Somebody Wants Me To Die.

379 nights.

379 nights.

379 nights of never getting to that stage of special sleep where the good stuff happens.

379 nights of ALMOST getting to that special stage of sleep before being wrenched back to awake-ness like a piece of Voldemorts soul being summoned back to hell by a dessimated Horcrux.

379 mornings of looking like I am suffering from a special kind of death plague.

379 mornings of feeling like my eyelids are made from heavy duty sandpaper.

379 mornings of wondering if today is the day I will die of tiredness.

1 night of a baby that slept the whole night. The same night that I woke up every 2 hours wondering why The Baby had not woken up and paved the familiar pathway to the nursery to do The Official Breathing Check. Then a follow-up wee.

379 nights before THE night. The night when I would finally get an uninterrupted, whole night of sleep. The night when we, The Man and I, would leave behind our precious bundle of insomniac joy and travel to London to eat food slowly, watch a musical concert not composed by Toddlers TV and then… the big one… sleep in a hotel room without a baby or baby monitor present. Sleep for a WHOLE NIGHT. Not get out of the bed at all. Until morning. Or the bloody afternoon if I wanted.

No words or phrases present in the English (or any) language can convey the desperation I felt for this nights sleep. This night was the sole reason I had not turned to illegal hard drugs in the past month to ensure my capacity to function as a human being could continue.

I daren’t believe it would actually happen. Something would inevitably go wrong. The Baby would get sick…. I would get sick…. The Man would get sick… The Baby Watchers would pull out… or get sick…. London would close…. The Car would die… I just daren’t believe.

None of the above happened.

What DID happen was this:

• ·      Ate food slowly.
• ·      Watched a musical concert not composed by Toddlers TV.
• ·      Went back to hotel room.
• ·      Did preparatory sleep wee.
• ·      Got in bed.
• ·      Watched TV for 10 minutes.
• ·      Turned TV off after 10 minutes because of overwhelming sleep excitement.
• ·      Snuggled down ready. READY FOR THE SLEEP OF ALL SLEEPS.
• ·      Noticed loudness of external noise.
• ·      Ignored loudness of external noise. London is noisy.
• ·      Started to drift…..
• ·      …… Undrifted due to loudness of external noise.
• ·      Started to drift……..
• ·      **HORRIFIC LOUD METAL SMASHING NOISE**
• ·      Mumbled conversational interlude with Man about potential source.
• ·      Started to drift……
• ·      …. Undrifted due to heavy machinery type noise.
• ·      **HORRIFIC LOUD METAL SMASHING NOISE**
• ·      Angry growl and accompanying turn-over.
• ·      Started to drift…..
• ·      ….. Oooooo lovely drifting….
• ·      **HORRIFIC LOUD METAL SMASHING NOISE**
• ·      Jump out of my skin.
• ·      ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT’
• ‘I don’t know, but it’s fucking annoying’
• ‘Is the balcony door open? It sounds open.’
• ‘No, but I think it’s single glazed so it’s quite noisy’

SIGH

• ·      Started to drift……
• ·      **HORRIFIC LOUD METAL SMASHING NOISE**
• ·      Man is out of bed.
• ·      Man is standing at balcony door.
• ·      ‘It’s a building site. They are actually still working on a building site.’

Let me break this down for you.

Right outside our window (and down a bit, as we were on the 10^th floor), was a building site.

Upon this building site, were approximately 8 builders in luminous jackets.

1 of said builders was driving a digger.

This is what he was doing with the digger:

1.  Drive digger to pile of large metal sheets.

2. Pick up one of the metal sheets with the metal digger section of the digger. (Accompanied by metal screeching noise)

  3. Turn digger and drive approximately 200 metres to a hole in the ground.

4. Drop giant heavy metal sheet from a significant height onto the concrete ground to cover up hole.

5. Repeat.

And when I say repeat…. If I were to make it slightly clearer, I would say that the above 5 steps continued to happen until 2.30am.

TWO THIRTY AM.

That wasn’t the kind of noise you could just IGNORE or PUT TO THE BACK OF YOUR MIND. This was the kind of noise that made me feel like I was attempting sleep in the building site itself. In the digger. This was the kind of noise that made me feel like I was employed by that building company myself and I too was donned in a luminous jacket at 2.30am covering up a giant fucking hole using giant metal sheets.

The anger didn’t come at first.

The Man and I we stood. For a substantial amount of time. At the balcony door. The Man in his special sleeping pants. Me in my special sleeping pants and vest top. Staring. In complete silence.

Because you see… there really weren’t any words. Of course. Of COURSE these men were outside the window or OUR apartment, on THIS night and of COURSE they had to cover this hole until 2.30am. Everyone knows you can’t cover holes during the day. That would just be wrong. Has to be done at 2am.

I stared at the luminous jacket men with a kind of hatred that scared me. Then I cried. Actual tears. As I realized that I would not feel refreshed in the morning, as I had been dreaming about for the past 379 days. I was once again awake in the middle of the night, unable to do anything about it (I wasn’t sure that offering the builders milk from my breast would have the desired effect) and was once again going to have to spend the next day searching for caffeine and trying not to fall asleep on the toilet whilst doing a wee.

It was at this point something became very clear to me… I felt like I had had an epiphany:

Somebody wants me to die.

It was absolutely unquestionable. And thus I proclaimed this to The Man through my tears. And he…. Well practiced in my over-dramatics… merely nodded his head in accompanying despair and sighed. Perhaps you are thinking that this is over dramatic. If you have or have had a non-sleeping baby, you will not be thinking this at all.  You will know. If you have not had a non-sleeping baby… get back to me when you haven’t slept properly for 379 nights.

So we finally got to sleep at 3am.

And on the bright side, we did get to sleep until 8.40am… so I felt less like I had a deathly plague and more like I was just suffering from a slight dust allergy.

Oh well. Maybe in another 379 days we will get another chance. You know…. If we’re still alive.