Sleep....whats that?????!!!

Sleep.....what’s that?????!!!

I was going to end this chapter right there just for dramatic effect – but there is so much to say about sleep - the lack of it and the longing for it. Non-parents will always smile and nod in apparent understanding when a parent complains about being tired and how many times their child has been up during the night – but seriously – until they have survived on about six hours of broken sleep continuously for two years they have absolutely no idea what tired is or how doolally it can send you.

In the “olden days” before babies, whilst at university or at the weekend, I could easily sleep until lunchtime. Anything less than 12 hours sleep was deprivation. I only had two meals a day because lunch was breakfast; that’s probably why I was a stone lighter then even though I survived on cereal and Chinese takeaways.  There were times after a wild night that I’d get to bed at 7am and be up at 8am for work – but I got by on Red Bull and E-numbers and knew I would sleep for 2 days afterwards so it wasn’t a problem and my lethargy was a sign of a good social life.

When I fell pregnant with Owen, we jointly decided that the first thing we’d nail was the sleeping. And we did. I read every parental guide possible on sleep and formulated my golden rules –

1. Put the baby down awake so that they learn to fall asleep by themselves without being soothed and rocked. We did this from birth, swaddled cosily in blankets.
2. Let the baby establish the difference between day and night. Day naps can be had in a moses basket in the living room (or elsewhere) but the room will remain light, and when baby awakes, you can pick them up and make a fuss.  At night, baby sleeps in the bedroom, keep the room dark, don’t take the baby out of the room even for night feeds and minimise talking and stimulation.
3. Never bring baby into your bed until a reasonable time in the morning so that this doesn’t become a difficult habit to break.

By six weeks old Owen was sleeping through the night from about 11pm until 6am and we were very happy new parents. He still sleeps like a log today and when he’s out he’s gone, which we feel is our greatest achievement to date. When Dad and I are feeling particularly evil – or if Owen has been particularly naughty and we want to get our own back - we like to play tricks on him to see if he’ll wake up. He’s had shaving foam on his hand and a tickle on the nose. Dad’s pumped on him once or twice. We’ve told him it’s time for school at 10pm, we’ve tickled his feet and licked his ear. My favourite is dressing in my red onesie with the hood up and saying “ho ho ho” while Dad shouts “Santa’s here!”  You may think we’re cruel but he never wakes up. So he’s unaffected and we have a chuckle.

Then along came Ava....I stuck to the same golden rules but she came with her own set. She didn’t sleep through the night for the first time until she was six months old. To some parents that may not seem too bad but to us it was torture. She’s now two years old and it’s still extremely rare for her to sleep through without disturbing. She went through a stage of asking for “juice” about every half an hour all through the night and it killed us to drag ourselves out of bed to meet her demands. I’ve spent many a night screaming into my pillow (not in a good way), thrashing about in my bed (not in a good way), deep breathing (not in a good way), crying, stomping, slamming doors, sending crazed text messages to Dad on his night shift at work, trying everything in my power to contain my rage and despair when for the eighth night in a row my daughter has decided that she won’t let my eyes close for a moment – and the following day I have to go to work for nine hours. There are nights where I’ve had to let her cry herself back to sleep, with a pillow over my head and my heart breaking because I didn’t have the energy or the sanity to move from my bed.  Lack of sleep has been the hardest part of being a parent of small children and after two years of sleepless nights I was ready to admit myself to a secure unit. Or put Ava up for adoption. Or hire a night nanny with her own sound proof annex. We would put her to bed awake and she would drop off to sleep no problem, but keeping her asleep was impossible. Then one day – resisting the urge to dope her with Nytol - I made the overdue decision to forbid juice in the bedroom.  Ava has plenty of fluids during the day and has a small sip before bed, but bedroom drinks are now banned. We had a couple of nights of screaming to contend with and she tried the throw-the-dummy-across-the-room game for a while, but we stayed strong and she got bored and now....(fingers, toes, knees and elbows crossed)...she only wakes up about once a night. She’s recently moved from a cot to a toddler bed, however, and her new game is let’s-get-out-of-bed-and-dance-on-the-landing-for-an-hour-at-bedtime. Or let’s-eat-the-Sudocrem. Or let’s-escape-and-put-Mammy’s-Clinique-makeup-all-over-my-face. Or let’s-spread-Welsh-Nanny’s-hard-skin-remover-all-over-the-walls. One baby gate on the bedroom door, all cosmetics out of reach, and all objects she could stand on removed from the room and we are almost getting there with the littlest Gremlin...

And THEN....Dad develops Sleep Apnoea and starts snoring like a tractor revving in the lowest gear while running over a pig attached to a megaphone! Dad has a teeny tiny mouth, which is a standing joke between us (it really is the tiniest mouth ever seen on a fully grown human), but the noise that comes out of it is not from this world. He falls asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow so I don’t even get a head start - I think his record is eight seconds from pillow to snore - and it’s beginning to affect our relationship because I want to murder him in his sleep. Instead of missing him when he’s working a night shift, I now whisper a subtle “get in”, spread out like a starfish under my duck feather duvet and enjoy my six to seven hours of sometimes unbroken shut eye. When he’s at home, he tops up my supply of extra thick earplugs or he sleeps on Owen’s bedroom floor – because luckily Owen could sleep through an atomic bomb.  Unfortunately, Ava can’t and he contributes to her night waking even though the bedroom doors are shut and there’s a wall between them. Those are the nights when he sleeps on the sofa. He’s sought medical advice and the doctor basically said “you’re fat”. I creased myself laughing at this diagnosis but Dad didn’t find it funny when the GP prescribed him some Slimming World vouchers.

But despite wanting to throw myself out of a window to run away forever between the hours of 11pm and 6am, and despite wishing for two or three more hours of slumber when Ava begins the morning wake up call, I do enjoy seeing their little faces pink and fresh from their sleep as they clamber into bed with us for morning cuddles. At least until Ava stands on my head whilst trying to look out of the window, or her piddly nappy leaks all over my sheets, or the two Gremlins begin their morning chinning session, or Dad farts under the covers and we all choke and suffocate.