Are you getting any sleep?

One of the first things anyone asks a new parent is, “Are you getting any sleep?”

At first, I thought this was a tongue-in-cheek code among parents, because, as most people know, a lot of babies don’t sleep through the night, or even any other time you want them to, generally speaking. Now that I’m entering my seventh month as a parent, I’m realizing that the question may mean more than I thought: sleep is difficult when you have a baby -- when you are a parent -- but not always for the reasons you might think.

My daughter, Eleanor, sleeps better than I do. Now, in some ways, that’s technically true for most parents (babies sleep for 15 hours a day, on average), but to be honest with you, I have a pretty easy baby, at least when it comes to sleeping through the night. She’s been sleeping through the night 95 percent of the time since she was about 5 weeks old.

(Note to parents who hate me right now: please keep reading.)

Now, we’ve had our sleep battles with our daughter -- she’s not the best napper in the world, and she has a hard time falling asleep (another blog post for another time), but I won’t pretend I can even begin to understand what it feels like for parents who spend hours getting their babies to sleep only so they can wake up again 2,3, or 4 hours later, several times through the night.

Despite being blessed with the best baby in the entire world, I don’t sleep very much. I seem to be pushing all my anxiety about being a parent into some pretty crushing insomnia. For the past three months, I’m lucky if I get 6 hours of sleep in a night. On the surface, Eleanor has nothing to do with this problem. She goes to sleep at 7:45 pm or so, gets up to eat around 6 am and goes back to bed until about 8 in the morning.

But me: I struggle with panic attacks that hit right about the time I try to fall asleep, or they hit when I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason. Some nights, I don’t sleep at all.

The first time that happened, in late September, it just so happened that our normally very good sleeper was waking up in the middle of the night and we couldn’t figure out why. This, obviously, interrupted my sleep schedule. It lasted for about a week and half, and then she started sleeping just fine.

But I didn’t. I probably average 4-6 hours a night with several night wakings. It’s beyond exhausting. At first, I felt crippled. The first night that I didn’t sleep (not for a minute), I laid there, waiting for my wife to wake up at 6 am. She got up to turn off the alarm, and I turned to her and said, I need to go to the doctor, and I need to find a mental health specialist, because I can’t do this every night.

The spiralling what if questions that race through my mind are too numerous to capture here, but most of them are about not being the best, most perfect stay-at-home dad that’s ever existed, about not being good at this new job and my daughter suffering because of my personal failings.

There are plenty of things I don’t like about myself, but being a parent puts a gigantic spotlight on all of them, and it feels like there’s nowhere to hide. I’m working on this struggle, and it’s getting better.

I see a therapist every couple of weeks and I take a mild, low-dose anti-anxiety medication to help me sleep (and it still doesn't always work). I'm trying to reach out to people, building up a community through our church and by just being honest and open with people.

One thing I’ve realized as a parent is that I have to remember that I'm not the only with who's having a hard time. I’ve had several other parents tell me that they take medication and see therapists, too. I didn’t know this until I started sharing my own struggles. When we become parents, we assume that other parents out there have it figured out. But figuring it out is relative, and it looks different for each family. We all have our struggles.

I’ve realized that there are people out there who care about me and want to support me and my family. Keeping that in perspective seems to help more than anything.

There are a variety of labels you could slap onto this situation, but here’s the point: it’s ok to seek out help, and it’s ok not to be the perfect parent. I do the best I can for my amazing little girl. If I have to work through my issues with a psychologist and take some medication, that’s ok. I’m doing it so I can be there for her.