Lauren
It feels like an act of violence when the baby wakes me up again.
‘No,’ I whisper, as I hear Woody start to howl. ‘Please, no.’
Tristan stirs next to me in the bed. He’s heard it too, but we remain silent, like Woody’s the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, and, if we stay still, he’ll go back to sleep and not eat us whole on a toilet. Does that make sense? I’m not sure. I’m so, so, fucking sleep deprived. Honestly, I could weep. Hang on, my pillow’s wet. I am weeping. Great. We’ll have to start the tally again. Tristan thought it would be ‘funny’ to keep a daily tally of how often I cry. Because, you know, PND is much easier when it’s gamified.
Another howl from Woody’s cot. I reach for my phone to check the time and it’s just as bad as it feels. It’s been precisely one hour and fifteen minutes since Woody fell asleep... Since Woody fell asleep after us spending one hour and fifty minutes trying to get him back to sleep. And, after he finally went down, I was so full of adrenaline and that crippling feeling that I’m trapped forever in this total nightmare, that I couldn’t get back to sleep for ages. In fact, I only dropped off twenty minutes ago.
A more urgent howl. Tristan inches closer to me.
‘Shall we leave him?’ he whispers, but not quietly enough. Woody lets out a desperate screech. One so shrill that I want to lurch up and tell him to shut up because I’m such a good mother. Make me a mumfluencer. What’s my USP? I tell my baby to shut up. To its face. Regularly. And I’m still really fat. And I hate every minute. What do you mean I don’t have any followers? No brand deals for #AuthenticMamaBabiesFuckUpYourLife? I really am delirious, aren’t I? Oh my God, why won’t Woody stop crying? Why is he awake again?
‘The sleep lady said we need to leave him for fifteen minutes to see if he self-settles,’ I whisper back, just as Woody screams so loud the neighbours will complain again.
‘He isn’t settling,’ Tristan says, not bothering to whisper now.
‘I don’t know what you mean, he sounds delighted.’
A blood curdling scream.
‘We have to get him up,’ Tristan says.
‘No, the sleep lady says . . .’
‘, he’s distraught.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t be. He should be asleep.’
‘I’m getting him up.’
‘Don’t you dare.’
But his screams are so desperate that I give in. Take a deep breath. Push my aching body out of bed, rub my eyes that feel like they’ve been sandpapered.
Fuck this. Fuck this.
Fuck fucking this.
‘Are you OK my darling?’ I say, plucking Woody from the cot, with his angry old man face neon red from the whole thirty seconds of me not responding to his every fucking relentless need. ‘I know, I know. Mummy’s here, it’s alright. I’m here. I love you.’ I shove my nipple into his mouth, and he sucks greedily, even though he shouldn’t be hungry. He can’t possibly be hungry. He sat on my nipple for an hour and fifty minutes only an hour and fifteen minutes ago. Tristan sighs and turns over in bed, relaxed in the knowledge he can’t do anything to help. I sit in the rising dawn, seething with jealousy as Tristan’s breath steadies, while Woody sucks himself back into sleep too. Once he stills, I wait an extra ten minutes to ensure he’s in deep sleep before I attempt to pop my little finger into his mouth to unlatch him. Slowly, with anxiety rising in my stomach, I peel his suckered lips off my body. Then I hold Woody’s face against my breast for an additional ten minutes to ensure he’s in the deepest part of his sleep cycle, before lowering him back into the cot with more precision than Tom Cruise dangling from a ceiling in Mission Impossible .
It works.
He’s asleep.
Finally, again. For now.
But, of course, it’s taken so long, and I’m now so pumped with stress, I won’t be able to get back to sleep myself.
5:30am, but the sun’s raging behind the curtains like it’s midday and Woody’s body heat is cooking me through my skin. I can smell my pungent armpits without even leaning into them. I’ll need to wash before the baby shower today. Try to not look how I feel – knowing everyone will be subconsciously analysing me to see if I’ve lost the baby weight yet. Of course I’ve not lost it. I hardly have time to wash, let alone exercise, or cook food that isn’t Nutella spooned directly into my mouth. I’m so exhausted there needs to be a different word for it. Something German to describe the tier of exhaustion you feel if you’ve been duped by society into having a baby. I can’t believe I used to complain about tiredness before Woody. I was such an utter twat – declaring ‘I’m exhausted’ after I’d gone out dancing til 4am, actually HAVING FUN and ENJOYING MY LIFE, and CHOOSING NOT TO SLEEP – knowing I could catch up the next night, and the next. These days, I’m tired in my bone marrow. I feel parts of my brain shrivel and whisper to each other, ‘Shall we develop some Alzheimer’s?’ And I’m this broken without having fun. Just the daily, relentless, grind of keeping Woody alive. Oh, I wish I could go back to sleep, but it’s not going to happen. Not with today looming.
Oh God, Nicki’s baby shower.
I head downstairs. My eyes hurt each time I blink, but I tell myself at least this is alone time. Time to just be me – broken, rotting, shell of . The kitchen’s full of chores that urgently need doing. Last night’s dinner still needs washing up. We didn’t get a chance to do it as Woody woke, screaming, only 45 minutes after we put him to sleep. Baby paraphernalia scatters most of the floor space – jarringly cheerful hunks of plastic coated with dried baby drool. I collapse onto the sofa and my arse lets out a novelty shriek as I pull out Sophie the Giraffe.
My house used to look quite nice.
My body used to look quite nice.
My face.
My life.
It didn’t even just look quite nice. It felt nice.
I was happy. On reflection, really quite deliciously happy.
And I’ve ruined it. Bulldozed it. Fucked it up forever.
Nicki’s baby shower today . . .
Nicki and Matt are happy. So happy. They’ve been together since university and known each other almost as long as the Little Women. Practically childhood sweethearts. And happy. With their nice house, and good jobs, and thriving social circles, and their eight hours a night. Now I have to go to her party, see her swollen bump, and pretend I’m excited for her rather than terrified.
I bet she thinks she’s going to have a nice water birth like I thought . . .
Memories of screaming.
My body making noises I didn’t know it was capable of.
A dying animal.
Breathe, . Breathe.
Just my luck. I get a precious half hour to myself and I waste it with another panic attack.
I breathe. I push the memories aside. Push the endless worries into the crammed cupboard in my mind. The worries that the sleep training clearly isn’t working and Woody will therefore never sleep and therefore I’ll never feel sane again. The worries about how to fucking drive Woody to fucking Nicki’s parents’ house in the middle of fucking nowhere, and having to pick up fucking Steffi on the way, on this little sleep, when Woody hates his fucking car seat. The jarring infantilising games, pretending Nicki is about to embark on a good thing, rather than treading on the same snare trap that clamped down on me. Will I crash the car trying to drive on this little sleep? Kill Woody? Kill us both? Horrific visuals play across my mind in high resolution, turning my stomach to acid, and . . . No. Distract yourself, . I get my phone out and hold it up in front of my psychological abyss.
I attempt to keep up with current news and flick through various news stories about the heat wave and how global warming is going to kill us all. There’s an opinion piece about the carbon footprint of children – apparently having Woody is the equivalent of twenty flights to Australia a year in terms of his carbon emissions, and they’ve not smelt his nappies. On a different site, another columnist laments the plummeting birth rates and how women are too selfish to have babies. I sigh and tap into Instagram instead. I scroll mindlessly past the frozen grins of people showing off their best lives. It hurts seeing anyone doing anything nice – looking free and fulfilled and glamourous. I see Steffi was out again last night, at some elaborate-looking dinner with loads of editors, with cocktails afterwards in a hotel bar. The jealousy tastes literally sour on my tongue. No doubt she’ll be hungover later when I pick her up and complain about being tired – and I’ll try not to stab her in the eyeball. It must be something important to do with her new agency , I remind myself, in an effort to be kind rather than jealous.
All of this is a delay tactic. I know what I’m really doing online. I’m about to do what I always do when I have a spare second. If I send them enough messages, maybe they’ll say sorry. Maybe they’ll stop playing this dangerous game. The one that almost killed me. I feel myself float away as I log out of my regular account and into my newest burner one. I know their account name by heart and I type it into the search bar. Up comes their smug face – the one I used to love and trust.
I open a new DM to them and tap out my message.
‘You’ve got to stop the lies. Seriously. Stop. Fucking. Lying.’