It's midnight, and I'm in bed. The kids are sound asleep, as is my husband, who is snoozing contentedly next to me. Lights off, HEPA filter on, pillows arranged underneath my head and between my legs (old pregnancy habits die hard). I'm profoundly exhausted from a day of bathing the kids, cleaning the apartment, shuttling my son around to various activities, and grocery shopping for the week, not to mention trying to find an hour to work—and yet I'm not sleeping. I can't sleep.
Instead I'm thinking about buying shoes for my 3-year-old. His summer camp requires him to wear a uniform, and part of that is a pair of sneakers. He only has sandals and a pair of green boots. Somehow this tiny splatter of a thought unleashes a torrent of others—When am I going to buy those shoes? If I go tomorrow, I won't be able to get my work done. Can I get an extension? No, can't do that. I'll just give the babysitter some money, and she can go buy them. But what if I hate the pair she buys? I'm only in this predicament because I'm so disorganized. My life is a mess. I'm a mess. I have no business being a mother—until my mind is deluged with worry. I finally fall asleep two hours later, or so I think, because I force myself to stop checking the clock after 2 a.m.
Welcome to my night. It might just look a little something like yours. I had two babies in rapid succession. Neither slept through the night until 6 months, and then only periodically. My son is 3 1/2, and my daughter is 21 months; ergo my circadian rhythm has been out of whack since 2004.
This prolonged period of sleep deprivation has left me impatient and crabby. I find myself snapping at my son at the breakfast table when he won't eat the cereal he begged for three minutes earlier, or at my mother when she calls right as I'm leaving for a meeting. At the drugstore, I'm so exhausted that I give in and buy my son a toy car, rather than deal with the tantrum I know he'll throw if I don't. On the weekends, I can't even muster the energy to fight with my husband for the right to sleep in; it feels easier to wake up at six to dole out milk and cereal than to listen to my kids cry as my husband, God love him, stumbles around the kitchen.
Sleeping pills aren't an option. After 9/11, I took Ambien a few times and found myself a victim of one of its oddest side effects, sleep eating; I devoured cookies and entire cartons of ice cream in the middle of the night. Not going there again. But I can't keep living like this, that's for sure.
Which is why I decide to leave my children with my husband and babysitter for four days and fly to Miraval, a luxury spa an hour outside Tucson, Arizona. I go to partake in its Natural Sleep Lab, a cognitive therapy–based program helmed by Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and the resort's sleep specialist. (Yes, I know, a desert spa trip sans famille could cure my insomnia on its own. But I want to get skills to take home.)
Next Page: Dr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream
