Ace & Deuce of Mothering: Rest

In the latest instalment of her column charting her journey to the 2022 World Championships as a mother of two, Diana Dersch reflects on the importance of rest – especially for those balancing multiple other responsibilities – and why giving yourself adequate recovery time is more valuable than pushing yourself to train harder

5:30pm. 7pm. 8:30pm. 9pm. 10:30pm. 1:30am. 4am. 6am. 7am. 8am. 9:30am. Those are the times I nursed C one evening last month through to the morning. Throw in a 3am wakeup with L, and you’ve got one exhausted mama. 

Real talk – this has been my normal for several weeks now. C is cluster feeding in the evenings and it’s carrying on through the night. I’m the only one who can feed her and the only one who can calm her down. 

I feel drained and helpless. Some would be tempted to feel like a bad parent, though thankfully I don’t. There is nothing anyone – not even my husband – can do to help a fussy baby waking up every couple of hours to nurse, so I am doing my best to survive this. There’s not much I can do to catch up on sleep either, since L is active during the day and doesn’t nap anymore. 

This stuff is just a phase. Not pleasant to be sure, but it won’t last forever. Sleep regressions, cluster feedings, weird habits…whatever it is, I give it two weeks and if it’s still going on, then I’ll start digging for information. Otherwise, it’s mostly just normal baby stuff and most issues will just go away. This has held true for many, many kid-related woes over the past 3.5 years. This one has been three weeks, but…the concept still stands.

I just want this kid to rest, so I can get some myself. 

We are bombarded with messages that pushing through hardship and pain and the sheer possession of determination will get us to great things. Culture glorifies this, and within the Irish dance subculture we also see this potentially dangerous message. We see Instagram captions or article interviews with 13, 16, or 19-year-old titleholders about how they pushed through injury to win their last major or danced 20 hours a week for a decade while taking advanced placement (AP) education classes and getting six hours of sleep a night to get to where they are now. 

That ain’t it. Nope, nope, nope. Kids in their teens need more sleep than that, more rest than that. Athletes need even more. As adults, we sustain these impossibly busy lives with sleep being the first thing to disappear when the going gets tough, when actually, sleep is probably the thing we need the most in those stressful seasons. 

Photo: Diana Dersch

Plus, as a senior lady, show me a full-time job that allows you to dance 20 hours a week and still have time to grocery shop and pay your bills. Show me a mom that can’t afford a babysitter or housekeeper that even has 20 spare hours to dedicate to something other than mommying. 

The message I most frequently have to tell myself is to rest. And in this phase, rest (not sleep, unfortunately) is being forced upon me. If you haven’t already figured it out, the past few weeks of my life have looked very different. I’ve been exhausted, overwhelmed, and at a breaking point a couple of times. My Irish dance training-related plans have been the first to go. My cross training efforts have been either nonexistent or sporadic for several weeks. 

At an elite level we are expected to compete at three majors, if not more, each year. This already makes it complicated to train for, especially since our teachers often seemingly demand peak performances at every class and every feis. How the heck are we supposed to maintain this level of intensity year round without injury or burnout? I mean, it’s impossible, actually. The people you see doing it without those issues are just lucky, but it will likely catch up with them eventually.

Irish dance doesn’t have seasonality built in. To be fair, it’s also the livelihood or partial livelihood for most of these teachers, many of whom also adjudicate year round. But there is no built in opportunity for rest or for focusing on cross training instead of dancing. My first dance school, which I trained under for 13 years, only ever took two weeks off for Christmas. I was so used to this perpetual in-season that when I learned of seasonality in adulthood, it was a difficult adaptation to make. Now, two kids in, I can’t imagine not having time to rest built into my training plan. 

Having planned-out off seasons keeps me free from injury and ready to mentally and physically tackle the demands of in-season training. Keeping a firm two-day-a-week rest schedule means I give myself enough time to recover from the intensity of dancing so I can do the rest without pain or fatigue. I stay fresh.

There is a lot that is backwards in the structure of our dance classes. The demands of our sport have surpassed the previous methods of training from a decade or three ago. What worked for “them” no longer works for us – or else we will deal with chronic injury and pain, subpar performance, or worse: career-ending burnout or injury. I am thankful that there are more and more resources from educated dance health and fitness practitioners sharing information about safe and healthy training for Irish dancers now, but we have a long way to go. 

Photo: Diana Dersch

Can we fight a few rest and moderation myths while we’re at it? One, please remember that rest is when our bodies get stronger (we are told rest is weakness); two, more is not better (we think we need to do more to see results); and three, dancing more doesn’t improve our dancing if the issue is actually a weakness or alignment issue. Not getting adequate sleep or giving our body adequate rest periods decreases performance quality.  We need to work smarter, not harder, which is especially true as we age. And dancing more only encourages unhealthy patterns and dysfunction. I could go on about this, but I digress (perhaps another time.)

There is also mental burnout. Besides all the stuff I plan out and hold onto for training and feis prep, the cognitive load I carry for my family is intense. I’ve taken many an extra rest day just from needing the mental break from All Things Irish Dance. The breaks I get from being a mom and homemaker are few and far between, but absolutely necessary, and there is often no way I can stay sane by carrying the load for both aspects of my life. 

Did you know that sleep is the most important indicator of performance? Yeah, tell that to a first time mother or a mother of multiple kids with different nap schedules. In a state of nearly perpetual sleep deprivation, we just do the best we can. Especially to one who is a go-getter, competitor, and been told the lies that more is better for their whole life. That is one challenging, yet critical, shift to make.

The irony of writing lots of this after a rough night of sleep, when I should have been napping is not lost on me. What can I say, this message was too important!

Update: a week has gone by since I wrote the opener to this, and thankfully, C is doing much better. Mama is sleeping a bit better these days and my training is getting back to normal again…

Stay tuned for the Ace & Deuce of Mothering column every month.

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