According to many self-help experts, helping others is an important part of any personal growth spurt, no matter who you are, or how self-actualized you may feel at any given moment. “The first thing you should do in the morning,” said one such expert during his book tour, “is wake up ready to help someone.” If you’re a parent, that’s an easy one.

The first words I heard this morning were “My bed is wet, Mama.” My daughter Sophie was standing next to the bed; it was early, or late, depending on your habits. It was 3:00 AM, which brings me to something I’ve never understood: Why call it AM when there’s nothing remotely morning-like about three o’clock?

I began the ritual of stripping Sophie out of her wet pajamas, tucking her shivering little body into the warm spot I’d made in my bed. I was prepared; her bed was fitted with two sets of sheets separated by a waterproof mattress cover, so that a fresh layer of bedding was waiting for Sophie as soon as I’d peeled away the wet stuff. If it sounds as though I like to keep things simple enough to do them in my sleep, it’s because I hope someday to get some of the uninterrupted kind.

Going in, I knew that the famed sleep deprivation of parenthood was going to be the thing that dogged me the most. I barely logged enough hours when I was single, and so I prepared myself for the kind of suffering that accompanies surrendering one’s last vice. One priority or another has claimed coffee and cocktails, the orgies of fat and cholesterol that used to define dinner every night, and I shouldered these losses with a certain amount of sport. But I knew that, in particular, I was going to grieve the loss of sleeping in late, especially when the temperatures and snows started to fall. For a time it seemed that there would never be enough sleep, and there were a few times when I began to genuinely come undone because of it.

I clung to any philosophy, any ideology, that urged me to press on through the exhaustion despite the dizzying mood swings I was enduring. Most of the time, there simply was no other option. Unable to focus or retain information, I turned to meditation, affirmations, exercise, anything that would burn off the fog, and for the most part, they served me through the worst of it. I could support forgoing sleep as an act of love, and when I considered that I had lost sleep over less deserving things—money or men, a party I’d missed—it didn’t hurt as much.

I trusted that helping someone who wasn’t even capable of knowing she was being helped had to, in a small and profound way, help me too.

I once saw a Zen monk point to his heart and say, “Suffering ends here.” I think understanding the relationship between love and sacrifice is how I made it through the notorious sleepless months of infancy without resorting to gratuitous online shoe shopping or writing threatening emails to my spouse during the day.

Months into Sophie’s infancy, after I had returned to a schedule that was closer to normal, I couldn’t sleep anymore; a lifetime first. I also couldn’t do things like remember my debit card PIN, or the directions to places I had been before. I couldn’t blame Sophie; at eight months of age she’d been sleeping through the night for half the year. The headaches and fatigue were unbearable, but the insomnia kept me up for 48-hour stretches without so much as a wink of sleep. “Maybe I’m sleeping and I just don’t know it,” I told my husband one night at dinner. He looked bewildered. “Maybe I’m sleeping right now,” I said. When he swore we were both awake, I said, “You must be right. If I were dreaming this, you would have volunteered to do the dishes. In a pink tutu.”

Four grueling months later, I learned I had a thyroid condition, and with treatment, returned again to a version of normalcy, just in time for three relocations and multiple bouts of wintertime illnesses to upend every molecule of peace we had assembled and re-assembled during the course of a year and change.

That’s life for you: A two steps forward, one step back kind of dance that, like a certain advertising prop keeps going and going—if we’re lucky. And it’s that dance, that ever-changing dance, that had me waking up each day helping someone without expecting a reward for it. I can’t measure it, can’t see it, can’t explain it, but I know I’m better for it.

In the dark of that three “AM,” with Sophie lying in the warmth of my bed, I said, “I’ll be right back to get you after I change your bedding.” But when I returned just a few minutes later, she was snoozing comfortably next to her dad, lying in a position identical to his, which, along with demanding to know who’s on the phone the second I answer it, made me wonder what other sorts of peccadilloes were hiding in her DNA.

Since it’s no picnic sleeping next to the child who performs gymnastics in her sleep, I trudged back to her twin bed, where I slept under Dora the Explorer sheets until a time that was decidedly more AM.  Again, Sophie stood at the side of the bed, this time with a different concern.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He probably left for work,” I said, checking the time: 5:30. “Were you two Amish in another life?”

She smiled, poked at my face, and gave me what I hope was a compliment. “You smell like golden,” she said.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, closing my eyes, dozing off again. Suffering ended there, for a few minutes.

“Oh, and Mama?” she put her hand on my shoulder. “Your bed is wet.”

There’s something funny about having less in your life.  Less clutter, less food, less stress, less paperwork - it makes you appreciate what you have all the more.

Case in point:  let’s talk baby dolls. With four girls, we’ve had our fair share of dolls.  Life size dolls, microscopic dolls,  Groovy Girls, American Girls, Barbies, dollar store cuties and Happy Meal prizes - at any one point in time we’ve had buckets and baby beds full of those little mini people. They take over the house, spilling out of the playroom and appearing in odd places at random times of the day - it’s nothing for me to round a corner and stumble over a beady eyed naked doll  or find her twin hovering on the bookshelf. The really bad part of this equation?  When they were called on their forgetfulness, their habit of dropping the dolls whenever and wherever - my daughters had no idea what they even owned.  And, most of the time, those same dollies weren’t even played with - just strewn about and abandoned. A shining example of “too much stuff”.

I made an executive decision and cleaned out the cabinets - in one fell swoop, I rid the girls of 80% of these “beloved” belongings.  The very ones that they never play with and in fact, couldn’t even name when pressed. I donated some to school, tossed the really ratty ones, and have a bucket sitting here next to me, ready to list for your scrutiny here on Zwaggle.  There was an immediate and vivid benefit to this action:  my little girls PLAYED with what they had left.  It wasn’t an overwhelming conglomeration of arms, legs and heads - the baby bed contains two dolls now.  Two that can be seen and appreciated. The bucket in the playroom contains a few more - but not nearly the FIFTEEN (!!) that I weeded out of there.

Having less makes you appreciate what you do have all the more, I’m certain. My playroom is a shining example of that.  Do you have too many toys, cluttering your house and overwhelming your kids?  Why not take the opportunity to list them here and help your kids learn to appreciate what they have.

I met my daughter, Sophie, on her birthday. I was thirty-five, she was zero, and the time was 9:50 PM. The second she was born, the doctor put her on my chest, rubbed her back and said, “Come on, baby, cry.” She did.  I consider that the first and last time she did as she was told.
I was overjoyed, I was grateful, I was tired. We took Sophie home from the hospital, and I considered the number of firsts her arrival marked in my life, and how radically it would change.

I had never, ever anticipated a meeting like the days (two very long ones) I spent in the delivery room.   My parents, my mother-in-law, my husband all urged me to hurry things up. “When are you going to have that baby?” they asked, as if I had any of the answers. I was almost two weeks overdue, and had spent the previous month on the phone with my mother, who called daily to ask, “Is today the day?”

“It’s not a pizza,” I barked at the crowd gathered in the birthing suite, adding that I never promised to deliver in thirty-minutes-or-less.  “You don’t get a coupon or a free soda if the baby’s late,” I muttered under my oxygen mask. I waited for Sophie, knowing she would find us when the both of us were good and ready; I spent the time exhausted and hopeful, watching the last DVD left in the hospital’s library: The Godfather. Once everyone went back to their corners to wait, I couldn’t have been happier.

Our birth plan had been simple. We wanted to show up at the hospital, where we would follow instructions on what to do and where to go, and take home a baby after it was all over. For the first time, I was comforted by the fact that there was nothing special, nothing unique about me; countless other women had birthed babies, and that was the evidence I needed that it was OK to surrender to nature’s mysterious know-how. I didn’t have to interview for the job, or defend a thesis, I only had to push. I did, which may have been the first and last time I did as I was told, too.

The day we took tiny Sophie home, I looked at Alex. He looked scared like me. I reminded the both of us of my theory about kids. “Be cool,” I mumbled, “Much like bees and dogs, children can smell fear.”

I wasn’t just a first-time mom; Sophie was the first person I had ever known since birth. (Considering that girls are born with all the eggs in their ovaries they’ll ever have, I’ve known at least part of Sophie my whole life, too.) After nursing her until she looked delirious, I used to put her in her bassinet and lean over the side, put my face to hers, and smell her breath. I’ve never smelled anyone’s breath before, not on purpose, and especially not right after a meal.

People say that when a child is born, everything changes and maybe that’s true. I do know that my glasses are different.  Sophie spent months—years—ripping them from my face and attempting to send them on one mission to Mars after another. (One small step for plastic and glass, one giant leap for nearsightedness.)  After the Sisyphean task of scaling and summiting Mount Laundry for years on end, my underwear is different. I might not have noticed a little piece of Velcro entering the wash with my good underwear, but it snagged and snarled and clicked the “undo” button on several years of ordering from Victoria’s Secret just the same. If all it takes is one red sock to convince the world you love pink tee shirts, one little closure on one little terrycloth bib is enough to convince your husband that you spent the week scratching your rear end with a cheese grater.

And then there are spiders: Creatures that haven’t changed since Sophie took up residence, but that are different because I’ve changed since then. Once allowed in my home under the “I won’t bother you if you won’t bother me” policy, I now can’t abide any insect capable of creeping, crawling, or biting. And, lo, the dogs were demoted, much to their disappointment. “Off the bed,” was a staple of my lexicon for months, not because the dogs were anything else than they had ever been—snoring, bed-hogging mutts with bad breath—but because I decided that someone who was only getting an average of a few precious hours of sleep each night deserved more than one-eighth of the bed while savoring them.

I was rebuilt during parenthood, no technology necessary. I began caring about my health, and stopped pretending that I never needed any help. I began to use my time differently. I became too full to hoard all my emotions, and in fact, when one of our dogs died, I wept openly in front of the vet, another first.  I stopped fainting at the sight of blood, and started drooling at the mention of bloody marys, a tasty symbol of bygone days. The last time I got to watch what I wanted on TV, I chose Einstein’s biography over Will and Grace, knowing that there was no telling when I would get to hold the remote control again between the hours of 8 AM and 9 PM. I already knew everything about Will and Grace, but had no idea that Einstein married his cousin after leaving his wife.  “Are you feeling all right?” Alex asked, watching me carefully weigh the choice between watching a sit com and public television. I reminded him that parenting, like the game of chess, forces you to think several moves ahead. “But with chess,” I said, “the pieces hold still while you think, instead of making three new messes while you clean up the last two.”

Over time I became better, stronger, faster in many ways, and those changes, for better or worse, are irrevocable. Forget the underwear, the brunch on Sundays, shoe shopping during lunch. There’s no return now to the life and lifestyle that dropped me off here.  But considering that what I’ve sprung forward from, I’m not sorry there’s no way to fall back. This is the first time I’m letting the cosmic forces of parenthood shape me into a better person than I have ever been. It’s my initiation into the daylight savings time of my life, and now that it’s here, and I’ve waited all this time for it, I’m good and ready for it.

Finally.