The great regression

I’ll cut to the chase: I’ve been struggling to string a basic spoken sentence together lately, never mind a semi coherent blog. (“Can you pass me the thingy on top of the thingy?” My hand waving in the direction of nothing in particular. Blank stare from Tom. “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!”.) Like many, I imagine, I’ve been struggling to make any sense of the ongoing crazy in the world. This has coincided with Ruby’s textbook four month sleep regression phase. We’ve been blessed with a baby that has instinctively gotten day and night the right way round and has generally slept accordingly. Until now. And we’ve been floored by this little development, left dumbstruck as to how some other parents have been dealing with such nocturnal behaviour all along.

Having run the initial gauntlet of getting the little lady down around 7/8pm, the next awake noises (adorable by day; terror inducing by night) drift over from the cot at the foot of the bed any time between 11pm and 1am. Always just after I have finally nodded off myself. Neither Tom nor I move. Less than two weeks into this, I’m starting to think I could win an Oscar for my sleeping performance, and a separate accreditation for my ongoing commitment in adverse conditions. It’s quite hard to keep your eyes sealed shut and remain perfectly still while your offspring writhes around and starts mumbling for your specific attention six feet away. If Tom is out acting me or – to give him the benefit of the doubt – simply just sleeping more deeply, then I must resort to getting up. I wait until Ruby starts firing up in earnest, then walk straight past her cot to the bathroom. This leaves Tom with no choice but to step in while I am otherwise engaged.

The chances are I’ll be required at some stage, I know this. And I’ve not covered myself in glory delaying this inevitability. I’ve thought very angry thoughts, my pre parenting concerns that I would be unable to function on sleep deprivation confirmed. And I’ve gotten irrationally annoyed at Tom for both finally giving up on trying to soothe our daughter without me breastfeeding her, and also for persevering with trying to settle her when we could just skip to breastfeeding. The poor man cannot win. No one can.

One night Tom became convinced there was a force field around Ruby’s cot because of the way she woke up and howled every time he began lowering her into it, having endured painstaking 15 minute intervals of rocking and shushing her to sleep beforehand. Such was his certainty that there was something amiss with that specific part of our bedroom he began lowering her down in other parts of the room to see if she also woke there. Sleep deprivation does strange things to people.

Ruby is pushing us to our limits in a way only someone we love this much could. If anyone else was putting us through this they would be promptly chucked out of the window. Instead, she ends up in the middle of our bed. I must admit, for me, this is the silver lining to the whole thing. Even at 4am, these baby cuddles are the best thing ever. But Tom knows it’s a slippery slope – he’s heard the stories from my parents, who still appear to be suffering from PTSD. I was begrudgingly permitted into their bed on a regular basis until I was about 10 because I targeted them at their most vulnerable: in the depths of the night.

So we’ve got to nip this bed sharing in the bud sometime soon…the books, I’m sure, will say we should never have started it. Too late to worry about that. But in the meantime, like countless other parents around the world, we’re getting by on our baby’s cuteness (our bias “she is the cutest!” all too common) and copious amounts of caffeine. And with that, I’m off to pop the kettle back on….