Sleep Like a Babe

So – Clara is a month old today. Where has that gone then? In a daze, mostly.

There is one thing that takes precedence over everything else when a new baby arrives in the house, and that thing is Sleep. Very little else matters. It is sleep – or the lack of it – which dictates the rest of existence. A reasonable amount of sleep, cumulatively acquired, in chunks of three hours or more in the darkest watches of the night spells a reasonable existence the following day. Things get done. Phones get answered. Food gets eaten. Ablutions occur. An unreasonable and inhuman deprivation of sleep in the night leads to only one thing the following day. Making up for it.

I have no idea why a good night's sleep is described as "sleeping like a baby". "Sleeping like someone without a baby" would be far more apposite. So far, however, – (touch wood, and don’t say it too loudly) - we haven’t been doing too badly. Clara, having turned in a model delivery, is now following it up with pretty darn close to text-book eating and resting. Plenty of time for things to change, however, and I am a very long way from feeling smug.

One of the great things about this Blog is that I have been able to go back over some of my old posts about Eleanor’s arrival, and completely remind myself of stuff that was lost long ago in the mists of wipe-outfulness. Thus, I am prompted, Eleanor forgot how to eat at precisely two weeks. My Dairy-free regime began almost immediately thereafter, and relative calm was restored, until I was foolish enough to attempt to introduce her to a bottle. Perhaps all this is yet to come.

Other chapters in the new baby story have already begun to repeat themselves. I hadn’t remembered this either, until it happened again, but I always get a recurring dream when I have a new baby in the house. I have it most nights. The dream is that the baby is in our bed. Not very dramatic, you may think, but I can make it so. The dream is that the baby is lost in the bed: drowning somewhere under the duvet, and I wake in a panic, and have to dive in for the rescue. So I really do. Much to Mark’s chagrin.

He’s used to it now, of course, but he has woken on many a confused occasion in the past, to find me scrabbling wildly around under the duvet, squawking: “Where’s the baby?! Where’s the baby?!” Not unfairly, that is a question that he expects me to have the answer to, particularly at three o’ clock in the morning. I had him properly foxed the first few times, and he joined me in the futile search of our bed for quite some anxious moments, before he realised that I was barking mad, telling lies, and fast asleep.

This time around, of course, we are not the only ones who stand to have our sleep disturbed by a tiny feeder. The timing is all wrong for poor Josh, who is also currently contending with a new-found fear of the dark, and the relatively recent experience of bad dreams. The darkness we can deal with by way of night lights and bedroom door open. Nightmares we have struggled with for a number of months; trying to explain the whole concept of dreaming to a five year old, and wholly failing to persuade him that the images that seem so real to him are not any reflection of reality whatsoever. You can see the scepticism in his eyes when you patiently explain, for the umpty-umpth time, that the monster / robot / alien / prisoner-with-a-wig-on, ( last night’s offering), is not really hiding in his bedroom, just waiting for him to fall asleep, before leaping forth and acting out a complicated tableau at the bottom of his bed. The dark-fear thing is also badly timed, in that the open door leaves him much more vulnerable to Clara’s dulcet tones at whatever hour she decides to dine.

Incidentally, for those who care about these things, I should explain where we are up to this time on Gina Ford: Queen of Sleeping Babies. Veteran blog readers will know the ecstatic enthusiasm which I bore this slightly dubious baby expert and author, during the early raising of my previous progeny. I am now working from the: “Sod It….. Whatever. - Limited Edition.” of ‘The Contented Little Baby Book’. This is an Edition which I have edited myself. There is only one copy. It basically comprises vaguely reading Gina’s book again, and sort of remembering the routines, and laughing at the really funny bits.

My very favourite is from the: “Newborn to One Week Routine”, where it says:
“08:00. You should be eating cereal, toast, and a drink no later than eight o’clock.”
In fairness to Gina, she does not specify which brand of cereal you have to eat at precisely 8am, and you are entirely free to choose your own drink, ( probably not whisky); but if you fancied fruit or a fry-up, then you can obviously forget it, or your baby will never fit into a routine, and you will all die of sleep deprivation. Her regime remains, in my view, an excellent concept, written in an utterly appalling ‘delusional dictator’ kind of style. Still, a good bet when you have absolutely no other idea what to do. These days, I follow the routines to the extent that when Clara happens to coincide with the timetable, I go: “Oh look! Clara is Gina Fording!” Other than that….. Sod it. Whatever.

Mark totally stole the show the other night, however, in the sleep disturbance stakes. He woke too early, at around 4:30am, to the sound of the dawn chorus. Unusually, every other body in our house was deeply asleep and peaceful. In a moment of sweet conjugal affection, (and perhaps a small amount of boredom), he turned to his sleeping wife, ( her mouth doubtless hanging open, dribbling slightly), and gently stroked her cheek. Wife ( almost literally) hit the ceiling with shock and terror, and landed to find ( in her sleep befuddled state) a man lying next to her, staring right into her eyeballs and reaching out a hand for her throat. Much screaming and hysterical tears ensued for the next few moments, until highly apologetic, and yet slightly amused, husband could bring her round enough to convince her of his true identity and non-violent intentions.
I then had about a quart of adrenalin pumping round my body for the next half an hour. I expended most of it on berating Mark.

Poor Clara. She can be as well behaved and peaceful as she likes, but the nocturnal machinations of the rest of her oddball family ensure that the house will remain a madhouse the next day, regardless.