...isn't always the light of the home or the bringer of happiness.
At least, not when it's coming at you at four in the morning and the only light in your life is the landing light that's back on yet again while you drag your sorry butt back down to your two year old's bedroom for the 50th time in 3 hours to convince them that this really isn't playtime and you think 'dear all that is good and holy in this universe please get my child to sleep while I can still get three hours of shut eye if I was to fall asleep now.. right now... please... pleeeeeease you little sh*!&%""££!Argh!!'.
Panic sets in... you might have work to go to in a few hours, the school run. Good giref you might have to talk to people. Your whole body's shaking with the need to slip into a coma. You start calculating how little sleep you'd manage to get if you were to fall asleep immediately, mid-step across the hallway. Sleeping standing up - is that possible? Surely horses manage it... can we? If I don't sleep tonight, you think, how much coffee will it take to keep me functioning throughout the day tomorrow... today? Oh shit, yes, today... and damn, there's no milk for coffee.. that's ok, you think, you can drink it black - might be better, might be stronger that way. Definitely tastes stronger. Why am I going on about coffee at 4 in the morning?!
You are not alone. Trust me.
There's a subculture of dreary-eyed parents across the globe, gently rocking their babies while they gently rock themselves in the corner of the nursery, throughout the night, just as they did the night before, and just as they no doubt will do again the next night, over and over into a swirling void of sleep deprivation and near insanity. I've been there, too, still am, on many nights, willing slumber to fall upon my baby, desperation kicking in... sleep, please....sleep.... and then, silently, they fall asleep on you.. and then... then... hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking this precious bundle that's puffing warm, sweet breath into your neck... then... you sit up for the rest of the night, willing yourself to stay awake, terrified that if you fall asleep you'll wake to find them squished under your colossal breast-feeding mammary mattress of a boob that's stuck itself to the front of your chest and weighs the same as a small cow.
And then your arm goes to sleep. Still, at least some small part of you is getting some downtime. ffs.
Dear lord will sleep come again.. to any of us? Will anyone sleep again? You ask yourself minute after minute...
Yes, I assure you, it does come, you will (all of you) sleep again, but only after several months, or maybe years, of calling your baby and yourself every name under the moon. And then you'll just have to get comfortable with feeling guilty for the rest of your life that you swore and cussed at your baby.
