I Can’t Sleep.
Shane came into my bedroom at 4 a.m. – less than three hours before he was supposed to get up for school. I heard him, and reached out in the darkness.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, touching his arm, knowing instinctively that he wasn’t sick.
“I can’t sleep,” Shane said. “And it’s been two hours.”
“Do you want to try to sleep with me?” I asked, pulling a pillow over for him.
“I think it will help,” he said, climbing in.
I did my best to comfort him, even sharing one of my own stuffed animals, but Shane didn’t sleep for a long time. As a fellow insomniac, I lay awake next to him until he did sleep, maybe 40 minutes later.
In that 40 minutes, I thought mostly about Shane’s bassinet.
We lived in a two-bedroom rental when Shane was born, with no room for another crib. We were building our current house, which wasn’t quite finished. So we put a bassinet in the office for Shane.
But Shane was born in the dead of winter, and there was no air circulation – or heat – in that bassinet. When I picked him up, no matter how much I bundled him, Shane was freezing cold.
We moved the bassinet into our room, but it was still too cold. So after about a week of trial and error, Shane slept between us in our bed.
Three months later, the new house was finished and Shane got a crib and his own room. He slept in the crib until he started to climb out of it – when he was barely two. He would show up next to our bed in his tiny pajamas, too short to climb up by himself.
So we got him a toddler bed, which was shaped like a car and totally cool. The mattress, however, wasn’t all that comfortable. So sometimes Shane would climb out of the toddler bed and wander into our room.
There were a few years when seeing Shane next to my bed in the middle of the night was … expected. And knowing he would grow up made those moments … treasured.
But now, it’s not so expected. I still treasure having him there, but I remember that cold bassinet, and how easy it was to comfort him then.
And then I think about the nights in his future, where Shane can’t get back to sleep and he won’t know why. This happens to me all the time. I have suffered from insomnia for my entire life. I found that sports and exercise help a lot. Skipping sugar helps. I am teaching this all to Shane.
Meanwhile, he struggled so much last night, just to get some needed rest. He went to school today – on time, because he didn’t want to skip math class – after six hours of very interrupted sleep. I told him to call me if he’s too tired to focus in school. I told him I would come and get him and he could rest.
But Shane won’t call. He will keep going, and be contented for the most part, and we will talk tonight again about exercise and sports and movement.
And he will sleep well tonight, with no school tomorrow. But his insomnia will return. And someday, I won’t be there to comfort him. I won’t be there to pull him out of his cold bassinet, and cuddle him until he can sleep. He will have to comfort himself.
And while I know it’s for the best that he learn how to comfort himself, I will treasure my job as long as it lasts.