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| "I wanna Bertie Beetle" |
The scenario is nothing unusual. Mother of a 9 week old little boy who although he is the most beautiful little treasure in the world, isn't always so great at sleeping at night. Dad has a demanding job and gets up with our other two cherubs in the morning (besides he lacks some of the necessary equipment) so it's Mummy on night duty.
Needless to say that after nine weeks of broken sleep. Mummy's starting to get a little tired, cranky and teary. We mums are very good at putting on brave faces in the light of day but let's face it when you're staring at a tiny little person in the middle of the night who has decided that rather then go back to sleep they would rather play or cry over nothing in particular for an hour and a half you start to go a little crazy.
I have been reading Sarah Napthali's "Buddhism for mothers with lingering questions" and have found her advice to be both logical and helpful (both key tests of advice as far as I'm concerned). I decided at 4am this morning (man I used to be partying at this hour) as I started to tear up again that it was time to put this advice into practice.
The first piece of advice is to be in the present moment. Rather then starting the dialogue in my head of how it's always me getting up to and having to settle the baby in the middle of the night (the past) and how I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow and as I can't see me catching up on that sleep any time soon I'm going to end up sick and run down (the future.) I chose to stay in the present moment and found that the tears stopped as soon as the back story ended.
The next piece of advice is based on Buddhism's second noble truth "Our suffering is caused by our attachments and aversions." Napthali (and Buddha) suggest that understanding that it is our attachment to or our aversion toward a thing/person/event that causes our suffering not the thing/person/event itself. Right got it, my aversion toward the crying and my attachment to sleep are what is causing me to suffer right now, not the fact that my baby won't go back to sleep. OK time to let go of the aversion and attachment and just deal with what is in front of me. I can do that.
The next piece of advice is to ask what the present moment requires of you. Easy, the present moment simply requires me to get my little man settled and back to sleep. I've done this before, it's not so bad. Calmly cuddle, walk, pat and jiggle until he falls back asleep. So much more effective than crying, swearing, storming, huffing and puffing. Who'd have thought. What often took 90 minutes took just 10 and I was back to my bed and sleeping before I knew it.
I'm not saying that I'll never have another teary, non-sleeping episode again but it's nice to know that I now have some tools in the tool box to help me when I start to feel out of control. Now if only I could deal with the attachment to a well rested functioning brain and the aversion to being vomited on I'll be sorted.
What great advice have you been given recently?
