First salad, then sleep

Pushing through a period of sleeplessness

The baby just went through a month of very little sleep. It coincided with her first birthday and so I felt particularly lied to by all the people who said the first year is the hardest. I'm glad I didn't know about this phase when she was a newborn. I'm glad I didn't know that her sleep would almost revert to that early state: hours and hours of wakefulness in the night. Four, five hours of awake time. On a good night, just two hours. The difference being that this time, I had to get up and go to work the next day.

I have always hated January. But January without sleep tested my patience to new levels. I tried to go outside and find beauty in nature, but I was tired and the beautiful thing was my bed, waiting for me.

L said when she had her son she used to fantasise about being hit by a truck so she could go to the hospital and sleep. When she first told me this I laughed heartily. She sent me a big book about child sleep that for months, I didn't need to open. After the first few months, the baby had periods of restlessness, but was generally fairly easy to settle. This period of bad sleep has been defined, for me, by my inability to soothe her. She doesn’t want anything. Not milk or comfort or singing or rocking. She just wants to be awake.

People offer well-meaning advice: don’t breastfeed her, don’t give her a bottle, don’t rock her, don’t pick her up, leave her to cry.

Instead, alternating with T, I spend the hours with her, trying anything I can think of to calm her down. I stand in the dark and wait for the magic thing that will make her settle. In the end, it is only time, and a little game of how much is needed before she gives up. Every morning before work she is sound asleep.

Now is the point where I should recount what little snacks helped in my sleeplessness, but I honestly can’t remember what I ate.

The only thing of note is that recently I had the bright idea of starting our dinners with salad instead of having it at the end, as supposedly this helps with glucose spikes. But the rest of the day I don’t give a damn about glucose, and shovel in whatever I find at whatever time I please.

By the time she has settled in the evenings I am extremely heartened by the sight of the salad with little peas, but I can feel the cortisol surge through my body with every little sound from her room. If she wakes up now, how many hours will it be? 

The only answer, in the end, is to admit defeat. She will sleep eventually, I tell myself, when my patience left hours ago. You can’t control when, so forget about bed, forget about sleep. Your job is just to be here.

I feel, constantly, that I am the problem. That other mothers have been diligent in working out sleep and I have failed. I won’t bother to recount what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, but these kind of stupid thoughts surface.

I feel better when F doesn’t try to give me a solution. When I tell her I’m doing everything wrong, she says: ‘The opposite is probably true. She just wants you, and you’re doing everything you can to make her feel better.’

Yes, I think, we’ve all been through this phase, some of us for much longer than others. We know what to tell each other. I know in many ways I’ve been extremely lucky. I try to believe her.

I have all these feelings, and then – the baby’s sleep suddenly starts to improve, for seemingly no reason at all.

I am still afraid of the wee hours, but I have hardened to them. It makes me angry, I think, now that I understand this is what working parents have been doing all this time. How foolish that I never realised how they turned up every day with so little energy.

I laugh to myself about the salad thing, because reducing your glucose spikes is supposed to make you less tired. But every night after the little salad I fall asleep at 8.30 on the sofa.

Perhaps deep down, though, in some part of my small intestine or some corner of my gut, it makes a difference. I’m trying, I tell my body, I really am.

***

This week I’m eating: gorgonzola stuffed gnocchi, M&S Extremely Chocolatey Chocolate Rounds.