I've enjoyed and communerated with the thoughts and writings of this topic
of disrupted sleep.  Two thoughts have come to mind while I've been
listening (reading with intent).  Please forgive if it has already been
mentioned and I've missed it.  The first thought was that perhaps we as a
society are doing a disservice training our children to "sleep thru the
night".  That it is not only an unrealistic sleep pattern but is not
preparing them for parenthood/adulthood.   :-)
My other thought was that in alot of other cultures they often "close down
shop" in the middle of the day for napping (which could be due to their
night wakings and going ons).  Perhaps our societies even used to do this as
well, but with the coming of the industrial age (or some other time,
although this seems the most likely to me) this practice or change in
lifestyle soon was thought "outdated", "unneeded", to eventually even
believed to be "unhealthy".  Sound familar?

~Zena Kay Gresham
WIC Breastfeeding Counselor & Financial Consultant in Las Vegas
mother of Thad 14yo; Thea 11yo; Sariah 6yo; & Charles 4yo
www.zillioniare.com & www.wmas.com
www.slingsnthings.com

<<snip>>And I don't remember getting all that much sleep in the years
between
infancy and teenagerhood, come to think of it. There are always the bad
dreams, or the ear ache,  or the calls from the sleepover to get picked up
because so-and-so said such-and-such. Believe me, it's always
something!<<snip>>

<<snip>>I've learned a lot about "normal" sleep patterns from Kathy D's
writings,
and that of other anthropologists. Here's my take on why "sleep deprivation"
is such a huge, huge problem in today's society: we have too much to do in
the daytime. We try to do way, way more than we're meant to, and much of
what we do is so "important" (or so we, of course, think) and/or on someone
else's schedule. A lot of it is what I think of as "fake" - it's what we're
led to believe we have to do. Don't believe it!<<snip>>

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