Go the **** to sleep!

Evening all!

William is on a minimum-sleep cycle at the moment, so what a perfect moment to talk about it. Sleep deprivation sucks. Not for him, he's having a whale of a time chatting shite to himself at 3am. Personally I'm a light sleeper, so once I'm awake, I'm stuffed till I reach exhaustion. Many a time I've been up reading about serial killers on Wikipedia after a night session with William. I don't know if I should be worried about myself or not.

Anyway, William has melatonin each night to settle him, it's supposed to relax him but sometimes I think I'd be better off taking it instead. I've often thought about slipping some whisky in his juice but best not. I haven't done that in case anyone has picked up the phone to call social services.

When you have a new baby, the exhaustion of night feeding is pretty unbearable at times. But often after a full belly of milk baby will nod off again for a bit and you kinda get used to a cycle, with the hope that one day they will sleep through. William is now 4 and still wakes most nights. Sometimes its for comfort of Mum or Dad, sometimes its to play or to
babble about Upsy Daisy or count numbers. He has a tendency to pi$$ about, tossing and turning and saying "telly on". I will be the first to admit that on the odd occasion I have said "William, its 3 o'clock in the pissing morning, FFS go to sleep".  He can't be left alone as he starts banging furniture or screaming, which wakes the whole house, including the dust mites, so you're in it for the duration whether that be 20 minutes or 2 hours.

A fellow mummy posted a youtube video on Facebook a while back and I watched it over and over again with Daddy, snorting with laughter. Julie, you saved my sanity with this, and even on our worst nights we can sing this to ourselves and smile. A bit. With blurred vision and matchsticks.

Here it is (warning explicit lyrics)
http://youtu.be/XYsTXkoQwEM

As I type I have William in bed with me faffing around and far from tired. Its 9.44pm and after a late night on the beer yesterday, I could do with catching up on rest. Daddy says "Come on, bedtime" and William rolls over to me saying "to Mum" and being all cute. Little bugger. It's going to be a long night.

I'm hoping that sleep will improve one day, but I know many families who go through a similar thing, and of course many children who don't have autism fanny about at night times. Williams brother is a great sleeper, but tends to be up early, about 6am even on weekends.

Tonights prediction is that William will pass out about 11pm, I'll still be reading about criminals till midnight, when William will be up again to play Igglepiggle games. Alex will be up at 6, Mum and Dad will be grumpy, copious coffee is consumed and the cycle starts again.

Go the **** to sleep Wottingers!