Interesting isn’t it how once upon a time routine made life so mundane. I used to wake to an alarm, shower, dress, eat breakfast, organise lunch, travel to work, take my breaks, travel home, make dinner… all the while looking forward to the weekend or holidays where schedules were non-existent.
Now, routine is what I desperately wish and hope for – especially where sleep is concerned.
For Christmas Milla gave us consecutive nights of blissful, uninterrupted slumber. Despite waking in a puddle of milk at 7am, we were sure we were on to a good thing. The warm bath, the classical music, the relaxing massage and the ‘dream feed’ at 10pm – we had finally discovered the winning formula. My husband and I woke each morning grinning from ear to ear with relief – our lives were back to normal, we were human beings again, we could have 6 children, this was easy!
Four whole nights this went on for and then came the unexpected midnight snack! Milla had decided that she was hungry at midnight, hungry at 3am and was ready to party by 5am. This also went on for four whole nights.
What went wrong? How had our system failed?
I spoke to a close friend about our forty winks dilemma. Being a mother of four she would surely know the answers that would help to put us back to that semi-habitual state.
Her words of wisdom were this: “Children thrive on routine, but the last routine they seem to learn is sleeping all night. Even then, they will most probably be teenagers and you’ll spend all your time trying to get them out of bed. Just face the fact that you probably won’t get a good night sleep for at least a decade, and you should be right.”
Hhhmmm…did I say 6 children? No, I think (if we are lucky enough), we’ll just stick to 3!
Yawn.

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