Of all the bedtime battles, the sound of silence is hardest to overcome
DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR A FIRST-TIME DAD OF TWINS
ONCE it was a basic human right, a steadying influence on my life, something I’d relied upon to always be there, very much like Bruce Forsyth. But now both Bruce and sleep have been cruelly taken from me by the force of nature.
No longer do I look forward to the arrival of bedtime but feel a sense of creeping dread as another night of chaos edges ever nearer.
There’ll be tears, tantrums and screaming from all of us.
The first issue appeared very soon after Emma and Thomas settled into their little Moses baskets in our room.
I hadn’t realised how generally noisy babies are, often grumbling, snuffling or hiccupping their way through the night. They also seem to communicate with each other by means of a very low pitched rasping sound.
However, this constant soundtrack of bodily noises fades into gentle irritation compared to when they stop making noises.
It’s happened a few times now yet waking up to silence still strikes fear into my soul and within seconds, I’m out of bed checking for a heartbeat.
I’m not a suspicious person, but I don’t know whether the boy (Thomas) does it on purpose just to check my emergency response time. I’m sure I’ve heard him chuckle
gently after two of these occasions.
Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of things that annoy me after only sleeping three hours a night for the past month but those are the main problems emerging.
Please forgive me for my lack of fatherly compassion, but last night Thomas was fed four times and went to the toilet on each occasion – once he went to the toilet on my new luxury cotton M&S dressing gown before he was sick in my face.
Emma was only three feeds, three changed nappies but spoiled all that by continuously mumbling in an aggressive manner when I wasn’t rocking her basket. In between all of this were the numerous times when they woke up, cried briefly in agony but long enough to wake me up then fell straight to sleep again.
The positive side is their sense of camaraderie. They work like a wrestling tag team, so if Emma is kicking off, Thomas is beautifully silent, storing energy for his time in the ring. This means there’s rarely a moment when somebody isn’t demanding something.
I realise vengeance is not an admirable parental quality but I’m looking forward to those teenage years when they want a lie in and I need to do the hoovering.