Last night, I considered opening the window and letting my baby tumble out of my arms, into the darkness below. Anything to make the relentless screaming and thrashing stop. Those fleeting fantasies are a small, ugly part of me I feel deeply ashamed of and can barely bring myself to type. Clearly, I sound unfit to be a parent. But it’s a very real side of parenting that no one ever mentions. We talk long and loudly about the paralysing effects of exhaustion – when our baby has been teething or ill or regressing or whatever – how our bones ache and our brains are fuzzy and thick, how it affects our relationships and our jobs and the day-to-day minutiae; these are all awful yet acceptable side effects of babies not sleeping. But no one talks about how crippling sustained sleep deprivation can be for our relationship with our child.
Nighttime is meant to be a safe space. A restorative nest where any shittiness of the day can be slept away. A little reset button, like dying in a computer game and getting to come back to life. But for me it’s felt, for the longest time, like a particularly crap game of Russian Roulette. I dread the nights, because I don’t know what kind of baby I’m going to get, and because I dread this space that used to be so easy and familiar and is now filled with conflict, I resent her. I resent her for the way it’s gnawing at my marriage, spotting with ruthless efficiency every wobble and weak point and then bashing at it. I resent her because I feel like I’m losing my grip on the things that I love so easily, like my job and running. I resent her because she still needs me so wholly and fully and surrendering to that makes me worry I’ll lose myself completely. I resent this tiny, innocent person a lot and that’s a really nasty feeling to sit with.
People always ask how many times she’s up in the night (presumably the woman who’s got up the most gets some kind of crap badge for her efforts), but I’d take being up every hour if she went back to sleep again in a few, sweet minutes. Ava will wake up once, that’s all, but she’ll be up for one – two – three hours, restless and fractious and tearful at first, building to ear-splitting shrieking and screaming that makes her choke and gag, her body stiffening as every muscle bursts with rage, her fists flailing and legs kicking. When she’s like that, I feel completely incapable. Like the most useless, pathetic example of a parent – because no amount of shushing and singing and rocking can help her. And that desperation is humbling and instant and appalling. I’ll never forget a friend saying that she actually thought having two children was easier, and feeling so aware that I was clearly doing something very wrong because the night before I’d wished, for a brief betrayal of a second, that my baby hadn’t been born.
And obviously, I don’t feel like this in the day. When I wake, in bunched up sheets and furiously kicked off bedding, and she is snoring like a dormouse on a greetings card; utterly at peace, with her hand clinging tightly onto me, then my heart balloons and I am riddled with guilt that I can have felt so far away from her. The days where she is her true self, she is curious and playful and fascinated by everything. She laughs boisterously and wrinkles her nose cheekily and sticks her tongue out. She is the sunniest little human and I can’t remember what life and our family was like without her in it. And it crushes me that, even though I know this will pass and it’s not her or even my fault, I cannot hold onto that Ava when I’m at my wit’s end.
We’re supposed to love and protect our children. That’s it. But god, it feels impossible sometimes. And I don’t know how to reconcile those dark, sticky emotions when we as a society continue to put mothers on a pedestal of perfection that presumes they idolise and adore their children at all times. The motherhood I know is wild, end-of-the-scales emotions that lurches from huge, unequivocal, all-consuming love to primal protectiveness that would literally make you kill something if you had to. Parenting is not PG. It’s not smoothed over edges and neatly tied-up ends. It’s messy and chaotic and amazing and uncompromising. There has to be more grey area with what we think being a parent amidst all that looks like, so we can talk about the times we feel wretched and awful and violent, instead of stuffing those feelings deep down and quietly beating ourselves with the lurking thought that our kids might be better off with someone else.
And while I wrestle with my own fears that no one else thinks these things and I might just be a horrible mother, the one comfort I clutch onto is that every morning I get to start all over again; to try and be the parent Ava deserves and the woman I know, after seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, I am.