like mother, like son

It is going on midnight & here I sit, as I do most nights, usually blogging or facebooking or surfing the Huffpost or crocheting or reading or doing just about anything other than sleeping. It is stupid, I know. I am worn out from these many sleepless months & I desperately need the rest. On the few random occasions when I have accidentally fallen asleep at 8PM while nursing X down I feel magnificent the following day. I tell myself that I must make the same mistake again -and as soon as possible. But it hardly ever happens. I can be completely dragged out & wilting & sore & tired, and yet I will resist sleep until the last.

Part of my current malaise is owing to the fact that I have so little personal time. It seems the only hours available to me are these dark & lonely ones when my baby -along with the rest of the world - is sleeping. If I gave up these moments, what would be left to me? Never mind that these are not the most enjoyable hours -I have no energy left at the end of the day, which is why I so seldom engage in any meaningful activity. But it is time to myself, nonetheless, and so I treasure it.

But I have always been a little sleepless to some extent. Sleep has never come easy to me. Even when behave responsibly and go to bed "on time," I often pass several hours before sleep comes, just staring at the ceiling & letting my thoughts trip along from one topic to the next. A favorite late night mind game involves selecting a particular phase or period from my past & meditating upon it until I have returned a few lost faces or random moments to memory. I surprise myself sometimes by what I am able to recall. Usually I freak out a little when sleep fails me utterly. That is the worst --midnight panic attacks caused by a failure to relax are hardly restful, as one might imagine.

And so, I shouldn't fault X when he slips into his newest routine that I like to call "refusal to sleep." It is a pattern that is just beginning to show itself --a pattern I hope morphs & changes & disappears. But a part of me fears it is in his genes. Whenever he seems visibly tired & ready for sleep, I go through our usual motions -we lie down in bed, cover up, nurse, etc. He used to drop off to sleep fairly quickly (excepting when he's teething). Recently, he has begun to resist the very concept of sleep. When I try to nurse him, he turns his head away, arches his back & cries pitifully & it takes an awful lot of patience & a good deal of time to get him settled & asleep. Sometimes I just give up completely and send him back to the living room to play with his Papa for a while until he seems ready. But the same routine ensues when he returns to bed, sometimes even worse. Most often he tires himself out from crying in my arms & finally gives in, nurses through a few choked sobs & then drifts off to sleep. The great irony is that I have always been vehemently opposed to CIO (cry it out) but it seems X is determined to cry it out regardless!

I hope & pray this is yet another phases & that someday soon he won't recoil from sleep but will welcome it instead. But how can I hope that for him, when I refuse it for myself? Perhaps I should model the behavior I would like to see. Perhaps....