what’s in a snooze?
personalities do not shut down with the eyelids.
cruising through the babies rooms these past few weeks, i have noticed their sleeping positions reflect their very unique selves.
jasper sleeps face down, arms akimbo. the minute we lay him down, usually during prayers, he flips over and commences sliding his gro-bag clad self down the cot. not an easy task, but he is up to it. leaving a snail trail of drool that a) marks the path of his voyage like a treasure hunt for infants and b) indicates the effort needed to create this pathway. the j always has his mouth slightly open. if a stray cheerio might pop up from the folds in his neck and migrate into his mouth during the night, jasper wants to be prepared.
he has a really weird sleeping position, whispers magnificent charles.
that is funny, coming from a man who sleeps lying on his back, with his knees up in the air and his feet planted firmly into the mattress. head tilted back in a position that cannot be comfortable.
carys sleeps tightly clenching her lamaze cot decorator. while she is still awake she tends to roll from side to side, cooing in her gravelly voice and occasionally popping in and removing her right thumb. as she gets tireder, her thumb drops out of her mouth and hovers two inches away from her mouth, in case the thumbs services are required again. as she settles into sleep, she grabs on to the decorator and relinquishes control of consciousness. i have tried loosening her grip on the decorator, but it is tight, and why bother? who’s she hurting? besides, lying on her left side means she is sort of partially strengthening the tight side of her neck.
sela moves very little from the position you lie her in. on her back, right arm outstretched, left arm arced and thumb in mouth. by the middle of the night both arms are flung out. two theories abound on why she chooses this position: its flattering, and b) she’s lazy, and wants to get to sleep. our sela likes her sleep.
sebastian has been a wriggler since the day he was born. when he was released from the hospital, magnificent charles and i agreed that he could bunk with us for a few nights. it would be easier for feeding in the middle of the night, etc.
magnificent charles was concerned that he might roll over and squash sebastian, so we put the bald wonder into a xerox a4 photocopying paper box that we had lying around. and so, we tenderly introduced sebastian to his first bed. he slept, but charles and i did not. sebastian scratched, bashed and bonked the corners of the box all night long. every noise, by b00bs would leap to attention, and magnificent would bolt upright "wha???". and our cats, who were allowed to sleep on the bed with us would shuffle about, turn two and one half times around, then settle themselves again.
the second night sebastian was home, we read and worried about the transition from sleeping in a comforting small space to cruelly shoving sebastian into a cot. one thing was certain, he would not be sharing our room again. because of the very real danger that babies who don’t have happy transitions from small baskets to cots don’t get into good colleges, we compromised, and that night sebastian slept in the xerox box, which was in his cot. that worked fine for a few weeks.
sebastian has no regard for proper sleeping placement and i find him with legs and arms dangling off the bed, his head where his knees should be, or his head pressing against the bed rail. he is all over the place all over the time. why? i am not sure. he is not overly eccentric, paranoid, or prone to bad dreams. maybe the the first level of his circadium rhythm is an aerobics programme.
my sleeping position? i always sleep on my right side, with my hands between my face and pillow (preferably a cold pillow) and knees bent (when my dear departed cat was alive her sleeping spot was behind my knees) and bare feet sticking out of the duvet.
everyone’s heard of dream analysis, but sleep analysis seems just as interesting.
