True Cliches

In the deep mists of time, long before I had kids of my own, I remember people telling me about what it was like to be a parent. Usually these people were my own parents, maliciously wishing my own crappy behaviour onto my kids so I might experience just how much of a shit I was. Well their wishes haven't come true...yet. As for the other people, they usually had kids and would say the usual things about sleep or sex, you get none of either after kids. I never really liked hearing this because I knew my kids would be different. Sleepless nights? Not my child, they'll sleep through till morning. Sexless marriage? Please, we'll be at it like rabbits (very quiet, safe rabbits avoiding making more bunnies or waking the ones we already have). Fussy eaters? They'll be mini gourmands, lapping up whatever delicious treat they're given; "Daddy I'm loving this pork terrine with the red wine reduction, thank goodness you didn't get me that boil in a bag pasta with oven ready chips!"

Well turns out that certain clichés exist because they're actually true. We have two kids now and i think its safe to say that i haven't slept through the night in nearly 4 years. Exhaustion has become a state of being rather than a feeling at the end of a jolly busy day. The bags under my eyes have bags of their own. If, by some miracle, both kids sleep through the night I know i would wake up thinking something was wrong and do that creepy parent thing where you stare at your child to make sure they're still breathing. Or I shove my finger under their nose to feel for breath. I can guarantee you that doing either will wake your child, sometimes causing mild terror / psychological trauma. 

You know he's going to need a diaper change.

The sexless marriage part is also true, but, mainly because of the not sleeping. Ever. My baby wakes me at 5:30am every morning. We have our morning routine, then i go to work for 8 or so hours. I come home and maybe have half an hour to myself before I pick up my daughter. Literally. She gets off her school bus and I carry her home. Then she wants to be thrown around, or to fly, or for the Tickle Monster (me) to run around after her till she pees on me from laughing too much. That last part happens most days, but its girl pee which is harmless or gives me super powers, plus I shower everyday so I don't smell of hobo. My daughter weighs about 40-50 pounds, my son maybe 20. When was the last time you threw a giggling, flayling, potentially peeing 50 pound weight over your head? I'm developing killer biceps and deltoids but my back is buggered and I generally need a lie down afterwards. Once playtime is done it's dinner, bath, clean teeth, stories and bed time. All that takes an hour or more and isn't finished until 8pm at the earliest. That's assuming there haven't been massive tantrums from one or both kids. After all that, the carrying, the throwing, the tantrums, arguments, thrown food and ritual soaking of the bathroom, the last thing I want is rampant sexual antics. My wife and I collapse on the couch and stare at the TV or just go to bed. The odd occasions when we do have the energy or inclination to have a go, it usually starts with one of us saying "let's do this!" or "we can do this" like we're going to climb bloody Everest. Sometimes I'll put on my Borat accent and tell Sher "it's sexy time" which really helps set the mood, and is way better than "brace yourself love!".

Thankfully food isn't really an issue for our kids. They eat well and aren't too fussy, but meal times are becoming a pain in the ass. Our daughter is refusing to eat, not listening when asked to eat or just plays withher food. This usually ends with her going to bed and sobbing for a few minutes. Its heart breaking on the one hand because she hates being alone, not because she's scared but because she feels lonely. On the other hand, just eat the fucking food! My son can be a fusspot at meal times, mainly because he wants to feed himself now. He's not quite one and a half so he usually ends up wearing more food than he eats. Tonight he tipped his bowl of pasta over his head, wore the bowl as a hat and laughed happily. It was really funny, so it's not all bad and at least our kids have a sense of humour.

I feel so haggard, thank goodness for my heinz baby moisturiser.

At the end of the day my wife and I find ourselves laughing more than anything else. What other choice do we have? I can't fathom being a miserable sod, it takes too much energy and I need all the energy I have to be a good Dad and husband, and occasionally for sexy times.

Breaking Point

Breaking Point

Everybody has a breaking point, it just takes the right set of circumstances to push a person to theirs. For some people reaching breaking point means getting laid off, bad days at work, or someone nagging endlessly at you. There are different degrees of reaction to all that. For some it means getting loaded on cheap wine, for others it's anger and resentment leading to news headlines. I reached my breaking point yesterday, when Benny was totally inconsolable, screaming and crying on me. I told Sher I couldn't have a screaming baby on me anymore, I needed a break. For me that's a big deal. I define myself as a Dad who is always ready and willing to help with the kids. To say I didn't want to be with or console my son was terrible and felt a little sickening. 

You might well think that since he's a baby, crying and screaming are nothing unusual, and you'd be right. The trouble is he's been crying and screaming on me day and night for what seems like weeks now. When I get home from work it's late in the afternoon and he's tired, about two hours away from bed. I can get a bit of cuddle time in when he's a wonderful, chubby bundle of joy, but then it's bathtime, followed by the nightly round of I'm-NOT-going-to-sleep-and-you-won't-fucking-make-me bedtime battle, where Benny screams, cries and flails about like an enraged seal until he eventually slumps into and exhausted slumber. Now I don't have to do the bath and bedtime routine every night, sometimes I do it just once or twice a week. It's what follows that has just worn me down.

Benny will wake up after an hour, crying again, then again about half an hour later, then again, and again, and again. This will continue with different intervals of time through the entire night. Consequently neither Sher nor I get a decent nights sleep. I can't speak for Sher, but I'm rarely getting into deep sleep because I'm being woken every 2 hours or so. Sometimes he'll go back to sleep quickly with a few pats on his back, other times, like on Saturday night, he'll be up for 2 hours or more. It may be teething or gas that's keeping him awake, we've medicated him recently and that's helped, but he's also a cuddle monster and hates being in his spaciously appointed cot. We have a very cuddly family, a wonderful thing, but we've also created a wee monster who doesn't like being put down. 

It's not the cuddles that have pushed me to my breaking point, it's the nights. I don't remember it being this hard with Carys, and she was a terrible sleeper for a while. Maybe it's the combination of two kids that's making it so damn tiring, they both wake at some point in the night. I don't think I'm more tired than Sher who is working her ass off in the day and still being woken at night. The thing is, saying that I needed a break from my son felt like I was saying I didn't want to be around him, which also made me feel like a shit. I love him desperately, but I can't stand the screaming, crying and flailing anymore. I can't fight him to sleep anymore. I can't go to bed gritting my teeth in the certain knowledge that I'll be woken again in a few hours by a smack from a grunting, crying baby.

Parenting isn't easy. When we first had Carys people would joke about the lack of sleep we would experience. They did it again before Benny was born. It's never really bothered me that my kids wake up at night and need me. It's my responsibility to help them because they can't help themselves. But I've hit some kind of wall and need a break. It feels selfish, like I'm somehow a failure as a parent or a bad person. I feel terribly guilty, as though I'm letting my family down and burdening my wife with extra care of our kids. But here's what no one ever said when they were laughing at how little sleep I would get: sometimes you need to be selfish as a parent just so you can preserve your sanity and maintain a healthy relationship with your family. Being SuperMum or Dad is all well and good right up to the point it starts destroying the other relationships in your life, or the relationship with the child you're working so hard to raise and love. 

So last night I slept on the couch, and I may well be there again tonight because it was quiet bliss. It will make the difference between going to bed tense, gritting my teeth and anticipating a hellish night, and going to be ready and willing to help my wee man feel better. If being selfish for a night or two is what it takes to be a better Dad and husband then that's what I'll do. 

Night Watchman

So it's been a few months since my last post. Bubs is sleeping through most of the night but there's an interesting byproduct to all the sleep shinanigans that went on.

I'm a light sleeper. I wake up if a pin is dropped (albeit a really BIG pin dropped right near my head...onto something hollow). It turns out my daughter has inherited this from me which is not neccesarily a good thing. Within 10 minutes of both my wife and I going to bed, my daughter will be awake. More than that she'll call for me. She's able to say Mama, Dada or Daddy, and YaYa (what we call our helper). As I'm a light sleeper I was usually the one to respond to her crying in the night. My wife can usually sleep through it for a few minutes, whereas I'm up like a shot in the dark. So now my daughter associates night time with Daddy time! She's also figured out that if she cries I'll go to her. The moment I get to her she's all smiles, giggles and playful slapping of my face (another thing from her Mother....). The process of getting her back to sleep can take an hour, sometimes more. She'll go down, pretend she's sleeping then pop back up just as I get in to bed. All this may sound terribly cute - awwwwww, she's playing a game with you, she just wants more Daddy time! - but when it's 11pm on a school night I defy anyone to be overly chipper.

I'm now developing the talent of falling asleep at her crib, body slumped over, head hanging over the side, baby playing with my hair. I love my daughter to the moon, but it'd be nice if Dad could go to bed and stay there till morning. Having said that.... I do love to have secret quiet time with her, and it makes me laugh that she can now reach my feet or sometimes even my leg at the end of the bed then pinch it.

I am the Night Watchman. I don't care that I'm tired, I just care that my daughter is happy - always. Alright, bed time for me, or not, depends on her.