Sleep, Sleep…where for art thou Sleep?

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 

The menacing sound from the hallway taunts me on a frequent basis. The sinister agenda behind its tutting has blurred into what I now hear as;  Still. Awake. Still. Awake. Still. Awake. 

The abundance of lovely catch phrases tossed about – ‘tired’, ‘exhausted’, ‘fatigued’, ‘sleep deprived’ – are all terribly cute when injected into conversations and facebook statuses…but I’m afraid that not even when mushed together in a super linguistic Über word, do they in fact capture what Mum’s mean when they yawn.

To put it simply, I. Don’t. Sleep. Ever.

What I do, occasionally between the hours of 1am and 5am, is nap on the job.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve startled with a loud snore, jolting to find myself on the lounge with Miss Moo attached at the boob. Exuding judgement, she frowns up at me as if to say, ‘When you’re ready there Mum, can we continue what we started here please?’

In all honestly, I have on several occasions looked back down at her and whispered under my breath, ‘At this rate sweetheart, just be grateful I got the right kid and am not currently trying to force your three year old sister to latch’. 

It is, after all, a slippery slope from here into madness, and the decline is being elevated daily. 

At the risk of being institutionalised, may I just state that I have a conspiracy theory.  Not only are my children conspiring against me, they are taking bets on my inevitable nervous breakdown.

I came to this conclusion last week when it felt all too suspicious that Miss Boo had positioned several toy trains in random doorways throughout the house. Thomas and his friends, clearly in on it. As are the Disney Princesses who aided in having their tiny spikey shoes littered about on the kitchen floor.

They’re draining my rational thought and ganging up on me during Soccer Hubby’s working absence. Deprive and conspire, divide and conquer. 

Further evidence of their mission lurks deviously in the darkness.

Log Book:

8pm – Place Boo in bed, feed Moo as she wakes

8.30pm –Moo nodding off, cue Boo bounding from bedroom in protest of sleep

9pm through 10pm – Tag team protests on the front line of sleep from both parties

11pm - Boo conceded and snoring, Moo initiates ‘feed me’ scream.

12am through 2am –Boo ‘I-have-nightmares-I-need-to-sleep-in-your-bed-or-I-will-scream-until-the-neighbours-call-the-police’ sequence commences.

2am –Boo snoring on my side of the bed, Moo tags in on Keep Mum Awake duty.

3am –Moo placed back in cot. Miss Boo removes foot from my rib cage only long enough to tap me on the shoulder and advise that she’s thirsty  

3.30am – Soccer Hubby rolls over and begins to snore unnervingly loud until alarm wakes him at 4.30am

5.30am – ‘Mummy, it’s morning time, I want vegemite toast and Moo is crying’

Multiply these antics by six months and we are left with only one small upside – I no longer have the need for the alarm clock setting in my phone. 

Greeted daily by muffled screeches and a three year old with one finger up her nose and the other prodding insensitively at the side of my face, I long for the days when I had the option of a snooze button. 

‘Today is the day, the day I’m going to actually snap,’ I tell myself as I butter toast and prepare portions of mashed banana. The Conspiring Sisters take note and nod at each other sinisterly as I do.

It is in the depth of these routine, sleepless notions that I wonder if I am indeed part of the zombie apocalypse and am just not consciously aware of it yet. How long into the zombie takeover do we start demanding brains, or is that just a natural progression that happens when we are too tired to move and have not been allowed to sit and eat a hot meal without hearing ‘Muuuuuuuuuuuuum!’ the second our bottoms hit the seat?

Laugh if you must, but it would be an easy assumption to make given that on a daily basis, friends and family tilt their heads patronisingly to one side and rhetorically whisper, ‘Are you getting enough sleep? You look…tired’.

Translation: ‘You look like total bollocks and I’m scattering these eggshells around you and preparing this ammo as a precautionary measure.’

Granted, I went to work last week with my dress on inside-out, but in my defence they should count themselves lucky that I remembered to dress at all.

The unfortunate catch is, even when my darling, concerned parents physically remove the children from my arms and demand with authority that I lock myself in a room and sleep… I can’t. 

I toss and turn with guilt listing the things I could be doing with this time. I have cakes to make, blogs to write, craft activities to plan. And even if I didn’t, I would still be left looking up at the ceiling struggling to remember how to sleep. 

The highest problem this issue causes is, although it may be their unintentional fault, when I do snap, it is almost certainly in the direction of my children. 

I know Miss Boo will never forget the argument that started with ‘If you want the princess shoes picked up Mummy, you do it,’ and ended somewhere in the vicinity of me dragging the vacuum over them and rattling the drum in my hand whilst shouting ‘Well I hope the Princesses enjoy being barefoot this season!!!’

It’s also worth noting that I should be awarded for the mental capacity it takes to actually form the sentence ‘can you please pick up your soccer kit,’ rather than walk up to Soccer Hubby and just flick him in the nose.

I would love nothing more to privatise these little moments. Oh how I wish I could sob in the shower for a good 30 minutes without someone knocking on the door and asking me an absurd question like ‘What drawer are the girl's pyjamas in?’ and ‘What socks should I put on them?’

But patience is only a virtue if you’ve slept the night before. Without sleep, it’s as tangible as a mermaid riding a unicorn. 

Gone are the days where blaring Florence + The Machine during a bubble bath meant ‘If you don’t let me wallow in my pity for the next hour, I will literally glue the door shut’. Now I must resort to the lie of ‘I’m just going to put my make-up on,’ to get a good 20 minutes of alone time spurting tears at the bathroom mirror. Given my current appearance, I could probably take an hour and Soccer Hubby wouldn’t think to question how much concealer application it would actually need. 

In place of sanity, sleep and self-preservation, I have a schedule. But I am not alone.

I take solace in knowing someone somewhere is reading this is the wee hours of the morning as they rock babies to sleep. Someone somewhere is staring up at their ceiling thinking ‘Really? The one night they sleep and I’m wide awake?’. Someone somewhere is watching infomercials and is genuinely convinced that they need an AbSwing. Someone somewhere is watching the Sex And The City movie at 3am and giving a standing ovation at the scene where Charlotte locks herself in the pantry and cries. (Ok, that last one was me.)

Fellow shadow dwellers, charge your glasses of caffeinated drinks – here’s to us and the knowledge that one day our teenage children will want to sleep in…

"Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them,” said C.S Lewis…. As he stayed awake all night to write The Chronicles of Narnia.