I am aware that many of my readers are chronically sleep-deprived, so I don’t mean to brag about what I did Friday night. I slept – get this – ten and a half hours. I know! It’s remarkable, really. I woke up feeling groggy and my body was stiff from so much sleep.

Just writing that reminds me of a beautiful woman I used to know. She had porcelain skin, shiny thick hair, and gigantic blue eyes fringed with the most amazingly thick, long, black lashes. If you happened to remark on those eyelashes, she would reply “Ugh. You know, I can’t wear mascara if I’m going to be wearing my sunglasses. My lashes end up being just way too long, and they hit the lenses.” In other words, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful – my eyelashes are really just too luxurious. I just got too much sleep on Friday.

My last post generated several comments about the horror stories foisted upon pregnant women, and while those about miscarriage, stillborn babies, collapsed uteruses and other horrifying endings are certainly the most disturbing and terrifying, stories about lack of sleep are definitely the most common. Enjoy your sleep now, the story teller will say with an evil glint in their eye, because after the baby comes you will never sleep again! And while there is a kernel of truth in this – my best friend, I’m sure, has not had a solid night’s sleep in nearly seven years, due to her four children aged six and under – this particular information transfer is not productive in any way. I don’t think there is a woman alive who thinks that the addition of a child to the household, whether by birth or adoption, will not affect her sleep in a negative way.

I myself expected to be essentially in a coma after each baby was born. I expected the sleep deprivation to result in my morphing into a babbling, drooling, incoherent idiot. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself actually functioning. Not that I was particularly coherent or intelligent, but I was functioning! Although comments from somewhat well-meaning older female relatives about other, ostensibly superior, babies who were sleeping through the night at two weeks of age and how well their ostensibly superior mothers were functioning would inevitably arise and destroy that feeling of well-being. Isn’t that strange? First people tell you how exhausted you are going to be after the arrival of the baby, then they tell you about amazingly rested and refreshed women and their angelic sleeping babies.

But back to the present. I have only this strange observation following my sleep marathon on Friday: I actually did not feel rested or refreshed. I was in a weird daze all day, rubbing my stiff neck and back. I felt actually less rested than on a usual night, when I get fewer than eight hours of sleep and am woken up a couple of times, either by Jake’s weird dreams – “I saw a baby elephant! And it sprayed me with water!” – or Mark’s “Hi Mom! I’m just going to the bathroom!” announcements. So, at the risk of offending my poor sleep-deprived readers, I will venture to say that ten and a half hours of sleep is, perhaps, not all it’s cracked up to be.