Golden rule

The first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club.

Only slightly less well known is the first rule of having a child who sleeps. It's remarkably similar - the first rule of Good Sleeping is that you do not talk about Good Sleeping. This is for many reasons...

Firstly, it's just not fair. At least 50% of your friends will have a child who is not a good sleeper; they will be surviving on brief snatches of an hour and half of sleep, interspersed with a wailing or vomiting or insomniac child. They do not want to know that you are getting a solid eight hours sleep. They may take a pause from clawing their own eyes out to claw your eyes out instead.

For those of us who are either not brimming over with the milk of human kindness or whose empathy has been erased by the trauma of dealing with every permutation of crisis that one's own child presents, there is another reason for not mentioning you child's ability to sleep. You will jinx it. The moment that you inform anybody, even in a hushed whisper, that your little darling sleeps for twelve hours without a murmur it will be the last night that this happens for several months. You will suddenly have a child who cannot fall asleep without being held, or a child who wakes at midnight needing a drink, at 2 AM needing help blowing their noise, at 4 AM having lost their favourite cuddly toy, and at 5 AM because it's time to play. If you have the audacity to offer advice on your own fantastically successful bedtime routine, it will immediately cease working for you. Bath-time will become a war-zone; bedtime stories will be required to last for an hour and a half; sleep will not come without seventeen dinosaurs and a cuddly squid being aligned with the earth's magnetic field, but your child will not tell you about this requirement, he will simply object, frequently and vociferously that everything's wrong.

As I said, the first rule of Good Sleeping is that you do not talk about Good Sleeping.

And why do I mention this now?

Because after yesterday's food-related post, I exchanged anecdotes with a friend about her children and food. Her children are Good Eaters but Bad Sleepers. Mine has, historically, been the opposite. We agreed that we all had our crosses to bear. But it was too late. I had already transgressed. I had mentioned LittleBear and Good Sleep.

So this morning he woke up at 5:30am.

He felt poorly.

He was too hot.

He felt sick.

He didn't know what to think about.

Could he have a bucket please? In case he was sick.

He burped and stopped feeling sick.

Could he have a drink of water?

He needed to go to the loo.

Four times.

Could he have a tissue to blow his nose?

He still felt sick. Or thirsty. Or both.

After an hour and a half of this, it was time to get up, at which point he decided he felt sick again. Until he'd eaten a piece of toast and beaten me at Scrabble, and then he felt fine, apart from the dark circles under his eyes.

I might feel sick now. Or maybe it's the side-effects of the high doses of caffeine with which I'm attempting to navigate the day?



Footnote
It would appear I've basically written this post before. Maybe lack of sleep makes me repeat myself. Who knows? Maybe lack of sleep makes me repeat myself. Who knows? Maybe lack of sleep.....