Ellie writes:
My house is a war zone. The signs are everywhere: half-empty bottles of gripe water, discarded Infacol droppers, dummies scattered on every surface. (I think they might be breeding.)
Swaddling wraps and sleeping bags lie in crumpled heaps, or draped over the wide variety of baby chairs we've tried. Some rock, some swing, some vibrate, some play music; none of them actually get anyone to bloody sleep.
Nor does anything else we've tried. On a good night, Joe only wakes up once an hour. On a bad night, he's unable to stay asleep beyond ten minutes, and I get no rest at all. The other night I was awake with him from midnight until he finally settled at 6am. At 6.04am, my three-year-old bounded in, ready to start his day.
We've asked advice from everyone we can think of. GPs and health visitors. Grandmas and friends. Random women behind us in the queue at Argos, where we've gone to pick up yet another swingy chair that eats batteries so fast it costs more to run than a racehorse.
After a few weeks, these conversations have started to go the same way:
"Have you tried X?"
"Yes. It didn't work."
"Oh. Well, it's not forever."
I know it's not forever. I've already been through it with my first baby, to a less extreme degree. But it's still hard.
The worst bit isn't being knackered; it's seeing my baby in pain and exhausted, and feeling like a failure because I can't seem to help. There's an extra dynamic here because Joe was born premature, and spent six weeks in hospital. That meant six weeks of watching him go through injections, tests, tube swaps and all the rest, without being able to help.
And because I had another son at home, I couldn't even be there 24 hours a day to comfort him. There is one positive - often I don't mind being awake with Joe all night, because it just feels like I'm catching up.
But then the day starts, and it's awful. I struggle to find the energy to be the fun, cheerful mummy Charlie wants, or to be patient while he spends eight minutes putting his underpants on.
My husband has learned to avoid probing me with intolerably infuriating personal questions like, "How are you?" or, "Have you seen the car keys?" And as for asking what's for dinner - he might as well enquire if I fancy a threesome with Katie Hopkins.
I know it's not forever, though, so we plod on, and the search for a magic cure continues. There isn't one, of course - but somehow the research makes me feel less helpless. It's like when Joe was in hospital and I spent hours reading the telephone directory-sized Preemies book from cover to cover, regardless of the fact he didn't have 98 per cent of the conditions described. (But one day, there will be an entire pub quiz round on necrotising enterocolitis, and I will storm it.)
So that's how I spend those long, dark hours - baby on the boob, iPhone in the hand, Googling things like "SERIOUSLY THOUGH DIDN'T EVERYONE GIVE BABIES RUM IN THE SEVENTIES?"
There is one suggestion that keeps cropping up - cranial osteopathy. From what I understand, this is an alternative therapy that involves a specially trained person squeezing your baby's head, and then they sleep like you've given them a pint of Bacardi. The parenting forums are full of people saying it's brilliant. But there are skeptics too, and it's expensive, so it's always been bottom of the list of things to try.
Now, though, we've reached the bottom of the list. The health visitor has run out of suggestions, Argos has run out of swingy chairs, I have run out of patience. So we're going to give cranial osteopathy a go. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions...
My house is a war zone. The signs are everywhere: half-empty bottles of gripe water, discarded Infacol droppers, dummies scattered on every surface. (I think they might be breeding.)
Swaddling wraps and sleeping bags lie in crumpled heaps, or draped over the wide variety of baby chairs we've tried. Some rock, some swing, some vibrate, some play music; none of them actually get anyone to bloody sleep.
Nor does anything else we've tried. On a good night, Joe only wakes up once an hour. On a bad night, he's unable to stay asleep beyond ten minutes, and I get no rest at all. The other night I was awake with him from midnight until he finally settled at 6am. At 6.04am, my three-year-old bounded in, ready to start his day.
We've asked advice from everyone we can think of. GPs and health visitors. Grandmas and friends. Random women behind us in the queue at Argos, where we've gone to pick up yet another swingy chair that eats batteries so fast it costs more to run than a racehorse.
After a few weeks, these conversations have started to go the same way:
"Have you tried X?"
"Yes. It didn't work."
"Oh. Well, it's not forever."
I know it's not forever. I've already been through it with my first baby, to a less extreme degree. But it's still hard.
The worst bit isn't being knackered; it's seeing my baby in pain and exhausted, and feeling like a failure because I can't seem to help. There's an extra dynamic here because Joe was born premature, and spent six weeks in hospital. That meant six weeks of watching him go through injections, tests, tube swaps and all the rest, without being able to help.
And because I had another son at home, I couldn't even be there 24 hours a day to comfort him. There is one positive - often I don't mind being awake with Joe all night, because it just feels like I'm catching up.
But then the day starts, and it's awful. I struggle to find the energy to be the fun, cheerful mummy Charlie wants, or to be patient while he spends eight minutes putting his underpants on.
My husband has learned to avoid probing me with intolerably infuriating personal questions like, "How are you?" or, "Have you seen the car keys?" And as for asking what's for dinner - he might as well enquire if I fancy a threesome with Katie Hopkins.
I know it's not forever, though, so we plod on, and the search for a magic cure continues. There isn't one, of course - but somehow the research makes me feel less helpless. It's like when Joe was in hospital and I spent hours reading the telephone directory-sized Preemies book from cover to cover, regardless of the fact he didn't have 98 per cent of the conditions described. (But one day, there will be an entire pub quiz round on necrotising enterocolitis, and I will storm it.)
So that's how I spend those long, dark hours - baby on the boob, iPhone in the hand, Googling things like "SERIOUSLY THOUGH DIDN'T EVERYONE GIVE BABIES RUM IN THE SEVENTIES?"
There is one suggestion that keeps cropping up - cranial osteopathy. From what I understand, this is an alternative therapy that involves a specially trained person squeezing your baby's head, and then they sleep like you've given them a pint of Bacardi. The parenting forums are full of people saying it's brilliant. But there are skeptics too, and it's expensive, so it's always been bottom of the list of things to try.
Now, though, we've reached the bottom of the list. The health visitor has run out of suggestions, Argos has run out of swingy chairs, I have run out of patience. So we're going to give cranial osteopathy a go. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions...
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