I’ve written before about how middle of the night awake times with babies create tensions and arguments between my husband and I. I think that never before children do you argue in quite the same way and the things that are said in the heat of moments when little sleep has been had, I find, can be thoroughly vicious in a way you would never normally be! You might speak terribly to the one person in the world who you really shouldn’t because let’s face it, you love each other and have these beautiful, SCREAMING and non sleeping yes, but beautiful children together. But… Sleep deprivation in it’s full torturous state can drive us to lots we shouldn’t be proud of!
I’m not just talking about how my husband can treat me, this isn’t a poor me post and this isn’t the middle of the night remember, I can afford to be rational in a way that midnight arguments never allow me. In the cold light of day I can see that I can be just as nasty to him as he can be to me. We sometimes swear at each other, shout, lose our rag and to be honest, I’ve kicked him out of the bed and to the sofa on many an occasion. These are the moments when we should be sticking together, offering to bring each other a glass of water, seeing if we can help in any way but instead with every snore he emits while I lie awake feeding, feeding, feeding, only boils up a passion of vengeance that in the early hours when he might stir once leaves me wanting to club him with the glass containing the water I got up and got for myself!
Most of the time he doesn’t deserve it any more than I deserve the things he might say to me when I just can’t get the baby to stop crying and go back to sleep. ‘FEED HIM, YOU’RE THE ONE THAT’S MADE HIM SO DEPENDENT ON BREAST MILK’! My husband might say as he turns his back and I’ll shout ‘I HAVE DONE YOU IDIOT’ in retaliation! Oh and we’ve said far, far worse of course.
There was the night very early on with Florence, possibly our first middle of the night spat, when he said ‘Ruth, this is MY WEEKEND for crying out loud, can’t you just get up with her!’ Like the roar of a tiger I screamed ‘WHEN’S MY EFFING WEEKEND?’ We laughed about it eventually, perhaps not immediately but it’s a story we tell now and I laugh. It’s hard to forget what has been said in the twilight when you feel the whole world is asleep but you and you’re counting all the merits your partner should afford you because they had 5 minutes more in bed than you, got to read the paper before they fell asleep and had at least half an hour in the bathroom before anyone needed them! But we must! Sometimes it takes a while longer than others but night time slanging matches never really mean anything.
What got me thinking about this again this week? Well Jonny stormed off to the living room one night, he wasn’t banished but decided he needed more sleep and with the children poorly in bed this wasn’t happening. I seethed as I saw that he had the luxury of being able to do this while I, who is always needed, could never do the same! 5 minutes later and Jimmy threw up, again, in my hair, all over the bed… Everywhere! I called Jonny on his phone who was not amused and although came to look at the vomit river in our bedroom only said this ‘You can’t have an effing shower at this time of night’! And off he went back to bed on the sofa. The clean sheets and fresh pillows he had taken with him waiting for him to lie back down and slumber!
I on the other hand had to change the double bed, put washing in the machine, clean up the baby, explain to the toddler why we were all up and she then thought it was all tremendous fun and wanted to play… I scrubbed the feather pillow and then, with both poorly children sitting on the cold bathroom floor I had to shower the vom from my hair. An hour later and I needed to change Jimmy again, doing this in Florence and Jimmy’s room which is right by the living room woke poor Jonny again and he came to see why I was making so much noise! If I’d had a mallet… Well I don’t think I’d have been responsible!
In the morning Jonny was very sheepish and when I wouldn’t talk to him I think he knew he was beaten and it would be a week of nappy changing duties for him! The points system, always the points system! See, my Jonny is lovely really and such a hands on Daddy. Lack of sleep can turn even the best of us into utter monsters! No wonder they use it as a form of torture, frankly, anything else would be a walk in the park surely?
Anyway, with Father’s Day approaching this weekend it is me who holds all the cards and surely will have a cup of tea in bed… Or will I allow myself to be charitable and forget about the night time storm off, desertion and accusations? We shall see?!
MY LIFE WITH 2!
This has not been an easy week as the children, then I, got a tummy bug! We went to our local favourite SureStart centre for messy play and made Daddy some Father’s day cards. A birthday child who had been at the morning session had brought party food and left some of it for the afternoon session. As my children tucked into mini meat pastries and mini scotch eggs I just didn’t really think about it. Looking back and why did I let them eat food that had been sitting out for hours? That evening Jimmy started throwing up and every twenty minutes I became the vomit catcher. Sometimes I was successful but more often than not, well, we’ll leave it there… So, I think every piece of bedding, towel, muslin and probably all of our clothes have been in the washing machine this week!
Poor little Jimmy! I tried to sanitise door handles and clean with anti bac but the inevitable happened and yesterday I got a call from nursery to say Florence had been sick. Up the sleeve of her teacher’s coat no less – nice! Jimmy was still poorly and being sick every few hours yesterday so we all snuggled up in little beds on the sofa and as they slept in between stomach lurches I watched films and cuddled. I’ve never seen Point Break before, it was good! The only up side to under the weather babes is the snuggles on the sofa! Florence is very good really, she cuddled her brother and wanted to make him feel better even when feeling ghastly herself and she tried so hard to always make the bowl or bathroom herself! And my little Jimmy, as ever, smiled through the whole thing. He always does, even when poorly!
Obviously I then got it too and last night didn’t get much sleep… Oh well, such is life! Jonny has his Open Uni exam today so at least he doesn’t have it! We’re off to Norwich later and hopefully, with everyone well, we’ll have a nice day Sunday. I’ve rearranged our Saturday plans for Pleasurewood Hills as I think a theme park might not be quite right for us after our dodgy tummies but we’ll go later in the summer. So, a quiet weekend of family for us please! And good luck Daddy for today!
Please do follow me on Twitter @rocknrollerbaby.
I was not paid for any part of this post.
Follow