“You can sleep when you’re in heaven.”

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was very little, my mother was trying to take a nap and I wanted her to play with me. She tried to explain to me that she was very tired and needed some rest and I stood in the doorway of her bedroom and responded, “You can sleep when you’re in heaven.” She paused for a moment… and got up and played with me.

For a long time, I felt really embarrassed about this little family story. When I was home on breaks from college and just wanted to be a total slug and sleep all the time my parents would frequently quote this back to me. In my mind, I was a hypocrite and I’d been obnoxious to say that. It was like saying, “You can sleep when you’re dead.” How depressing and what a guilt trip for my poor mom! I was exhausted all the time just from school and my life, how much more must a mother with a young child need sleep? 

Now that I’m a mother, I was expecting to feel a kinship with my mom on this. I was expecting to be so desperate for sleep that I’d be trying to sneak naps whenever possible. I’m surprised to find that’s not the case.

I am getting very little sleep, that part is true. But I’ve discovered that… I don’t really care. When I first get up and realize those 3 hours are all the sleep I will get until the next night (little one only cat naps during the day) and it’s the fourth day in a row like that, at first I feel desperate and crazed. My inner monologue is like, I HAVE to get some caffeine or find time to nap or I will literally not make it through the day. But, after an hour or so, I just shrug and go on with the day without that nap or caffeine and somehow I start to feel fine.

I’m sure part of this is some kind of New Mom superpower (because there are so many annoying post-natal side effects, the universe owes our bodies SOME kind advantage to make up for it) but I also think it means I’ve come full circle. When I want the little one to sleep and she’s all, “No, mom, let’s party!” I just smile and we party.

Because, really, isn’t life ludicrously short anyway? Sleep is great and all but is it worth missing a moment of the good stuff, especially when things are changing every day, never to be that way again, the way it is with a baby? I’ve decided that sleep, while nice, can always be done later.

And, on those moments when over-tiredness gets the best of me before my superpowers kick in and I feel brain damaged from lack of sleep, I think about my little self appearing in my own doorway and reminding me of what’s really important. As a young adult, there was always  this nagging feeling every time I slept the day away that I was letting my younger self down. With so many stories about what we lose from childhood when when we become adults, it makes me strangely happy to know that, though it took me a while, little me and I are still on the same page.