So I want to share a story with you – a story about my husband – and some different ways to think about this question, “Why do you talk so much about childhood trauma?” in case you’ve questioned what the point of focusing on this is for yourself.

Childhood trauma – we don’t know what we don’t know.

I want to share a story with you. 

It was early Summer in 2019. 

Our daughter was about nine months old and, like all new parents, my husband and I were moderately worn down with sleep deprivation from cumulative broken, fractured sleep across the start of her life.

But approaching nine months old, she was starting to sleep in longer stretches. 

I would get five, six hours of sleep at a time and feel soooo good – like a superwoman compared to the two or three-hour chunks the first six months mostly held.

But my husband, though he was also getting these six-hour chunks, too, remained exhausted.

Like, couldn’t form sentences tired. 

Running into the corners of our furniture tired. 

Leaving the cell phone in the fridge tired.

My husband had always been a restless sleeper who “didn’t get great sleep” but being childfree for the first seven years of our relationship, it was easier to just sleep in, go to bed earlier, take it easy during the day. 

Basically to compensate for the bad sleep, like over adjusting to your strong ankle when you have a weak ankle.

The “bad sleep” didn’t have as much of an impact back then so we didn’t look at it too closely.

But with a baby and with both of us working full-time, his poor sleep – even when the hours were available – was increasingly becoming a problem. For him and for us as a new little family 

His reserves simply couldn’t keep up with the demands of our life very well anymore. 

So, even though the timing was terrible, we doubled down on him seeking out some answers because this didn’t seem like typical new parent exhaustion – something else was at play here.

Taking time away from me and the baby, he attended medical appointments and ultimately ended up doing a multi-night sleep lab away from home so we could figure out what was really going on.

It turns out that he had severe sleep apnea. 

Not the snoring kind that’s more identifiable, but rather the kind where he stops breathing many, many times per hour all night. 

Depriving himself of oxygen and never fully getting the good rest he needs to function well during the day.

He has this because of structural issues – a very deviated septum thanks to a broken nose in his youth.