Monica Hesse / Washington Post
Anything I’ve tried to get my toddler to sleep after 5 in the morning will baffle you, or at least baffle me. Late bedtime, early bedtime, night log, blackout curtains, alarm window, sleep cycle, dream feed, Woolino sack: If you don’t know what these terms mean, you probably don’t have a toddler who wakes up at 5am. If so, congratulations, and bugs off again.
I spoke to a sleep consultant who said she could just cry, but it didn’t work. She consulted another sleep consultant and was told she needed to move her dinner 30 minutes later, which she didn’t do well. I tried a method called “wake to sleep”. This method involved my husband or I sneaking into her daughter’s bedroom at 4am each night and gently crushing her. Woke up, it worked fine for a while, but I, myself, habitually woke up at 4am and no one tried to push me at her 3am.
A year after returning to work from maternity leave, I told my editor that this column would be about everything I’ve learned as a working mother in America. She was raised in America. It felt like they were parenting out of a lunar crater.
A rocky landscape where a day looks like 29.5 days, an onslaught of viruses (triple demics) keep attacking families like alien lifeforms, and when you squint, you vaguely remember what you once lived I can see the earth that I remember. And I hope to come back one day. Covid is ‘over’, but the lack of childcare, the kids’ pandemic-ratted immune systems, plus the employer who has used up all patience before his omicron leaves parents still out of breath and desperate Except you’re asking for gravity.
I wanted to go to bed after 5:00
What I have learned as a working mother in America is that no one feels that they are doing particularly well. What I’ve learned is that being cheerful and stingy about parenting is encouraged. This is the kind of Kvech embodied by his T-shirt reading, “I run on coffee and chaos!” —but to instigate real, systemic support, such as guaranteed sick leave or universal kindergarten, is considered greedy. I am telling myself.
I’ve learned to only buy pajamas with zippers, not snaps.
I learned that string cheese and 97 peas are good for dinner.
In the morning, even when it’s pitch black at 5am, I’ve learned that the way you greet your daughter when she welcomes her feels like a new color was invented. A new color that only you can see, a color that matches you perfectly, but you can’t really describe it.
Forget being a working mother. Forget being a working woman. This year has been an exhausting year for any woman, for any woman, for any woman.
This was the year the Supreme Court learned that it was a personal matter for a man to occupy the 50-yard line and pray in public after a high school football game. Pregnant in your womb.
This year, state legislators who couldn’t chart their ovulatory cycle if their lives depended on it feel free to propose legislation that other people’s lives depend on. It was a year when I felt free. A time when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant. A bill to ban exceptions for rape and incest.
2022 had dystopian side plots related to targeting women. A group that persecutes transgender girls. In Ohio, the House of Representatives passed a bill allowing gynecological examinations to be performed on students whose gender has been questioned. rice field.)
“Can you give me a definition of the word ‘woman’?” Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. The point is not that Blackburn needed a biology class. Her point was that she wanted a culture war.
Over the past year, I’ve been thinking about one moment in comedian Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up routine. “I’m clearly sexually abnormal. I don’t think even lesbian is the right identity for me. I really don’t,” she told the audience. I know I’m tired. I’m just tired.”
Can you imagine what it means to not be tired? Did you wake up one morning not because the nursery next door was yelling for democracy, but because you were actually refreshed and rested?
Can you imagine what it would be like to go to sleep feeling as if you could breathe, knowing that something that desperately needed your attention was waiting until morning? It won’t surprise you when you wake up. Countries don’t take off their diapers.
Being a parent, or being a citizen, means knowing that no one but you is going to fix this, be it in the nursery, voting booths, protests, or family conversations. It means acknowledging that when we are asked for the most, it is when we give the least. you just keep getting up
I was thinking about what a friend said to me, a friend whose kids are old enough to get out of bed in the morning.I told her how my daughter got up at 5am But my friend said, she did it today But maybe she won’t do it tomorrow. she won’t do that forever. ”
A few days before I typed this, my daughter slept until 6:07 am. I do not know why. Nothing special was attempted. No new schedule was adopted. A car honked and she went to sleep. The dog barked and she went to sleep. And I slept for the first time in months. It was enough to show me the potential for something better.
The next morning she came back at 5:00.
This is my New Year’s wish to you: I wish you a peaceful pause. A chance to gather yourself. A glimpse of something better. As tired as you are, I hope you continue to struggle towards something better. And finally sleep through the night.
Monica Hesse is a columnist for the Washington Post’s style section and writes frequently about gender and its impact on society. She is the author of several novels, most recently ‘They Went Left’. Follow her on Twitter @MonicaHesse.
