Go the F*ck to Sleep
It’s 5.30am in this house, sometimes ten minutes earlier, sometimes ten minutes later. But always, most definitely, without fail before the sun comes up on that magical sleep-training tool, the Gro Clock.
Here’s how things roll in the house (okay flat, but who says flat?) of no sleep.
Evening comes, everybody’s high as a kite/wailing because they’re over-tired.
‘Tomorrow mummy, I’m going to try reeeeeeeally hard to stay in bed until the sun!’
‘That would be great darling! Because mummy is losing grip on her sanity from the lack of sleep!’
5.30am: wailing.
‘I don’t want to sleep any more. Bed is boring!’
‘Snuggle down darling, it’s still nighttime, cuddle panda and go back to sleep until the sun.’
Louder wailing.
‘Stop that, everyone else is asleep, the neighbours are asleep and you will wake them up. It’s time to snuggle back down and go back to sleep.’
Mummy goes back to bed, luxuriating in the three inches of duvet-less space left by the co-sleeping toddler. I say co-sleeping, there isn’t much sleep. Kicking, yes, attempts at breastfeeding, yes, sleeping? For wimps.
‘I got something in my mouth mummy.’
‘Let mummy see. Is it a piece of fluff?’
‘No a bogey.’
‘Okay, bogeys are yuck. Give it to mummy’
By 6am, everybody’s up. Thank God for CBeebies. Many a 5 minute nap has been snatched while Chris and Pui wiggle their worms (what’s that all about?)
BUT, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our old friend British Summer Time! Yes this Sunday, the clocks Spring forward with considerably more zest than a sleep-deprived mother, and we can all fool ourselves that 5.30am is 6.30am, and 6am is 7am! I’m thinking of it not as losing an hour, but regaining my sanity.
For a few, sweet, joyful mornings, the eldest WILL stay in bed until the sun comes up on his Gro Clock, and the youngest will refrain from bogey-mining until a more decent hour.
Whoever invented British Summer Time was surely a desperate parent, wishing their child would Go the F*ck to Sleep. At least until CBeebies starts.
About Alison McGarragh-Murphy
Alison writes and edits stuff for The Motherload®, and is also a radio producer and broadcast journalist, a mum of two and a wife of one. Since becoming a mother she has (mostly) gladly swapped a busy social life of gigs, pubs, art galleries and museums for dancing in the kitchen, drinking on the sofa, finger painting and hanging out at the park. She talks incessantly about not having slept for four years.
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