Day 3: Rest/Sleep is Essential
Have you ever experienced sleep deprivation? That feeling of numbness in body and mind (and spirit), where your brain struggles to do the simplest computations, and all you want to do is close your eyes and lie down...but you can't. Not yet.
Or that feeling of being so very, very tired and not able to fall asleep...watching the minutes, hours, whole night tick by as morning approaches, desperation filling your very being and making it even more difficult to fall asleep?
Welcome to a puppy in your house. This is your life now. At least, for a while. (Good thing they’re cute!)
The first few nights after we welcomed Suzanne home were like having a baby in the house again. We had that new-parent manic look in our eyes. We ran on coffee and cat-naps and lost track of day and night.
She was discombobulated when she arrived. She'd been in vehicles from 4 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., with four of her siblings (who were also stressed), strange people, and not much exercise or mental stimulation. She was wired. When we got to our house and put her in her kennel for the night, the protests began. It took a long time and a lot of patience for her to calm down enough to settle in and sleep.
But then she was up a couple hours later, needing to go outside to relieve herself. So we carried her down the flight of stairs in the dark (trying not to wake our daughter), leashed her, put on our shoes and sweaters, grabbed a flashlight and some poop bags, and headed into our backyard. And waited. Then we reversed the procedure and put her back in her kennel, to loud and earnest protests. Much shushing and soothing words ensued until finally she settled, her wails turning to yips turning to whimpers turning to squeaks and finally silence. This went on at least a couple times a night for the first few nights.
The first morning, she was ready to go at 4 a.m. (just like the day before!), so I stayed up with her in our kitchen and family room, trying to entertain her until she curled up on the couch and fell asleep again. I tried to do the same, (sleep when the baby sleeps, they tell new parents) but by then it was 5:30 and our early-rising, very-excited-to-meet-her-new-sister daughter bounded down the stairs, so my day began for realz.
Another night -- maybe Night 3 or 4 -- Suzanne went back to sleep after mid-night potty time without much fuss, but then I laid awake for close to four hours, unable to get back to sleep. The exhaustion caught up with me and my spinning mind wouldn't shut off.
Luckily for me, my work week was fairly quiet, with a few understanding client calls and lots of commitments cleared from my calendar. I sat down at my computer on Monday morning and couldn't remember how to log in. I stared at my screen, with the cursor blinking in the box, awaiting the keystrokes that would input my password and grant me access to my email and work files. But....nope. Nothing. No muscle memory. No word association. No visual clues formed in my brain.
Eventually, it came to me, somehow and I got in and got a little work done. But for several days, words lost their way from my brain to my mouth. I couldn't remember how to do simple things, or even what I was supposed to do. It was like walking through my life with my a ball of wool between my brain and the rest of my body. I'm so grateful I could ease into the week with limited commitments.
My spouse, however, had to hit Monday full-stride with all-day meetings and an overflowing to-do list and a pantload of responsibility. It was a struggle, for sure. Suzanne attended a few of his video calls and lowered productivity was immediately forgiven.
And of course, we were sometimes short and impatient with our daughter. I told her that we weren't upset with her; we were just very tired and not equipped to make good choices about our behaviour, and asked her to be patient and forgiving and extra helpful, which she was.
Happily, since then, the puppy's sleeping mostly through the night -- 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. most nights. Huzzah! We feel human again. Most days. With enough coffee.
Seriously, sleep and rest are so very important to our ability to function -- to work, to heal and recover, to choose, to think, to people, to parent, to live.
A lot of people don't get the sleep and rest they need on a regular basis, and it impacts every aspect of our lives. It can be a vicious cycle of working/doing/producing (especially if you're working from home and there's no distinction between work and home life), the added stress of the pandemic, then being unable to fall sleep or stay asleep because we're thinking about all the doing we need to be doing. Worse, we can feel like we can't take our foot off the gas; that we can't afford to step away from our responsibilities.
What's that saying? You can't pour from an empty pitcher or something...
We all need dedicated time for rest and non-responsibility. Granted there are seasons of our lives where rest and downtime are squeezed (new parenthood, big projects at work, a household move, a family crisis) AND we cannot sustain ourselves or our families or workplaces without recouping that much-needed rest.
Struggling for the first couple weeks with our new puppy made me realize how much I have prioritized sleep in the last few years (I'm a solid 8-hour-er -- 9 if I can swing it!) and how quickly and fully I am impacted when my sleep is interrupted or cut short.
The Rest of Our Lives
So, what lessons can be applied to the rest of our lives, whether or not we have a puppy in our homes? Here are some questions that may help you consider where, when, how and why you may want to look at the level and quality of sleep and rest in your life.
Our Households and Families
How is rest and sleep prioritized in your household?
Do you have healthy and supportive practices to enable quality rest and sleep?
What might you re-design with your family members to support more and better rest and sleep?
Our Businesses and Workplaces
How is rest integrated into your workday or team culture?
What is the attitude toward rest vs. productivity? Are they mutually exclusive concepts in your organization? What could be explored here?
Ourselves
In what ways are we feeling tired and well-rested?
How might we restructure our day, week or lives to ensure we get the down-time we need and want?
Where can we ease back on our doing and allow more space and time for being?
Can we take a cue from puppies who flop over and fall asleep whenever they feel tired?
What else?
Where else are you seeing a need for more rest and sleep? Share your thoughts with me by replying, or posting on my social channels. Let’s keep this conversation going.
The bottom line: We cannot function at our best without adequate rest and sleep.
Puppy Update:
I’m happy to report that Suzanne is a sound all-night sleeper now. She whines at us to head upstairs in the evening, then jumps on our bed for some snuggles before hopping down and collapsing on our bedroom floor. She inevitably moves downstairs to a sofa at some point, and is in no rush to head out for a morning pee, preferring snuggles or a game of chasies instead.
