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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Furrow's people
At a compound in Idaho, Nazis explain that they're not about hate -- they just love their own kind.
By Amy Benfer
[08/12/99]

"All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy"
Online confession queen Spike Gillespie dishes on bad boys and reveals her true love -- her son.
By Katie Allison Granju
[08/11/99]

Ketchup and Convertibles
My stepdaughters insisted on camping with ketchup, Pepsi and showers. I'd rather be opening a bottle of white wine with the women in the red Mustang convertible.
By Karen Ackland
[08/10/99]

Counter spy
I waitressed in the restaurant of nothingness where the menu was a work of fiction. There was no Coke. There was no bleu cheese. There was no dinner salad and there never would be.
By Maria Dolan
[08/06/99]

A cold-blooded killing in the neighborhood
My children believe in tooth fairies. Do I have to tell them about the murder across the street?
By Heather Donovan
[08/05/99]

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By Dulcie Leimbach

August 13, 1999 | I began sleeping with my son when he was a toddler, out of the crib, and his skin was supple and his hair felt like goose feathers. He was about 2 years old, and his belly hung over his diapers, but what I remember most was his freshwater smell, as if he had stepped out of a pond. It was so natural and raw that I lay next to him just to inhale his luxuriousness. He seemed impossibly brand-new.

The contrast between us was sharp: my rough skin, my tired eyes and my weary bones were like night against his day. I snuggled against my son for comfort, rest, a tiny sense of solace and to reacquaint myself with him after my long hours at work.

I had never been so physically close to a young child. Having slept with my husband for seven years, I was ready to experience something completely different; why not try my own son? He did not sleep with us when he was a baby; the books all warned against that idea, and we were ready to follow the books. He started out in a bassinet, and then we put him in a crib in the far end of our loft. He slept there about a year before he graduated to the adult twin-sized bed in his room. I had slept in that bed when I was pregnant with him, suffering from insomnia.

Because my pregnancy had been complicated with positive test results for toxoplasmosis in my fourth month, I'd started waking around 3 a.m. every night, worried about my baby's health. If exposed to toxoplasmosis, a fetus's brain can be severely damaged. In the midst of this bad news, I underwent a fetal-blood surgical procedure to determine if he had been exposed to the toxoplasmosis that I was carrying in my bloodstream; the results took four weeks. During that time I became a changed person, an insomniac, suddenly aware of what it was like not to sleep.

Each night I stirred restlessly for two or three hours at a stretch, praying to go back to sleep. Meanwhile, at work, an editor in my office told me that I did not know "how to write a book review," an assignment she had given me. During those sleepless nights, I obsessed over that criticism to deflect what I really didn't want to think about: whether or not my future son would be born with a fully developed brain. In the process, I lost so much sleep that in the morning I was barely able to get up, eat, dress and head down to the subway station. I'd stand on the platform so disoriented that I'd have to grope my way to the train when it pulled in, grateful when I didn't fall onto the tracks.

The insomnia didn't lift after I learned that my son was fine. The curse of sleeplessness has stayed with me for 11 years. But the good news was that Joseph was born on time, a strapping 9-pounds plus a few ounces. Bald and egg-white and fleshy, he was eager for my embrace. If I had to forgo sleep for a healthy baby, so be it. I accepted my insomnia as part of my life.

Next page | Only my son could soothe me to sleep