It's all over...

Thank God that is all over. Is that a terrible thing to say? I think just about every day over the past two weeks has felt like it lasted forever.

For this is what happens in our household. We all get up late relatively late as there is no school. This is good. What’s not good is that a) the baby has turned in to a wailing machine which means I have been up and down with her every night for what seems like weeks. I hear her at about midnight, then 2am, then 4am. She has a hacking cough which wakes her up and then she starts wailing.

‘Mama, mulk,’ she says.

I then get up and stumble trip downstairs and find her and find her a clean bottle and then warm up some milk and try to force cough mixture down her. Then I put her back in her cot with her warm bottle.

Do I think this is a good idea?

No I don’t.

Having had four children, I do actually know that getting up and making three warm bottles of milk every night for a baby is a mad and bad idea. However, putting up with her screaming ‘mulk! Mulk!’ at me is also a bad idea. The consequence is, I’d do anything for an easy life but this easy life is getting harder by the minute.

However, it does mean the baby has a bit of a lie-in as she is obviously STUFFED full of milk and doesn’t need breakfast until about, ooh let’s see, lunchtime. The smaller two boys get up and thunder downstairs and then chuck cereal over each other. My Eldest Son mooches around asking if he can go on his computer at the earliest moment possible. It’s what happens after that that’s a nightmare.

For a start, it takes me an age of clear up the kitchen. There are usually Rice Krispies over the floor and milk on the ceiling and the dog, who no one will have fed, will be following me around with pleading eyes and one of the cats, who will obviously have got locked IN overnight, rather than OUT, will have defecated in someone’s slipper and on it will go…

I will then have a discussion with ES about whether or not it is cruel to put the cats out at night. He says it is because the temperature falls to sub-zero and in fact today, as I write this, it hasn’t risen above zero at all. I know this because a) the ground is still frozen. My MS got a worm world for Christmas and spends half his time in the garden trying to dig for worms and, this morning, broke the trowel handle off because the ground is so hard and b) the ice on my car window is refusing to de-frost. I say, however, that we have a shed in the back garden and in that shed I have placed an old duvet and that the cats, who are covered in fur, should be quite happy in the shed curled up together in the duvet. My ES then points out that I would never expect the dog, who is also covered in fur, to sleep in a shed at night and I tell him that is true. I prefer the dog to the cats because she doesn’t do her business in children’s slippers.

Once all this has been sorted out, I then have to think of something to actually do with the children all day. This has been the worst problem. It was so cold over Christmas that I could barely venture outside without the baby freezing up within a second. My ES and MS don’t feel the cold at all. They go out in the snow in T-shirts and flip flops. But my YS, who is very thin and proud of it, can barely stay warm even if I clad him in layers and layers of fleeces and trousers and thermal things. As soon as his pointy little face appears out the back door, he starts crying frozen tears. The baby is also not happy but that may be because, with all the clothes she is wearing, she resembles an immobile stuffed dolly.

The answer to this dilemma – go out? Stay in? give up altogether? – was obviously to invite people over. This is what other people do. They ask their friends to come over for coffee and cake and stuff. But I realised then and there that I don’t have many friends and I now think that’s because I have become increasingly intolerant of people. I sort of knew this, but this Christmas period has brought it home to me even more. I just cannot spend time with people who either chatter on inanely or who are so self-deluded I want to box them on the ears and say, ‘no! The reason why your children are rude to you/your husband ignores you/you have problems with friendships is because you are an insufferable bore!’ The more I think about it, the more I feel like not seeing anyone.

Luckily I have two friends whose names both begin with J who saved me. I went for a long walk with one J and her family and it was lovely. My other friend came over with her three boys and we chatted over coffee and it made me feel at one with mankind again.

I just think I’ve been going stir crazy, that’s all…

This post was written by  Lucy Cavendish, a journalist and author of Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Journal. Her new book, Lost and Found, is due out in March. She lives in the Thames Valley with her husband Michael and their four children. You can keep up with Lucy at Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Blog.

Photo credit: Sean Dreilinger
 

Comments

[Susanna (A Modern Mother)]

Yes, midnight feedings can get to you. I'm glad you have the Js for coffe and chatter, sometimes that is just enough to keep you from going insane.