I can count on one hand the number of uninterrupted full night’s sleeps I have had in the last 7 years. Funnily enough my oldest child’s 7th birthday is this week. This is one of those correlation does indeed equal causation things. Every time one of my children learns to sleep through the night, we have found it in our hearts to have another child therefore resetting the sleep clock back to zero. There is no one to blame for this and I do not seek to assign blame. I knew that having 3 children with 2-3 year age gaps, would mean little to no sleep for around a decade, and my husband and I have managed this relatively well.
But this doesn’t negate the fact that I’m tired ALL THE TIME. So fucking tired. Like more tired than I ever thought possible. I have always been a night owl by nature. I made it through secondary school on 5 hours sleep a night because I was up reading book after book to well past midnight. In my twenties I could go clubbing in Soho all night, grab a McDonald’s breakfast in Piccadilly Circus, hot foot it up Regent Street, pick up some new underwear and a top in H&M, slide into my office chair and work a whole day incident free. I am no stranger to a late night and I thought nothing could break me.
I know different now.
So… what makes me so happy when I am so tired I could eat my own eyeballs?
- Not Napping
Let’s not gloss over the fact that chronic sleep deprivation is tough. It’s a form of torture after all. When you’re still on maternity leave there are unique challenges but at the end of the day, if I fall asleep whilst the kids are watching an afternoon movie or on a picnic blanket in the garden with a boob out so baby can just help herself… it’s not the end of the world. You can also just read Each Peach Pear Plum over and over again without thinking too much about it. But once you’re back at work you have to actually form coherent sentences. You can’t nap in the afternoon; not in my workplace anyway. And it’s probably just as well because I don’t think I’d be able to get back in the zone afterwards. To the point where after 5 months of working from home during lockdown, I have not taken a single afternoon nap.
How can I? My lunch break is sacred time. When the sun is up but I am not obliged to do anything except what I have chosen for that golden hour. It’s also the reason I’m up after 10pm writing this instead of going to bed. Everyone else is in bed. So I can do what I want! Watch what I want. Listen to podcasts/audiobooks. Do my charity work. Stare at the messy kitchen wishing the dishes clean. That sort of thing. And it makes me very happy.
2. Checking my privilege
I don’t know how I survived those early days when Baby A just couldn’t sleep. She’d feed for 45 minutes, burp constantly for half an hour, sleep for 90 minutes then wake up and want to do the whole thing again on the other breast. It was like that for 6 months. Until we discovered her gluten intolerance it was impossible for her to settle. We lived in a small house at the time. There was no spare bed for one of us to escape to some nights for a break. We didn’t have a super-king bed only a small double so co-sleeping was not an option for us. Neither was there space for having friends or family to stay to help out. Having these things is a privilege we now have and I appreciate them so much. I am still tired but at least now it’s under more manageable circumstances.
Money does not buy happiness but for us it sure has reduced the occurrence of unhappiness!
3. The three C’s… Coffee, cheese, chocolate!
Breastfeeding police alert! Drinking a cup of full strength espresso to kickstart the morning is the only way I survive. Maybe your baby would have slept better if you hadn’t poisoned her with caffeine I hear you say? What you forget is that the reason I started mainlining espresso at 8am was because she already didn’t sleep. This was definitely not a chicken and egg scenario. It was very clearly the no sleeping that came before the coffee. Same goes for chocolate and cheese. If I’m feeling like my eyes are going to close in the afternoon, a lump of cheese or a square of chocolate picks me right up. I don’t know why. I don’t really care why. It just works so I’ll take it.
4. Reminding myself that this too will pass.
And when it does, my time on this planet as a mother of young children will also have slipped by. A brief blink of time where even though I was exhausted, I loved those tiny humans so much I didn’t eat my own eyeballs just so I could watch them grow.
