Getting Through the Night

Madeleine Thompson - 7 Mar 18

Before our eldest child was born my husband and I attended anti-natal classes in the hope that we would learn everything about looking after babies and make some new friends too.  We didn’t learn everything we needed to know but we did make some new friends.     Thinking back to the class, I remember some highly amusing parts and the general lesson that giving birth was hugely within my control and would be one long, sugary bonding moment.  I think, in hindsight, I should have requested a refund.

However, the amusing parts of the course were great.  Mostly because they were not designed to be amusing.  Such as the moment the course tutor encouraged our other halves to massage our backs in preparation for labour day.  My husband and I smirked throughout this.   And the bit where the tutor asked us to close our eyes and imagine it was the middle of the night and our baby was screaming.  She told us we should look out the window, see other people’s upstairs lights on and feel solidarity that there were others awake with their babies too.

Of course, in reality, gazing wistfully from the window was the last thing on our minds when we were trying to get her back to sleep.    The early night-times were challenging and tiring, as expected.   Over time, this has eased, but we have found that night times have forever been changed by having children.    People talk a lot about when their children will sleep through the night, but, with young children in the house, the days of you as an adult sleeping through the night are well and truly numbered.   Even when night feeds are no longer needed, there are so many other reasons not to sleep all night.   Tending to children’s nightmares, night terrors, early waking, illness, toilet accidents.   The list goes on.

But what do we do with all this new-found time in the dead of night whilst we are waiting for the smalls to settle and the rest of the world is sleeping?   Being of a busy mind, I find I cannot simply sit and stare at the wall.  So, over the last six years, I’ve developed a repertoire of things to get me through the night.  Top of the list is obviously internet browsing.  When God invented phones that could be dimmed at night, he knew he was on to a winner.  Social media channels are fab but not that exciting in the middle of the night.    So, I explore, in no particular order, the news channels, Internet Movie Database, online encyclopedias, blogzines, house moving sites (we’re not moving) and general random stuff just to pass the time.  If there was an audit of my searches in the graveyard hours, things like, ‘Russell Howard favourite colour,’ and, ‘How to get rid of bathroom mold,’ would not be unusual.

Next up we have eating a bonus breakfast downstairs. This only works if the kids are nearly back to sleep otherwise they would rumble me and we would have a whole heap of new night-time discomfort.

I also find the middle of the night is a good time for some personal grooming, i.e. picking nail varnish from my fingers or tweezing facial hairs that seem to hide themselves in daylight.

And finally, night-time day-dreaming.  This involves not being asleep but letting my mind wander back to a time when responsibilities were not there, so usually a hedonistic night at university in the room of a handsome beau.  This is lovely although the jolt back to reality is a bit more severe when I’m ripped from my replay of naughtiness with Cockney Tom when one of the kids screams, “Mummy, where did you go!”.    It never seems appropriate to reply, “Sorry sweetie I was just transported back in time to winter 1999 and to one of my most favourite nights with Cockney Tom,”.  So, I simply reply, “I’m right here,” and then sit down on the bedroom floor to settle in for the long haul again whilst I google what Cockney Tom has been doing for the last nineteen years.  Sigh.

These are my things to get me through the night.   Perhaps you have yours too or perhaps you’re just starting out with the night-time stuff.   Wherever you are up to, I wish you happy nights.

Madeleine Thompson

I am mum to my little chicks, Aisha, 6 and Abel, 4. Originally from Yorkshire, UK, I now live in a little town in the North West. By day, I work for myself as a freelance PA. By night, I indulge my passion for writing.

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