Losing sleep

I have come to the realization that life up to this point has attempted to prepare me for having children, especially when it comes to the sleep you will lose over them.

In the teen/early 20 years of high school and college there is the partying studying that keeps us up late into the night.  Graduation!  And then it's reality.  Finding a job (and in this day and age worry about keeping a job), finding "the one"...and then keeping up with "the one".  Planning weddings.  Buying a home.  Adjusting to pressures, worrying about the little and big things....all will cause countless nights of sleep.

And then comes baby.  And for the better part of about 40 weeks you can plan to lose sleep as the growing, sweet little peanut(s) make themselves known to every internal part of your body and make it difficult to find a comfortable position to sleep.  And when you can....there are repeated wake-up calls for the bathroom.  Ta-da, magic day arrives and you hold your little miracle....and the sleepless night of feedings or maybe colic have you up.  And the "helpers" go home and the daddies go back to work and you are there in a mind-numbing, sleepless fog.  For what seems like ever.  (Actually, on a side note all 3 of my girls were wonderful infants, and all slept through the night by 8 weeks).  But then comes the teething.  Or double ear infections and stuffy noses and wet coughs that have you up.  And very soon there will come the friends and the sleepovers and then the boyfriend/girlfriend dramas.  The worry about them dating....and driving.....and arriving home safely.  And then going off to college or their own apartments where you have no clue what they are doing.....and I am wondering if those years I will ever get any sleep. 

Somewhere in the first part of our lives our bodies and minds are conditioned to lay awake and night and ponder the "what ifs" and the "unknowns".  Some of us toss and turn, others make mental lists of pros and cons and some of us just pray.  Wonder.  Worry.   To me, nothing is more of an unknown or a what-if than our kids.  We have to give them just enough leverage and freedom to figure out this thing called life, so that decades from now when they are parents themselves they have been conditioned to lose a little sleep.  When they are babies we have to let them "cry it out" on occasion in order to know how to self-soothe.  When they are teenagers is about asserting rules given in love for their safety and well-being while letting them develop a sense of self.  As they enter into adulthood it's about letting go and trusting that everything you have done will prepare them for the rest of their lives.  

But that doesn't mean you don't worry.  And toss and turn.  And pray.  And you hope that if your phone rings in the middle of the night for a reason they can't sleep it's something you can help with or at least listen to and remind them that for as long as they need you, you will be there.  Losing sleep.  All because you love them.