Sleep - are you getting any?
A friend called last night. 'Have you done it yet?' she hissed.
'We have,' I confided. 'A couple of nights ago.'
'And how was it?'
'Not quite as bad as expected. But yes, pretty horrendous.'
Another friend – who's done it already – admits: 'You think you've got it over and done with. But every so often, you have to go through the whole thing all over again.'
I'm not talking sex (right now, the opportunity is as likely as squeezing into my size 10 combats). The issue right now is sleep training: i.e. leave your baby/toddler to holler in his cot in the desperate hope that he will, at some point before dawn, 'learn' how to fall asleep by himself.
Then you can enjoy a full night's sleep. Yes, a full night. Something you took for granted until your baby moved in. Now, however, you are sleep-obsessed – comparing notes on how much you're actually getting, to how much you should be getting (a discrepancy of around five hours).
When our twin boys reached their first birthday, we tried the 'controlled crying' technique. The idea is to keep popping into your baby's room but – torture – do not lift infant from cot. However, I worried that all the wailing might do something terrible to our children's insides. More terrifyingly, I suspected that the volume of cries might possibly do irreparable damage to our house's foundations. And so I would crumble and offer cuddles/milk/weary renditions of Twinkle Twinkle.
'I'm so knackered, I feel sick,' my husband would report the following morning, attempting to leave for work via the airing cupboard.
'Call that tired?' I'd retaliate. 'I've been up doing night feeds for three hundred and forty-one days.'
'You've kept count.' He blinked.
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