The Twilight Zone
Written By Pete Nelson
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Why do those sleepless nights with a newborn feel like torture? Because they are.
It's the middle of the night and I'm up with Reiley, a crying 5-week-old baby boy. Outside in the Maine woods I can hear coyotes howling — probably scaring away the sheep I wish I was counting. My eyelids feel like they each weigh 50 pounds. There are dirty dishes in the sink, the dog wants to be let out, and a pillow with a dent in it exactly the shape of my head is calling to me. But I have a child to attend to. I pick up Reiley and tiptoe toward the changing table, hoping I don't step on the cat. I'm so tired. I love my son and would do anything for him, but that's just it — my son's name is Jack. Reiley is someone else's baby."I'm going to give you guys the best present new parents can get," I had told Reiley's mom and dad, Pete and Tracey. "I'll be the night nurse and do all the doody duties for the whole weekend so you can catch up on your sleep."
Everyone warns you, but no one can prepare you for the reality of postnatal sleep deprivation, a tortured brain-dead zombielike miasma of unrelenting exhaustion. I know, I've been there. And it's all coming back to me. It's no accident, I figure, that sleep loss leads to memory loss — the human species depends on it. If parents remembered how bad it was the first time, they'd never have more than one kid. My word is my bond, but what was I thinking?
Sleep deprivation is often said to be like torture. Sleep deprivation is not like torture. It literally is torture, employed historically to inflict psychological pain and/or extract confessions. Babies probably don't mean to torture us (and couldn't be held accountable if they did since few, if any, are signatories to the Geneva Conventions).
The key word is "deprivation." Unlike insomnia, where you're too wired or stressed to fall or stay asleep, deprivation is a bit like the oft-repeated experiment in which rats are placed on an overturned flowerpot in the middle of a bucket of water. They can balance on the pot, even doze lightly, but as soon as they enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and go limp, they fall off the pot and into the water, thus losing sleep's restorative powers. Within days, formerly docile lab animals morph into hyperaggressive psychotic rat-maniacs that fight with each other and bite the kindly lab workers.
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