Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Not Sleepingness

    It seems to be a theme around here, I don’t sleep and at the pinnacle of my not sleepingness, I blog.

    When I’m not getting any sleep, sleep seems to be all I can think about. Will I get enough in order to cope through tomorrow? Will Isaac go down before midnight? If I make sure there is no butter/zinc cream/crackers/vegemite/water/scissors in Amy’s reach, can I stay in bed dozing while she destroys the house? How hard will I have to kick Nathan to make him get up in the morning and leave me blissfully alone?

    On and on it goes. Circles, all made up of the same questions.

    ***

    Yesterday:

    Nathan: ‘So, what do I do with it?’

    Veronica: ‘It’s pouches. Just get one out and pop it up into the ceiling.’

    N: ‘How?’

    V:’Well open the pac….’

    He looked at me oddly.

    N: ‘Not like that! How do I get it into the ceiling?’

    V: ‘Oh. Those gaps in the dining room roof will work.’

    N: ‘Of course.’

    You know it’s bad when neither of you bats an eyelid when you talk about the gaps in your ceiling. Or the throwing of poison pouches up into the ceiling to kill the fucking mice. Or the fact that I checked the poison placement to make sure that it wasn’t going to fall back out of a gap.

    More to the point, you know the mouse infestation is bad when you can smell them. Or when it sounds like mice wearing football boots and pushing shopping trolleys are living in the ceiling. Needless to say, they are noisy and if I see them I will stomp on their furry little heads.

    ****

    Dear Isaac,

    Did you know that breast milk has a sleep inducing hormone in it? You did? Wait, so that would be why you are refusing to both feed and sleep right now? Surely there is room enough in your stomach for just a tiny little sleep inducing feed? Please?

    Well you know if I have to keep jiggling you to stop the crying, I am likely to jiggle an entire feed out of you. Wait, you knew that too?

    Heh.

    Good thing I love you so much.

    Mummy.

    ***

    Dear Amy,

    You are much bigger than a moth. Please stop waking screaming because you are having nightmares about them. Tomorrow I am going to teach you how to stomp up and down on their little moth heads. Again. I know that we’d just about gotten you over your moth phobia when you got scared of a moth the other day. Everything would have been fine had Daddy not tried to show you the dead moth so you wouldn’t be scared, when suddenly the moth came to life.

    I know you were terrified, it showed in how white you went and how quickly you threw yourself under as much of me as you could find while screaming your little heart out. I’m sorry the moth came back to life.

    I’m sorry I laughed so hard I cried. Tomorrow we will stomp on moth heads. Together.

    I love you.

    Mummy.

    ***

    Gosh I’m tired.

  • Solidarity

    There comes a time in a new baby’s life, when they stop sleeping all day and start having some wakeful periods.

    Then, a few more weeks into the new motherhood gig, you will find your baby starts sleeping even less and wants to become more part of the family, rather than just a cute blob parked in the corner.

    And if that baby is one of my children, there comes a time when they stop fucking sleeping altogether.

    Two hour naps turn into 30 minute-and-fuss sessions. You will find yourself looking at your cute little blob while saying under your breath ‘I just got you to freaking sleep, 30 minutes is not enough sleep, go back to SLEEP. SLEEP SLEEP SLEEPSLEEPSllleeeppslepepepslsls….’ Conversation at this point becomes useless, because your adorable blob is looking at you with very SAD eyes [Can you see my sad eyes mum? Pick me UP! Or else, I will have to drop my bottom lip and piiiick meeeee uppppppp] and wanting to feed, a-freaking-gain.

    No matter that the last feed was barely 45 minutes ago, your baby is HUNGRY and needs you NOW WOMAN, where are MY BOOBS?

    At which point, you will feed him again, because dude, it’s easier than looking at that wobbly bottom lip and if you’re lucky he will go back to sleep.

    If you’re lucky. Apparently, not if you’re me.

    Sure, he goes back to sleep, just so long as I don’t move my nipple away from his mouth. So what if he isn’t actually feeding anymore, that nipple is like a comforter and removing it will cause DEATH DESTRUCTION AND MAYHEM. Or you know, your baby to wake back up.

    Same difference.

    Once the baby wakes up, he isn’t really awake. He has realised however, that your nipple is no longer in his mouth and he will thrash and flail like a hooked fish in order to try and find that nipple again. He won’t however, open his mouth at all which would allow you to shove your tit back in there and shut him up.

    All this causes passive aggression.

    Like wandering around the house with a baby in your arms, muttering stupid things like: ‘Am I the only one with working boobs in this house?!’ [Answer: Yes] ‘Am I the only one able to settle a crying baby?’ [Answer: Yes. Not the only one available, but the one one able.].

    Sleeplessness makes you a little silly.

    Because as horrible as the first 3 weeks are when your newborn has no idea what sleep is and how to achieve it, sleeplessness is accumulative. And your 8 week old baby? Knows exactly what sleep is and knows he doesn’t want to be doing it.

    [And let’s not get into sleep and toddlers and nightmares and did you know Amy pulled all the carpet up in her bedroom tonight in order to not fall asleep? Tonight I have discovered that Amy’s bedroom carpet is actually a large mat and isn’t actually nailed down. But, whatever.]

    Your toddler knows when things are particularly bad too. This is when she chooses to be naughty. Like, finger painting the walls with Isaac’s zinc cream. Like unfolding every single bit of unfolded washing. Hey, but I bet if you ask Amy, sleeplessness and mummy distraction/inability to get up due to baby on boob makes for lots of fun. Or maybe complete boredom. Something.

    Sleeplessness also makes you slightly less nice to the people around you. Someone says ‘I’m tired’ and I have to resist the urge to laugh maniacally and yell ‘SUCK IT UP SWEETHEART!’ Because you know, you might get to sleep tomorrow. I probably will not.

    I do not need to resist the urge to laugh and yell if the person complaining about tiredness also has a baby or a sleepless toddler. Then it’s all about solidarity in sleeplessness and circle hugs and chocolate and comatose like zen states.

    So in short, I am fucking tired and it doesn’t make me a nice person [actually, some people would call me downright bitchy. whatever though]. This child of mine will sleep one day, right?

    Heh. Someday.

  • And POP! my head exploded.

    There is something about seeing a mouse and not being able to schwack it that makes my head explode. So, when I heard a scritch scritch sound and finally tracked it down to a mouse underneath the fridge, I may possibly have started to froth at the mouth.

    ‘Argghh! There is a mouse! Look! A MOUSE AND IT IS LOOKING AT ME.’

    [I may have possibly have been shining a torch at the mouse, hoping that the torch beam would magically turn into a laser and burn the little fucker to death.]

    Nathan:’Well? Not much I can do about it.’

    ‘It is looking at me! WITH BEADY EYES!’

    ‘Sigh’

    Nathan might get a little sick of how I overreact when I see a mouse and can’t kill it instantly by mind power alone.

    ‘ARGHHHH! It is running up my FRIDGE! IT RAN UP THE BACK OF MY GODDAMN FRIDGE! AND ONTO THE FUCKING SINK! Kill it! kill kill kill the goddamn thing!’

    This is where I’d like to point out that a torch is fucking useless as a schwacker. Especially if you are trying to schwack around the dirty dishes. Even more so if there is a nice little mouse hole at the back of the sink for the mouse to disappear into.

    Fucker.

    I have now moved the mousetrap. Nothing would make me happier than to dance around gleefully over the body of a dead mouse.

    ***

    In other news, I am 6 comments off having 10000 comments on this blog. Will *YOU* be the ten thousandth commenter? No, you don’t win anything except my everlasting love and devotion. Sorry about that.

  • Through my eyes

    7 weeks

    I might just be addicted to him.

    7 weeks sleeping.

    Sleeping! Not a common occurance in these parts lately.

    146

    091

    Spider. Not a hunstman though.

    Don’t you wish you lived in Tasmania too? Looky what we found in the dining room! Aside from the shoddy building.

    What I do all day.

    What I spend all day doing and seeing. Yes, that is baby vomit on my leg.

    Siblings

    I popped Isaac into the washing basket while I folded the clothes. Amy promptly decided that she needed a washing basket too.

    See more Weekly Winners here.

  • 4am

    Sunset

    Around 4am, Isaac starts to whimper and whinge. Nothing unusual there, it’s normally his second or third feed of the night, with bedtime being anywhere between 10pm and midnight. I roll over, bleary eyed and stick my little finger in his mouth, all the while cursing whatever makes him hate the dummy so bad, but also loving it a little too.

    I wait until I can feel him sucking and praying to all that is good and holy, I lay there on my side, eyes closed and start to doze back off to sleep. Unfortunately, that isn’t what Isaac has in mind, because dammit woman, don’t you know that I am not getting any milk from this here finger?

    I crack open my eyes again and sit up to grab the extra pillows kept at the end of the bed. This is typically where I disturb any mice partying on my bedroom floor and they scatter. I hope they run right into the traps I have laid, but I’m not hopeful. I unwrap the small grumbling one and rearrange us sitting up on the pillows. Someone doesn’t like feeding laying down, even though it would be so much more civilised for us both.

    He looks at me as I struggle with my t-shirt. Finally pulling the hem out from under my bum, I manage to get it pulled up enough to free my nipple. It’s here that you can see his eyes light up as he realises that yes! there are BOOBS! all for him! He flails his little arms, control isn’t yet his strong point. Still half asleep, I can’t help but smile when our eyes meet and he smiles his biggest grin; right before going back to the frantic ducking while trying to magically will my nipple into his mouth. Rooting like a carnival clown, I finally manage to get him latched and he breathes a big deep sigh before going boneless in my arms. He grumbles a little as the milk is slow to let down, then settles into sleep, his eyes closing.

    I snuggle down into my doona and rest my head on the mounds of pillows behind it. If I’m being forced to feed sitting up, the least I am going to do is use enough pillows to be completely comfortable. Light seeps in through the open bedroom door as I turn my head and rest.

    Inevitably, I will wake up two hours later with a stiff neck, Isaac still snuggled into the crook of my arm and a nipple that looks like it was left in the bathtub for too long. Somewhere in there my other breast has leaked, leaving me to sleep in a puddle of my own milk. This is where my morning starts, as I try and put Isaac down beside me. Unfortunately, having savoured two hours of snuggling with Mummy, he doesn’t want to. And besides, it’s been a whole TWO HOURS since the start of his last feed, don’t I know that he needs the other breast RIGHT NOW?

    I put him down anyway, fussing [lots] as I make my way outside to pee. It’s getting colder now and my breath makes little white puffs in the air. Dawn is breaking and I glance briefly at the sunrise. I *should* go and grab my camera and photograph it. Should is quickly changed to can’t, as Isaacs fussing is getting louder. I come back inside, have a drink, check Amy and the mouse traps [and if the fire is going, hold a mouse cremation for any caught mice]. I’m moving rather too fast for 6am and not enough sleep. I grab a nappy and wipes as I head in to deal with Isaac’s bum.

    Ten minutes later, Isaac is back on my boob, the lesser of the soggy nipples clamped firmly in his mouth. Me? I’m willing him to fall back asleep [for the love of GOD] because dude, don’t you know your sister is going to be awake in a little while and I am not ready to be awake for real yet?

    He gets laid down, milky sweet and dozy and I let him suck on my little finger. He might pass back out, or he will suck on my finger quietly for the next 30 minutes, allowing me to doze a little more. Or, he won’t. Either way, I don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.

    Later, Amy will wake up and wander into our bedroom for a snuggle, all four of us. Happy. Contented. Even if I am slightly sleepless.

    But hell, that’s what the internet is for, right? Hormonal, sleepless blog posts?

    Right?

    Right.