just the imposed sort of time constraints, but also perhaps just literally because it was night.

Rebecca
Like a rawness to your ideas.

Natalie
So there’s something in that.

Rebecca
I want to just go back for a second to the support groups thing, because I was thinking what I have found really challenging in mothering is that you can’t assume — I mean, this is obvious — but just because we’re all mothers that we’re all on the same page. And we’re really not. We all have our different ways. I mean, even you and me, right? Your tolerance for sleeping, for going to Frankie is higher than my tolerance now, apparently. But I just think that I found that disconcerting through those years, those younger years, that I couldn’t find a soulmate mother, that would think exactly like me. I mean, that might have been just some crazy expectation. I think.

Natalie
As you say that out loud, does that sound potentially like a crazy expectation?

Rebecca
Yes, it sounds like a high expectation. I don’t understand why I couldn’t find the soulmate mother! But I guess what I mean is, and maybe this is not even possible, but trying to find — it’s just hard, right? The sleeping thing, for example, there’s so much judgment — mothering judgment — that she might encounter, right? “Oh, you’re co-sleeping? Oh, you’re not letting them cry it out?” Whatever. So I think that can be really challenging. What do you say to that? Because as you try to cope, and you’re not necessarily hearing back what you need. Is it: do you keep searching for the soulmate, the mother who thinks exactly like you? Feel sad when you can’t find them? Or what do you say, Nat?

Natalie
You know, Bec…

Rebecca
Is this one of those un-reframeable ones?

Natalie
No. I mean, for me, I don’t think I tried to find solace in others, if I’m completely honest. I liked your initial suggestion of finding solace or community in some of the books that you read, or some of the art pieces that you find. You’re my person in terms of who I’m going to talk to about all these things. And yet, we’re very different in terms of the way that we encountered something like sleep — and you had done it so many years ahead of me, with your first — with Elsie — that, by the time I even got to having Frankie, you were like, “Oh yeah, I remember having that feeling,” like it was it was a retrospective feeling, not an in-the-moment feeling.

And I went back to work so quickly, that it was Clifford that made his community with a lot of the moms — it was predominantly moms — in the neighbourhood. So he was sort of getting a different kind of community vibe, versus me, because I just didn’t have people that I was going to go meet. I was literally like, going teaching and then running home and feeding a baby. So for me, I just did a lot of it in my head, for good or for bad. But I do believe that searching for community can bring with it some of its own challenges — in that it can be a bit of a self-flagellatory process if you’re not finding the right people along the way. So I would just say that there is some safety in finding a sense of support in text and art. I really do believe that. Because they can’t hurt you.

Rebecca
So definitely Nightbitch can be a support, but I think then maybe the key is finding some people — super non-judgmental people. So whoever those mothers are, or parents, or fathers, or wherever you can feel can talk it out. Or you just read books like Natalie.

Natalie
No, but you know what? You just said something, the idea of parents or fathers or whatever. It was dad! I remember that when I was having a real moment where breastfeeding with Frankie was just too intense. I just felt like my body was falling apart. It was daddy who went with me to Sweet Potato. I didn’t even talk about it. It wasn’t like I shared all these details, but it was just that dad was like, “We’re going to get some formula. That’s it. This is happening.” And he bought me my first big container of formula. And that was supposed to be the end of the discussion. And it was just so nice, because it wasn’t some big deep, “We gotta talk it all through in all of the gory details.” It was just dad taking care of his kid, who was taking care of his grandkid. There was just something really lovely about who can surprise you in community. I think that’s it. I wasn’t looking for it. It just happened. And it was this gift. We’ve talked a lot about that on this podcast, the idea of what is gift, and so much of it is who gives it, and are you able to receive?

Rebecca
That’s a nice way to think about it. You might not know, you might not be able to predict who it will come from — the right bit of community. But if you can stay open to it might come from someone you wouldn’t expect it from.

Natalie
Exactly.

Rebecca
Yeah, that’s beautiful. I also think — this is just an important point for me — is that I really feel strongly that both parents, if you have a two parent situation, I feel like both parents should be equally tired. I don’t think the whole thing of “Oh, the husband or the other partner who has to go to work the next day. So I should do the whole night time process, because they have to work.” I just think that is really detrimental to the mothers who have that mindset. That comes up in Nighbitch a lot. She’s like, “I also have to function.” I even subscribed to that for a while, and I would think that “Oh, Simon has to go to work.” But I had to work — with this baby. So then I think we moved to him bringing me the baby. I don’t know. Did you have any thoughts on that?

Natalie
Well, I mean, I agree with you. I lived out very much an equitable distribution of who was sleeping when just because we lived in small spaces. There was no space in any of our condos and whatever, where that could really be only one person’s awake with the baby and the other one’s sleeping comfortably on the other side of the home. If one of us was awake, all of us was awake.

Rebecca
So it just worked out?

Natalie
It was situationally very fair. There was that. You know what — I feel involved in the fairness was also the reward system. I remember the time when you came over and just rewarded me with a nap. Clifford was working that night. And you’re just like, “I’m gonna take Frankie for a walk.” He was, I don’t know, maybe two or three months old. And you strapped him on and went for a walk, and then I fell asleep on the couch. I don’t think I even recognized how tired I was, because I literally fell asleep until you came back with him. And you could have been gone for 45 minutes, that’s probably all it really was. But it was such a random moment of gift, in terms of sleep. So the sleep can be offered at any time. So in terms of the equitable distribution, it doesn’t even have to be always at night — it can just be like, the one partner who happens to be more awake at that point can give the other the chance to sleep, and probably it’s going to be the one partner offering the one who gave birth little bit of a nap — a nap gift. I think there’s something in that too, right? Claiming sleep once they’ve come. That’s in every single parenting book out there — don’t feel like your only time to sleep is at night. Take your naps in any moment when it’s available to you.

But you know what, there are so many people — kid or no kid — with sleep issues. So much of mainstream cultural writing ends up dealing with how many hours of sleep you’re getting, and what you should navigate around —what it means to deal with insomnia, and the stresses that come with not being able to sleep. So this is definitely not even something that Laura would have to feel alone with. Her friends who don’t have any kids are still feeling these things, and that’s why I say, the idea of finding care and love from an unexpected person could show up. It doesn’t have to be a moment of recognition just simply because there was a baby. People can recognize the need for sleep in each other, maybe? I think that if we’re all being sensitive to each other — certainly, I would hope that with our friends and family. Does that make sense? I really feel a lot of teachers these days are dealing with sleeplessness, and these are teachers with teenagers. So this is not necessarily the baby piece. This is the stresses of the world, so we all need to be practicing trying to write down those nighttime thoughts — exiting them from our bodies at times.

Rebecca
Just be open to being awake!

Natalie
For reals, you know what, that is the best reframe. What does being awake offer you? Something new!

Rebecca
Actually, it’s kind of funny too, isn’t it? Because it aren’t we pre-menopausal now? In our early 40s? Isn’t that when sleep…

Natalie
Isn’t it called peri? Peri-menopausal?

Rebecca
But I think sleep changes. I think I don’t sleep quite as well as I used to, which is interesting. Maybe there’s just a very, very small window when you sleep great. There’s a few years when your kids are a little bit older — you are excluded from this because you haven’t slept — but I think I had a small window when I slept really well, and then thereafter —

Natalie
That’s so nice for you.

Rebecca
I can see that you are pleased for me.

Natalie
I’m authentically happy for you.

Rebecca
But would Clifford say the same thing? Would he say yes, sleep has been a challenge for him as well — since Frankie? He would acknowledge the same thing?

Natalie
Oh, yeah. But I think it’s been newly difficult with the cat, I’m not even kidding. I think that our cat has brought a second child into our life, and we didn’t anticipate that. We didn’t know. If I’m completely honest, I was way more able to get up with Frankie than I am with Marsh. Clifford’s so stoic about it.

Rebecca
About getting up?

Natalie
Yeah. He’s just like, “Come on, flower,” and he and the cat walk down the stairs together. And I just roll back over.

Rebecca
All that is true. All the listeners — we all have to practice our non-judgmentalism, because someone’s probably going like, “A cat? You would do that for a cat?” And all of our feelings about sleep — just, “Lock the cat outside,” or whatever. Like all of our variances, variability.

I like the reward thing. I was gonna say Laura, maybe you could find a reward system. Every Friday, you do like — you got through another week, you do mimosa time? I would say, I haven’t been great at this in my life —these little celebrations. You Nat, you were saying like, as you consider a new phase for your life, you were like, “Yeah, with every goal I set or achieve I’m going to get myself a bottle of wine and build a wine cellar.” Did I get it right?

Natalie
Yep, totally. It started with a bottle of wine that Clifford got me for Christmas. And then I was like, “You know what, I’m turning this into a thing.” As you just said — every time I set a goal, I’m going to buy a bottle of wine. And then if I can make that goal realized, I might drink it.

Rebecca
Which is so great, marking moments like that. Even as a new mother, that would be amazing. Mark every week that you get through. I think that’s so amazing. I didn’t think of doing that. This torture that we were talking about at the beginning —I’ve probably spent a lot of my life just thinking — without maybe being fully conscious of it — “Just get through it,” but without being celebratory about it. I think now marking with some celebration, I think that’s something I want to take forward.

Natalie
Yeah. Especially because, I think again as new parents, there’s all those activities or books that you can do to mark firsts for the kid. That’s lovely. I never did any of them. I think I tried for like five minutes for one and then I was like, “Meh.” It’s not because I don’t think that those firsts are great, but there’s just so many things to celebrate and be in the moment of — as opposed to it all being memory. And that’s coming from me, the memory scholar. I mean, if I’m saying that that’s gonna mean something! But at the same time, I think that there would have been something good in marking each moment that I was winning. Because it’s like, I did put in all this time and sacrifice in terms of my body and whatever. And those types of wins — the small wins that we could be celebrating — and again, we could apply that to not just the new moms and dads and parents or whatever, but anybody who’s just navigating through a challenge. What does it really look like to celebrate the win of getting over even part of that challenge? I think that there’s some real value in that.

Rebecca
Mark the win for yourself. Yeah.

Natalie
Yeah. So anyways, Laura, I hope that some of these little suggestions are certainly ways of considering how to reframe sleeplessness. We’ve got lots of different options here.

Rebecca
And let us know if any of these is helpful.

Natalie
If it’s even just helpful to listen to two people trying to talk through it with you — then maybe that’s win enough, right?

Rebecca
Yeah. It’s a pretty challenging one, and there’s no obvious way to reframe it, but we appreciate the challenge.

Natalie
And you’re not alone.

Rebecca
Oh yes. With you. Let us know if you have Natalie’s patience, or Rebecca’s…?

Natalie
Also patience. You did two of them.

Rebecca
Patience with a degree of…

Natalie
What are we calling it?

Rebecca
Vitriol. Both are good.

Natalie
Embrace the nightbitch. Do it.

Rebecca
Embrace the nightbitch. Yeah. That’s our tagline.

Natalie
Exactly. Hashtag hope!

Rebecca
I was gonna say hashtag nightbitch!

Natalie
No, I’m sticking with hashtag hope.

Rebecca
One or the other! Yeah, hashtag hope. Ok, love you Nat.

Natalie
Love you.

Rebecca
Bye.

Natalie
Bye.