Help! My Child Won't Sleep...

When the Very Small Boy really was still Very Small, to say that he "wasn't a very good sleeper" was putting it mildly. As a newborn, suffering from colic and reflux, he would wake to feed every two hours through the night, and was never at any stage able to nap during the day for more than 45 minutes in one stretch. I used to think that if only I could get four hours of uninterrupted sleep, I would be able to function. And (as I think we all do when we have a small baby), I obsessed relentlessly about his sleep, and was completely fixated on that eternal question: When Will He Sleep Through The Night?

It pains me to say it, but as of yet, my question remains unanswered: the Very Small Boy rarely sleeps through the night, and when he does, the price we pay is incredibly early waking. At three years and three months of age, my child remains a terrible sleeper and DH and I remain chronically sleep deprived; and although my daydream of enjoying a four-hour stretch of night-time sleep was realised a long time ago, it was way too little, and far too late.

On the rare occasions when the Very Small Boy "sleeps through", he will wake the following morning at some time between five and six. The early waking is more bearable during summer, when it is often light at that time of day; every winter for the last three years, I have been regularly woken suddenly from deep sleep around 5.30am and been forced to endure the ceaseless wailings of a Small Angry Person for up to three hours and in semi-darkness. It's not a particularly cheerful start to the day. It is, in fact, akin to the kind of torture that hardened terrorists are expected to crack under.

I consider anything beyond 6.00am to be a lie-in, but this is usually preceded by the kind of night where I am woken suddenly, randomly and without reason or warning anything up to to five times. As one can imagine, nature of this kind of night waking prevents DH and I from being able to relax when the Very Small Boy actually is asleep; the threat of being woken hanging over us like a grand piano above a couple of unwitting cartoon characters.

Admitting to the world that your child has a sleep problem is rather like outing yourself with some kind of embarrassing affliction. Most people (mercifully for them) haven't experienced the level of chronic awfulness that having a child who won't sleep brings, and are unable to understand or empathise with the level of insanity that ongoing sleep-deprivation causes. All of us, in the first few months of a baby's life, are prepared for night waking: a tiny baby needs to wake regularly to feed and we understand that we can get through this challenging time because it is both necessary and short-term. So understandably, those of us still dealing with night-waking at three years and beyond feel horribly cheated, and quite often unaccountably ashamed of our situations (and of the resentment we feel towards our sleep-challenged child).

The shame we feel is often compounded by well-meaning friends who offer up solutions which, by implication, make us feel responsible. "Put him to bed later"; "let him sleep in your room"; "tire him out during the day"; "be tougher on him" are all comments I hear often. But unfortunately it is oversimplifying the problem to suggest that I am to blame for being over-indulgent, or not nurturing enough. After all, I have two children, both of whom have the same routine and are loved in the same way and one of whom is a fantastic sleeper.

My personal take on it all? He got into some very bad sleep habits from birth onwards, due to the excessive discomfort of reflux and colic. He's intelligent and sensitive; he fears bad dreams and dislikes being alone in the dark in his bed. But beyond taking the middle ground of being loving but firm, a solution is beyond me. I am condemned, for now, to live in the shadowy, surreal half-world between day and night, sleeping and waking: the permanent abode of the chronically sleep-deprived.

Biscuit-Face

“Mummy, I want to give something up for lent!” declared the Small Girl this afternoon as she and her Very Small brother played whilst I tidied up her bedroom. “Oh!” I replied. “OK darling, what would you like to give up?” 
“Ummmm... sweets!” she said.
“OK... but you know that you have to give them up for forty days?”
“Fourteen days?”
"No darling, forty days...”
“But am I not allowed to have any at all for forty days?”
“No... what would you do on a Friday afternoon when Teacher offers the class a jelly each for Being Good?”

Tears welled up in the Small Girl's eyes.
“But that's not fay-ur!” she exclaimed, wiping her eyes with a sleeve.
“Well, perhaps we ought to be more realistic about what you give up. But it's not supposed to be easy darling” I explained gently. “Do you know the story behind lent? The bible story of how Jesus went into the desert?”
“yes...” she said hesitantly
“Well, that's the whole idea behind lent; that you give up something that's difficult for you to give up and that makes you think of the hard thing Jesus did when he went into the desert for forty days and nights: it reminds you of the suffering he went through”

The Small Girl nodded thoughtfully to herself before declaring:
“I think I'll give up tidying my room!”
I sighed and turned on the vacuum.

Twenty minutes later, her bedroom pink and sparkling, I found the Small Girl playing a game with her brother in his bedroom.
"Mum? Tomorrow's pancake day!" she said excitedly
"Yes I know, it's Shrove Tuesday, which is when we use up all the nice things in the cupboard to make pancakes - because we know that after that it will be lent and we'll be giving stuff up"
"Did Jesus eat all the stuff in his cupboards before he went into the desert?" she asked
"No, that's just what we do darling" I laughed, and put my arm around her for a cuddle.

“Why don't you give up biscuits for lent?” I suggested. “You could still have cake... and I could give up biscuits too, so we'd be doing it together”
“OK!” she agreed. “And would he do it too?” she asked, pointing to her brother as he sat on his bed, swinging his legs.
“Ummm... well probably not” I conceded “you can't make someone do it really”.

“Pootle?” she asked, turning to her brother “Do you want to give up biscuits for forty days?”
He looked at her as if she were completely insane; not even bothering to reply before slipping off the edge of his bed and onto the carpet, where an assortment of colourful Power Rangers were in the throes of a Very Small Battle.

Jesus Christ

“What would you like for breakfast Mister?” I asked the Very Small Boy yesterday morning at 6.00am as we stumbled blearily into the dark kitchen. “Sugar!” he cried, shielding his eyes and wincing as I switched on the light, before adding “with Weetabix”, then changing his mind “No, no – jam!... with toast”

“Mummy, who are you?” he asked me five minutes later as he tucked into his toast and I gingerly sipped my comfortingly large and very strong coffee. This is just the latest in the endless string of difficult – and often unanswerable – questions fired at me recently by the Small People.

It all began, predictably enough, over Christmas, with the question “Mummy, is Santie real?”. The discussion that sprang from this reasonable-enough enquiry (“he's not actually a real person, but he is real in our imaginations”) led to a whole host of “is it real? ” questions (“Are you real?”; “Is this pasta real?”), which eventually, to my relief, led to a thorough understanding of the concept of “real”; by the time the New Year rolled around, further interrogation was no longer necessary.

“Mummy, is that whale real?” asked the Very Small Boy after Christmas, pointing to the television where “Free Willy” was cavorting damply across the screen.
“Well, that's a real whale” I replied, “but the story is just a made-up story and the people are just actors”
“But, what's that whale's name?” he persisted, looking at me intently.
“Errr... Willy” I replied, bracing myself
“Aaaaaaahahahahhaaaaa” the Very Small Boy fell to the floor, clutching his sides and rolling around, laughing hysterically. Then he sat up again and looked seriously at me.
“No but really Mummy: what's his real name?”

Walking back from Big School yesterday afternoon, the Small Girl too was full of questions:
“Mummy?” she asked
“Yes Sausage?” I replied.
“What lives longer, a camel or a polar bear?”

I thought for a minute, before replying “I have absolutely no idea, we'll have to ask Daddy's iphone” (the mysterious and magical Daddy's iphone being the definitive voice on even the most unanswerable of the Small People's questions)

She considered this briefly and then asked “Mummy, do you believe in Jesus?”.
“Ummm...” I stalled, taken aback (my mind still on the camels vs polar bears problem)
“Well, yes Darling: I believe that Jesus was a man who lived a long time ago, and that the Bible tells the stories from his life”. The Small Girl had skipped ahead as I was speaking.
“But I don't really believe in the magic stuff” I added quietly, and she stopped and looked suddenly up at me.
“I believe in the magic stuff” she said, nodding her head thoughtfully to herself.

“Well that's just fine” I said “because what people believe in is a very personal thing, and it's something that we each have to decide for ourselves; only you can decide what you believe”. I took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly and together, we walked back home pushing the Very Small Boy, who had fallen asleep in his pushchair; his favourite Batman figure clutched tight in his grubby little fist.

Rites of Passage

“Mummy?” asked The Very Small Boy, looking up earnestly from where he was sitting at the breakfast bar and cramming a handful of Smarties into his mouth.
“Yes Baby Pie?” I replied.
“You can call me a smashing fellow if you want to!”
“Oh good!” I laughed, kissing his chocolatey cheek “because you know what? I was just thinking to myself what an absolutely smashing fellow you are!”

We had spent a happy afternoon baking a cake and decorating it: the Very Small Boy is Very Nearly Three, and I had promised to send him in to playschool on Thursday with something celebratory to share with his friends. The Small People were having a marvellous time, wielding icing-laden spatulas and squabbling over bowls of sweets and sprinkles, the Small Girl busily trying to convince herself that she had a wobbly tooth (something she had been wanting for some months since a friend’s tooth “like actually fell out” at school).

“It really is wobbly!” she declared crossly, one hand to her mouth, the other curled protectively around a small bowl of jelly snakes.
“I know Darling, I’m sure it will be wobbly very soon” I replied soothingly, pushing the cake out of her brother’s reach as he attempted lick the icing off.

I find it hard to believe that the Very Small Boy is no longer a baby. With each passing milestone - from solids to first steps to outgrowing his cot and finally his nappies – he has grown into a complicated, interesting little fellow able to hold his own in a conversation and share his views (of which he really does have many but which mostly involve the "baddies" from the movie Home Alone).

I met with the Small Girl’s teacher today to discuss her progress at school, which so far has been very good. She is able to read pretty well and can figure out new words by sounding them out. She’s good at maths and is popular and sociable, quiet and thoughtful but gaining the confidence to speak out in class and hold her own against the other children. And I was desperately touched to hear that her teacher has pinned up a note at home on her fridge that my lovely girl gave her in class which reads “teacher is byootiful”.

“Mummy, my tooth really is wobbly!” insisted the Small Girl once more, after we had arrived home from the parent-teacher meeting. “feel it!”.
I sighed and gently put my finger on the little tooth. It moved perceptibly back and forth.
“Oh my goodness!” I cried “I felt it! It really is wobbly, I can’t believe it!”. Thrilled for her, I dashed off to text DH the happy news.

Half an hour later, I sat down next to her on the sofa, sobbing quietly.
“Mummy, are you crying?” asked the Small Girl with concern.
“Yes” I said, sniffing “I just realised that your wobbly tooth was the very first tooth to come through when you were a baby… I was so excited when I realised you had a tooth, I couldn’t wait to show Daddy, and we felt its sharp little edge in your baby gums, and it was so amazing… and now it’s going to fall out!” I sobbed, and burst out crying again.

“Don’t worry Mummy!” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “I only just realised it was wobbly today. It probably won’t even fall out for ages!” And with that, my very grown-up daughter put her arm around my shoulders to comfort me, wiping away my tears as she did so with her sleeve.

Conversations With My Family

“Mummy, when my children are grown up, will now be the olden days?” asked the Small Girl thoughtfully as we drove to her dancing class yesterday.
“What a great question, Sausage!” I said. “Yes, I suppose your children will think that it was the olden days when you were five”
“But it’s not really the olden days is it Mummy?” she continued
“Well no, not really I suppose”
“The real olden days was when you were little!”
I had to agree with her: “yes, when your children are grown up, they’ll think that when Granny was small it really was a long time ago!"

The Small Girl thought about this for a moment, then:

“Mummy?”
“Yes darling?”
“Were the dinosaurs alive when you were little?”
“No darling” I laughed, “I am old… but I’m not that old!”

Whilst she was dancing, the Very Small Boy and I walked into town to while away the time.
“Want a coffee, Mister?” I asked him
“Yaay!” he cried “can I have a Babycino?”

As we sat in the café, he looked thoughtfully at my figure-hugging animal-print dress and commented

“Mummy, you look like a leopard!”
“I know darling… it’s probably a bit much isn’t it?” I said, looking down self-consciously
“Yeah…” he agreed, nodding sympathetically as he sipped the chocolatey froth from his milk.

Later in the evening, after the children were in bed, DH and I lounged on the sofa in the breakfast room, aimlessly watching television.
“Have you seen anyone next door recently?” he asked, referring to the fact that one of our neighbours, in his sixties, had spent some time in hospital undergoing tests.
“Yeah” I said “I bumped into their daughter today actually”
“Is he OK? Do they have a diagnosis yet?” asked DH
“Yes”. I told him the diagnosis.
“Jesus…” he murmured quietly “that’s not good”
“No” I replied, standing up and taking a deep breath, feeling I might cry again “but he wants everyone to carry on as normal apparently, so that’s what we’ll do”.

And I gathered the empty dinner plates from the table, carried them to the kitchen and started to load the dishwasher so no one would see my tears.

Autumn

Collecting the Small Girl from school on the last day before the mid-term break, the Very Small Boy was stunned by the fascinating assembly of witches, skeletons and superheroes who had accompanied his big sister on the annual school Halloween Fancy Dress Walk. The Small Girl herself, dressed adorably as a witch’s cat, came skipping out of class behind a small, disgruntled Buzz Lightyear; helmet askew, satchel trailing solemnly behind him.

“How was your Fancy Walk darling?” I asked, lifting her pink-sequinned cat mask to give her a kiss before we set off to walk home.
“Great!” she replied, swishing her tail “all the mummies and daddies dressed up too!”
“Really?” I asked, wishing I’d been free to go along myself “and what did your friends’ mums go as?”
“Evangelina’s mummy was dressed as a crayon!”
“A Crayon!” I cried, dissolving into fits of laughter “that’s… weird!”

I don’t usually go in for Halloween, having grown up in England (where it’s less popular) and being possessed of typical English reserve when it comes to the whole business of encouraging my children to knock on the doors of complete strangers and make unreasonable demands. But this year I decided to give it a go. And despite starting off nervously, after half an hour I was happily propelling my children up the neighbours garden paths, making them hold their loot bags up endearingly and snapping at them to ring the doorbell again if there was no answer (because all the lights might be off but that was definitely the flicker of a television I spied between the gap at the edge of the curtains, and in any case, what kind of person goes to the trouble of decorating their house for Halloween and then pretends to be out on the actual night?).

The day after Halloween, we had some bad news - one of our tropical fish was discovered floating alarmingly at the top of the tank: belly-up, eyes glazed, he was very definitely deceased. It was a Saturday morning and I was enjoying a rare lie-in.

“Mummy! Mummy!” two shrieking voices, accompanied by thunderous footsteps, flew down the corridor outside my bedroom, before the door was flung open and the Small Girl and her brother leapt onto the bed shouting “There’s a dead fish!”

I glanced at the clock: 7.14am, not bad for a weekend lie-in, and although I would have preferred to be woken a little more sedately, DH had followed the Small People upstairs with a welcome cup of tea so I wasn’t about to complain.

“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that” I said, letting the Small Girl into bed for a cuddle and gently wiping away her tears.
“But why did he die?” she cried
“He was probably just old sweetheart, and got to the end of his life. You shouldn’t be sad, we rescued him from the pet shop and gave him a great home!”
“But it’s not fay-ur!” she wailed.

“I know darling. Sometimes life isn’t fair I’m afraid… it’s a tough old world out there you know”. I yawned and reaching for my tea, gazed out of the window at the beautiful clear blue sky and the bare autumn tree-tops, holding on precariously to the last of their crinkly golden-red leaves in the crisp morning light.

Fishbowl

“Mummy, do fish have feelins?” asked the Small Girl yesterday morning as we watched our new tropical fish swim in slow circles around their tank.
“No darling”, I replied, “they don’t feel things the way we do”
She thought about this for a minute, then: “do they feel homesick?”
“No sweetheart” I laughed. But I did wonder what the bright little fish, fluttering languidly within their four walls, made of our giant shapes looming up to their tank.

When I fist decided to write a blog, DH was horrified.
“Am I in it?” he had asked, looking concerned.
“Of course!” I had replied, secretly relishing the power that exposing our family life was going to give me over him “so you’d better be on your best behaviour from now on darling!”

I find the experience of writing down and sharing my thoughts both cathartic and liberating. Despite the fact that it means that everyone pretty much knows everything about me, I’m honest about the funny stuff. And I try to be candid about the darker things too: the past, my depression and the challenges of parenting (like how to deal with an hour-long tantrum about post-it notes or how to explain the word “sexy” to a five-year-old who has just heard it in a song on the radio).

But besides the (admittedly deliberate) disclosure of writing a blog, I also find it very hard to escape the close scrutiny of the people I actually live with.
“Have you lost more weight?” DH asked me accusingly yesterday morning as I got out of the shower .
“No darling” I sighed, used after a year and a half of fairly intense running to this line of interrogation. And then, catching a glance of myself in the mirror, “I need to colour my hair though”
“I prefer it your natural colour” commented DH.
“Oh…” I said, crestfallen “but it looks quite natural, don’t you think?”
“No, it’s too blonde” he replied.
“Oh well” I sighed, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much darling, you could be doing a lot worse for yourself”

Hearing the Small People collapsing in fits of hysterical giggles behind me, I looked over to see them wrestling over the Small Girl’s camera. The Very Small Boy pointed to the screen and screeched “It’s Mummy’s bum-bum!” before dissolving back into a giggling heap on the carpet. Rolling my eyes, I reached for my hair colour and left the room.

After we had fed the fish last night, the Very Small Boy reached up to throw his favourite Batman figure into the water. As I stopped him, he cried
“But Batman wants to bash the baddie fish down!”
“I’m not sure the fish want to be bashed down darling” I said, gently taking the figure from him.

“Mummy, do fish feel guilty?” asked the Small Girl thoughtfully.
“I seriously doubt it darling” I replied, and tucking Batman into the back pocket of my jeans, I put an arm around each of the Small People as we peered into the glass to watch the fish dart about, catching the papery bits of multicoloured fishfood that floated gently down through the water to the gravel below.