The Cerebral Mum

I think Caspar must be having a growth spurt. It’s only 1:14pm and he’s already gone done for his second nap. In spite of it looking like her would be done to just one nap a day soon, it’s now gone back up to 3. Or perhaps I’m just not as “present” for him and he’s bored and having no fun. I don’t think that’s it though. I think that really would be a self-pitying, un-motherlike thought.

Well, maybe not un-motherlike. Mothers worry. Mothers try to do what’s best and there is never a real answer to that. I think we’re fine, though. I know I don’t have the energy and zest that I would like, and if that was going to be some lifetime thing I think that would upset me. But I don’t think that it is a lifetime thing. I don’t I am scarring him for life because I am sad right now. And I do my best to keep our days busy for him. Or busy enough. I still enjoy him. He still makes my heart light up. Right now, the light is a little dim, but it is a light nonetheless. So it’s okay.

He probably has become a little more demanding than usual in the last few days, which is evidence that he is very aware that I am not as focussed as usual, but he is such an easy, placid boy that it is not unbearable. It is not making me feel more stressed or pressured or overwhelmed. It is not making me feel like a failure. And that’s good.

Really, it’s just a reminder when I drift into my head to snap out of it, to be in the day as best I can. Knowing that there are many mothers out there suffering depression whose depression is tied up with their young children, I think that I am fortunate that mine is not. At some stage, I guess, I will have to consider how becoming a mother has effected me, my psyche, because I need to question everything I think I know. My thinking has become rigid. I think I have less capacity for empathy at the moment. I think I have become judgemental.

But when I do examine it, although I think I will still feel as i do now, that our relationship is an easy one, that he is a wonderful human being, and that I am a good mother for him. That I have the resources to make good choices, that I have the capacity to love him as needs to be loved. That it is easy to love him. I do not have the same expectations of perfection for my child or for me as a mother that I seem to have for myself alone, or for other people. Those expectations for “them” - that nebulous, imaginary “them” - need to go.

I think that when I speak about the world and social issues I am careful with my words. I don’t make accusations or use ad hominums to bolster my opinion. But I think that somewhere in me there is some sense of self-righteousness that takes away the good part of doing that.

And now it is 1:42pm. And he’s is crying to get up. Just a little nap. So off I go to be in his day.

Yes, she is. And I don’t like the sound of her voice. She’s a nag.

Three nights in a row I have fallen asleep on the couch after putting Caspar to bed at 7pm. I think Sleep is trying to tell me something. But I hate sleeping. I always have. It’s not something I have ever been good at. As a child, I had an early bedtimes. Today it seems like children don’t have bedtimes at all but back in the day… So I went to bed. But not to sleep.

Growing up in north east Victoria we had long, hot summers, hot enough to melt the roads and it seemed like the sun never went down. I would read and read and read, squinting at the pages in the half-light until I had to admit defeat, no longer able to make out the words. Then I used a torch, which was confiscated from me regularly. I recall one night waiting until my parents were asleep before going outside to crawl under the house and retrieve it from it’s hiding place. And I remember hours spent overnight in the toilet with a book, working on the theory that if my parents awoke and discovered me, I had an excuse at hand.

I also remember waking early, around 4am, and reading some more. I would leave the house before 7am, still reading as I walked the 15 minute walk to school. School didn’t start until 9am.

So I didn’t sleep but I spent a lot of time in bed. With my books. In 40°+ heat ( that’s 104+ in fahrenheit for my American friends) I would be snuggled under the doona with Enid Blyton or Judy Blume or Jane Austen. Lost in their worlds, I had no concept of time or what was going on outside. The day I read R.D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, in the year of the Ash Wednesday fires which wiped out half the state (I was nearly 11), it was hot, really hot. When I finished it, in bed with my electric blanket on in the middle of the day at the height of summer, I was surprised to look outside and see it wasn’t snowing. That the air, sweltering, was a burning jewel.

After leaving home, there was no longer any bedtime and my sleepless nights continued. Sometimes, I worked late at a McDonald’s in the city, a 17 year old girl working her way through her last year at high school. Occasionally I went out to a club, stumbling from the early tram into my school-funded apartment for a long bath before classes. But mostly I read, now grown into Plath and Sartre and Camus. And I wrote.

As an adult, I succumbed briefly to the 9 to 5 life but continued living without sleep, spending dark hours at the computer working on my novel. Sleep is boring, I would say. I started working nights on top of my day job, just to stay awake, before doing away with the day job altogether and surrendering once more to my vampire life. I closed my eyes only when I could keep them open no longer.

Now I am not working at all and I am unable to sleep whenever my body wins its battle with me because of that small, warm, perfect boy now peacefully snuffle-snoring in my room. Still, I find myself again and again at my computer at 3am, writing this blog. My body is fighting me for its time; it’s time to recuperate, to rejuvenate my mind, to replenish itself, rebuild itself. It is not winning. It is ten minutes to one and after a restless nap on the sofa, I am here writing.

I confess, O nagging Sleep, that it is my bedtime. I will submit to that much.

But I am taking a book with me.

Me, that is. Not Caspar.

I’m one of those annoying mothers whose child sleeps through, eats anything I give him, cries only to let me know his nap is over, and fills his nappy at the same time each morning.

That’s not to say there haven’t been a few hiccups along the way. The week after his first two vaccinations were awful. The week after surgery was horrible. And he has a tendency to shit twice on any day that I’m not the one who changes that first nappy. He must know it’s my job.

I have slowly worked his bedtime back from 11pm to 7pm. My alarm goes off at 7am and I wake to the sound of ABC Classic FM (Caspar’s choice), not to a baby crying. Mostly I’m lazy and I take Cas back to bed with me so I can steal another dozy half hour or so while he annoys his toy giraffe and the curtains.

I’d like to give myself some credit for his 12 hour sleeps but I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve it: Routine and I are incompatible. I just happened to get the beginner’s model baby. Take tonight for example.

He had his dinner and I stripped him off to let him play in the nude. (It’s nice to play in the nude. I miss it.) I had intended to give him a bath but decided I couldn’t be bothered so we just hung out. Like I said, I’m lazy, and, boy, is Big Sis’ bathroom draughty!

At 6:44pm Caspar went to his bookshelf and pulled out all his books. This is not uncommon but he usually turns each one around trying to get to the pages before giving up and trying again with another. Tonight he was actually looking for something. And there it was, being handed to me: Time For Bed by Mem Fox.

(This is nearly always the last book we read together before I tuck him in for the night. The other likely suspects are Penny Dale’s Ten In The Bed and Mike Brownlow’s Little Robots.)

It was at this juncture that I looked at the clock and saw 6:44pm. Why else would I have any idea of the time? He’d factored in 16 minutes to have a snuggle, drink his bottle and hear his bedtime stories before lights out. He’s got it down. Me on the other hand…

As a first time Mum you hear a lot about how hard it is having a baby and living off 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. I’m not saying that being Mum isn’t exhausting because sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s draining. And I know that it’s different for everyone but I wonder how many other Mum’s are like me and living off 3 or 4 hours sleep because they choose to have a full day of their own once bub has gone down. Did I really luck out and get the beginner’s model, or was I being hazed?