Postcard from the trenches

I know you would much prefer to read a post about somewhere fabulous I have been, or something I have recently purchased, or anything other than a whiny, complaining, tired post, but it’s all I’ve got. Apologies. Actually, I’m not sorry. It’s fucking miserable and there’s not much else going on around here. Sleep, or lack of sleep is consuming us all. It’s all I think about. It’s what I’m thinking of getting whenever I have a chance. It’s what to blame for some really bad behaviour from all of us. There’s light at the end of this month’s tunnel with Harper’s operation, but until then I am trying to figure out how we can stumble through the next 22 nights. 22.

: Getting to sleep has become an issue all of a sudden with Harper. She screams the house down because she is inevitably over tired and the thought of going to bed repulses her. I have put in the hard yards with her getting to sleep so I refuse to budge on this and sit with her. I’m ruthless. A gazillion times harder on her then I ever was with Daisy. Eventually after an hour, sometimes longer she goes to sleep.

: Daisy, who desperately needs sleep, cannot sleep while the screaming match is going on. She gets upset and anxious and will not calm down until her sister does. You would think this would make me do whatever it takes to get Harper to sleep, but I won’t. I will not have us sitting in with her. It makes all the hard yards we have done up until now, pointless. As a consequence Daisy is missing out on about an hours sleep she needs so much.

: Rob and I fight, really fight with each other during this time. Desperately seeking the answers that we don’t have for each other “what the FUCK should we do?” and getting angry when we don’t get it. Pointless, mean words, mostly from me, hurting each other because there is no one else to blame.

: Harper will wake one to three hours after she has collapsed, but she is not really awake. It takes a simple shush and covering with blankets and she snores again.

: She will wake, like this, up to 6 more times in the night. Usually every 1.5 hours. I arise, like a zombie to do the same thing each time, sometimes having to stay longer, sometimes falling asleep exhausted at the end of her bed, willing deep sleep to come. My resentment builds with each wake up, patience that I focus on, meditate on giving wears thinner by the minute, until we eventually put her into bed with us and I cry with disappointment that my last 5 efforts of waking have been in vain.

: Daisy usually wakes at some stage. My child that hasn’t woken in months, has started again. School and all the hugeness that comes with it, are working overtime in her imagination. It doesn’t take long to sooth her worries, but it’s another wake up. Another disturbance.

: Rob cannot help the girls in the night. Not because he won’t, but because the girls won’t allow him to. He wakes with each cry and lays there useless to his angry, seething wife.

: There is usually a stretch of 2 hours sleep before a 6am wake up. My bleary eyes take longer to focus, my cold heart takes much longer to warm to the kids. I’m usually happy to see the morning light, at least we can stop pretending to be asleep. We can get on with the day. Get on with life. We are one day closer to things maybe being better.

I’ve turned the comments off on this post because I didn’t write it for advice or as a cry for help. I wrote it for what it is, a documentation of our lives at the moment. I know you are all thinking of us, and wishing us well, so thank you and know that it is appreciated. Mum, don’t panic, I’m fine.

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