Sleep, it’s for the weak.

You may recall a previous post where I spoke about how bedtime in our house could be a bit of a rigmarole. Well, we cracked it! We had a full week of going to bed and going to sleep brilliantly. I was going to allow myself to be smug then…

00:43 – Aoife wakes up shouting. She needs a drink, that’s fine. My barely awake brain, slouchy face and I take her a bottle of water. She drinks some, thanks me and lies down to go back to sleep. Nothing to be seen here. Back to bed.

01:00 – Aoife wakes shouting “Mummy, I’ve had a nightmare”. It’s been 15 minutes since she lay down, has she even had chance to be asleep never mind have a nightmare? Obviously as a good Mummy I duly go to her. She tells me she had a nightmare called ‘Night of the House Fire’ (she gives all her dreams titles) I reassure her it was just a dream. The house isn’t on fire and she isn’t made of fire. It’s all OK and I will leave the landing light on.

01:15 – Aoife has decided that she’d probably just rather be awake now and if I could turn on the big light and pass her some books that’d be great. I explain that with it being the middle of the night that isn’t going to happen, besides, it’s school tomorrow. The landing light is on, she should just snuggle down with Pip and go to sleep. I go back to bed.

01:20 – Aoife is letting the house now how unfair I am for not letting her have her light on. She then moves on to shouting about how she “really, actually” can’t get to sleep. I point out that if she maybe stopped talking and shut her eyes she might give herself a chance to sleep but it’s not going to happen while she is shouting and keeping herself, and now everyone else, awake.

01:40 – All is silent, everyone has gone back to sleep, except for me. I’m now wide awake. I don’t fall asleep easily, I’m not one of those people who can nap or sleep anywhere. Once I’m woken up and forced to engage in conversation then I’m just awake.

01:45 – I try to sleep but I can hear a tap dripping. I try to ignore it to no avail. I try to find the offending tap. It won’t stop dripping so I stick a bodypuff thing under it to silent the drips. I go to the hall, I see Aoife is asleep so I turn the light off “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo” I turn it back on quickly. I don’t think any damage is done, she still looks asleep. I go back to bed.

01:50 –  I can hear the cats trashing the kitchen. Climbing up the airer full of clean clothes and generally leaving clumps of fur all over the place. I’m sure I can even HEAR the clumps of fur landing!

01:55 – My brain joins the party “as you’re awake anyway, here’s a list of not that important things for you to stress about, lying here in the dark.

1 – Aoife needs to decorate eggs for school.
2 – You must remember to buy an egg to take to school.
3 – Where did I tidy Aoife’s glitter pens to?
4 – I must steam the snot off the couch” and so it goes on.

02:40 – The last time I checked to see what time it was. My brain got bored of itself and I finally fell back to sleep.

05:30 – Seth decides to wake up for a bit of a shout. Now, Seth’s a tricky customer, if you go in to see that he’s OK he considers that a binding contract to getting up right at that moment. I lay listening to him, I quietly whisper through the monitor “please go back to sleep baby”……HE DOES! I drift back off……

06:30 – The alarm goes off. My eyes feel like someone has stored sand under my eyelids. I know that it’s going to be a ‘lots of coffee’ kind of day.

Aoife bursts into the room

“MORNING MUMMY! DIDN’T I SLEEP WELL!”

Urrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh