Sleeplessness

The baby’s not even born yet and I’m suffering sleepless nights!

For well over a fortnight now I’ve been waking up around 5am and just lying there, absolutely exhausted but nevertheless wide-eyed and awake and as far from sleep as it’s possible to get. The cumulative effect is that I am now practically a zombie (though hopefully with less offensive BO) and have the ability to fudge up the most basic of physical actions. Weirdly my thought processes don’t seem to be diminished one iota but then, if you’re already at rock bottom, there is no where else left to fall.

Anyway there are number of external factors which are no doubt exacerbating this state of sleeplessness: my neighbour is a postman and leaves the house around 5.30am every morning and seems unable to do so without stomping down his stairs and slamming the door like Marsha’s enigmatic daughter from Spaced. I’m not yet in a position to confirm or deny that he wears the same stripy stockings as well. My boy is also waking up pre-5.30am and as quiet as he tries to be there’s a vast difference between a 6 year old’s idea of quiet and quiet per se. Anyone with kids will know what I mean.

But in all honesty I think I’m just waking up early due to internal factors. When Karen and I lost the baby last year the experience was pretty horrific and although it turned out that Karen was perfectly safe I nevertheless went through the classic “pacing of the hospital corridors at 4.0am” while Karen was carted off to the operating theatre and for 90 minutes I had no idea what the hell was going on. Since then my love of hospitals and all things medical – always pretty ropey at the best of times – has waned rather drastically to the point I get hives at the mere thought of us having to undergo yet another hospital experience.

And of course, now that the date for the caesarean has been set the clock is ticking and so are my facial muscles.

I know, I know, it’ll all be fine.

But I worry.