Silent Night

Blessed sleep. The commodity that no money can buy a new parent. Aimee is in bed by 8pm but can take up to an hour to wind down, she wakes at 5:30am. Dylan sleeps no longer than 2 hours if lucky and right now, he seems only happy unless he is suckling all the time. Poor Cat, she sleeps no more than about 2 hours a night. The regime right now is relentless. Since DJ was born, one or other member of our family has stayed over to help, but now the honeymoon period is definitely over. From Monday, Cat is on her own looking after DJ and Aimeesan. But the shimmer of light is that once the sleep thing has passed, you quickly forget how hard it is. Aimee took almost 9-10 months before she would sleep through the night. But now, she’s like any other toddler – using all her tricks to delay the event as long as possible but finally pegging out when fatigue takes over. We’ll occasionally ge a scream or a whelp in the middle of the night, but she quickly falls back to sleep. But I find the very early morning starts a shock to my system – a system highly trained from years of the discipline of the midday lie-in. As a natural night-owl I cannot physically sleep before midnight – 1am being my preferred bedtime. Factor in Aimee’s early mornings and I get no more than 4 hours a night. Which kinda reminds me of ole Maggie Thatchers oft claimed 4-hours a night sleep. She made that claim in Gordan Gekko like fashion ie sleep is for wimps. But if that’s the case, then please, please, let us be eternal wimps.