Where is the nearest Premier Inn?

Written by Lisa-Claire Janjanin for her blog, Cold Tea.

4/03/18 – 3.37am (in bed praying he stays asleep)

I found myself asking this question, in my head, many times in the first 6 months. Not because I don’t love my baby, not because I’d given up, but because I needed to find a space to breathe. And sleep. So that I could actually function. Like a normal human being. So that I could be the Mum I so wanted to be. All I needed was somewhere clean and simple with a bed. A Premier Inn would be fine. And wouldn’t eat into the crap statutory maternity pay too much.

Blog 3_premier inn sketch
So many people around us tell us, as expectant parents, that the lack of sleep when you have a baby is painful, ‘you never really sleep properly again’, they chime. And you don’t really know how to respond at the time other than to nod and smile – after all it’s too late, you are already expecting. A variety of people share this insight with you; your Mum, his Mum, your Sister in Law, your friend, your Aunty, your colleague, even the postman (yes my postman often liked to warn me about future horrors of having a baby throughout my pregnancy – his daughter apparently didn’t sleep through until she was 6. What an exaggeration! surely…..?).

But you only really know what they mean when it hits you, when you’ve been awake for what feels like a month but is in fact only 19 hours. And your baby is still cluster feeding. And your nipples are about to fall off. Or you’re trying to operate the tommee tippee perfect prep machine, ignoring the loud beeping, trying to alert you that it is empty of water. And you’ve forgotten how to walk. And you have constant brain fog. And your baby apparently needs no sleep to grow and develop, just more milk. And then you remember, they all tried to warn you. So many times.

And let’s not forget that you may well have suffered a lack of sleep during the last couple of months of your pregnancy too, or maybe even the whole thing if you were unlucky. All those aches and pains as your body changes shape, as it tries to accommodate your mini you, the baby playing penalty shoot out in small hours on your bladder, resulting in endless trips to the loo, oh and the beach ball (or yoga ball in my case) that is now taking up half your body meaning you have no hope of actually getting comfortable. So for many of us mums, before your baby even arrives you may not have slept properly in months. And labour, well that’s exhausting regardless of how you deliver (and another topic entirely.)

So the baby has arrived………and then the real fun begins – and my god the broken sleep really is that bad. It’s torture. I have since read that in some countries depriving sleep from captives is actually used as a form of torture. And here we are optionally putting ourselves through it by having a baby, despite being warned so many times. Oh well it’s too late now, it can’t last too long, it’s temporary right? (8 months on Russell and I are still asking ourselves this.)

In the day you feel like a zombie while attempting to fulfil your unrealistic plans to go to a plethora of your usual baby classes or coffee meet ups and complete all necessary domestic chores. (We are all domestic goddesses are we not!? – another chapter on this later). And then to make matters even worse while out engaging with other mums you realise they aren’t in fact all zombies like you – you hear about the babies that sleep 12 hours a night. Their mothers proudly wittering on, looking so refreshed as they happily share how wonderful it feels to have their energy back, with a flock of zombie mums eagerly gathered around hoping, no – desperately praying that some good luck rubs off on them. And even if you manage to avoid these mums (I try at all costs), you will see the same boasts on social media chat when mindlessly scrolling the internet on your phone late at night. And what’s more, these babies also have what I have termed ‘mythical naps’ in the day. So the mums even get some ‘me time’. Would you believe it?!

So the jealousy you feel is unreal, it’s nothing like the jealousy you may have felt previously in life when someone was prettier / thinner / smarter or has a nicer car / job / partner / cat / handbag than you – the jealousy of those mums with babies who ‘sleep 12 hours straight since he was 2 weeks old’ is on ANOTHER level entirely. You don’t even know how to process it. So much so it risks you having a criminal record. So the safest thing to do is just step away slowly and find a quiet corner away from the conversation and breathe. In and out. And again.

Or just convince yourself that they are lying. That’s what I have done. Maybe they are so tired that they actually forgot they got up in the night? Or maybe they can’t hear their baby and slept through the cries? Or maybe there are trolls online on a mission to fool you in to thinking you’re not putting your baby to sleep correctly / you have given birth to a demon. Who knows. Whatever the reason, babies sleeping through, can’t possibly be true…. can it??!

But funnily enough as with everything in this life, there are two sides to ever coin. And this is no different with mum life, there are always mums at both ends of the scale.

There are the Supermums who proclaim they are up so many more times than you are. And appear totally fine with it. And that the baby is sleeping in their bed. Which they are also totally fine with. And of course you totally believe them, and really empathise. That must be so difficult being on a 2 hour wake up cycle for example, and not having their own space in bed yet, or feeling comfortable with their baby being in their own room / or baby feeding at night so much that it feels pointless to put them in their own room. And they are still able to look lovingly at their baby, despite the fact that they have had less sleep than you have and you struggle with this. You just can’t get your head around it.

So what is hard is when you are struggling with your version of disturbed nights of being up 3 times and wanting to have a real moan about it, and to be greeted with empathy, hot tea, and a pile of biscuits at your NCT coffee morning, but in response to your moan, other mums, Supermums share they have in fact been up 6 times and ‘whilst it’s not ideal (they) have leant to cope with it’. OMG, what do you say in response to that? (in my experience its best to just pass them the biscuits).

When this happened to me (on lots of occasions) I have had no idea how to respond. These women must actually be superwomen right? Hats off to them for being so patient and tolerant of their little bundles sleep patterns. I really do mean that. But that just isn’t me, I get tired, grouchy, frustrated and experience what I have termed ‘night rage’ that I can’t just sleep for more than 3 hours without being woken up. And then…..Oh dear here we go, that familiar ‘Mum guilt’ revelation sets in (this is a reoccurring event throughout my (the) motherhood journey so far- which I will do a chapter on shortly);

“I’m finding the broken sleep so hard and I feel like I’m dying, and it’s not half as tough as what that other mum is going through and they are fine” – and then depending on the weather that day you then conclude one of the following phrases that means you are either; pathetic / a failure / useless / selfish / weak / not cut out to be a Mum. Which is awful to experience in itself. And to top it off you don’t get the empathy and biscuits you had hoped for as the conversation has now moved on to how someone’s routine is going with their baby…… routine? What even is that?

As mums our days are always busy, and the lack of sleep only makes this harder. And as we all know, no matter how little sleep you’ve had, you still need to be on form to be able to look after your little one the next day. One thing I have learnt so far in my journey as a mum is that all babies, and their mothers are different. Some babies, and some mums, can cope with less sleep, and some of us need far more. It’s a shame we didn’t all get paired up correctly(!) but the best thing we can do is be kind to ourselves, and allow ourselves to go slower, much slower, on those tough days when your head hardly touched the pillow the night before. And promise ourselves that at the soonest opportunity we will treat ourselves to that well deserved nap, or maybe just go for it and book yourself a massage for some real relaxation – if you’re local look up The Celtic Touch on Facebook, Linda is amazing.