The ‘New Year’ Badge

Carrie Freathy - 2 Jan 19

At approximately 4.53am last night (give or take a few seconds!) I lost the will to just keep plodding on, to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, or more accurately at that time to keep one hand gently, but rhythmically patting my daughters back!

You see, our youngest has given up on sleep, not every night of course, that would be ludicrous, as even she needs to recoup from her early morning partying! But for 3-4 consecutive nights she will wake up anytime between 11pm-2am and stay awake until anywhere between 4am-5.30am! It is quite frankly, the most exhausting thing I have ever experienced and I thought breastfeeding the little cherub every hour at night was going to be the most hard-core sleep deprivation task undertaken during her lifetime!

We have slipped into unending hours of wakefulness, followed by early rises for the school run, then Christmas Day, peppered with kids being kids and rising at dawn days, etc, etc! The overwhelm before Christmas began to hit, then the onslaught of Christmas – a multitude of amazing family and friend-packed days, leading into the reality that January was shaping up to be our busiest month yet and we needed to carve some serious work-time out of our days to ensure that we met our deadlines…

But this was going to be ok because New Year’s Day is like magic isn’t it? It hones us in on how we are going to be the best version of ourselves, how we are going to become a lean, mean fighting machine, how we are going to change our chocolate snuffling DNA into a love of sprouts (I tried for this one this Christmas, I really did, but without butter, bacon and chicken stock these little green cannonballs still taste like poison!)

Which brings me back to my 4.53am moment of despair when I realised the truth, that New Year is placed in front of us like a dangling carrot in front of a horse; like a hamster on a fricking endless wheel, New Year is a glistening glitter ball attached to the roof of a rather grotty local nightclub – to stop us from realising that life plods on one day after the other!!

(Stay with me, I know I’ve gone to a bit of a dark place but it gets better, I promise!)

By 4.57am and after a moistening of the eyes, I metaphorically slapped myself and counted my many blessings. Yes, being awake each night at this time seriously sucks, as does losing your cool because you need to go for a wee but you are stuck under a now slightly sleepy child and therefore leading you to blame your husband for even daring to breathe!

The 1^stJanuary 2019 will be lodged in my memory as the night that when I could hold on no longer, I gave my daughter to my husband and yelled (I hope to God quietly enough not to alarm our poor neighbours!) that this situation seriously sucked (peppered with a word which rhymes with ‘suck’ because I am sure toddlers don’t learn swear words at night, right?!!) and by the time I was back from my 60 second bathroom visit, YC was out for the count! Maybe like Peppa Pig’s cousin she needs loud noise to truly settle (how do you know when you’ve been watching far too much kids TV? When you reference it to highlight a situation to others, lol!)

New Year’s Day may used to have meant the cracking open of a new notebook and writing down a list of resolutions (ones that would mostly be broken by the end of January, to be honest!) but I am grateful of my reality of life; it’s ups and downs, sometimes it’s sheer relentlessness; or it’s flashes of pure laughter and joy, sometimes in the most banal of moments.

So, this year I am taking a leaf out of Dr Emma Svanberg’s book (@mumologist) by making a New Year’s Contribution – it can be something small, something big, something really simple, like volunteering for a cause close to your heart, speaking out about a cause that matters to you, supporting a loved one, interacting with strangers with a smile or a hello, essentially something that makes you feel good but that also doesn’t have to be a ball and chain that drags you down or makes you feel guilty for not achieving.

The other new trend I have come across is choosing a word that represents something you would like 2019 to be about, whether it is connection, challenges, being spontaneous, compassionate – whatever springs to your mind and fires you up. I love this idea as it means bit by bit you can aim to reach your goal, but it isn’t all ruined in one eating of a chocolate cake (yes, a whole one!) or chastising yourself for your lack of drive to go for a run at the end of an exhausting day, because there is always tomorrow…or like me on 31^stJanuary, there’s always next year!!!

And so my word is going to be…’sleep!’

Haha, no not really!

It is ‘connection’, making sure I am more present in each moment rather than being stuck in my thoughts about the next activity, or what I need to plan, etc. – put simply enjoying the moment I am in (even if that is a sleepless 4.53am moment – although enjoy might be too much to ask for, perhaps endure would be better!)

And my phrase will be ‘just keep swimming’ because life with three little ones is lovely, but it is also bloody tough. One foot in front of the other is enough. Kids don’t sleep, kids fall asleep when you would prefer they didn’t, two kids cry about ever leaving the house, one cries whenever we have to return to the house (yep, I know, could they not have all agreed on either loving or hating the house?) the corner of your duvet inexplicably comes out of the duvet cover leaving you with just sheet! Partners put the dishwasher tablet in the dishwasher with all the dirty plates but don’t always turn it on! But in all reality, aren’t I lucky that whilst often unrelenting, these are my first world problems? I am well aware that life could be much, much tougher (doesn’t stop me airing my grievances though as we all need to vent!)

But if I did make one traditional resolution it would be to ‘sleep more’ (please, pretty please YC!)

Carrie Freathy

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