“Honey? Honey? Are you alright? Honey?”
We are sitting in the car having taken Lola to the doctor’s surgery for a routine inoculation. Zsuzsa has just casually mentioned that the doctor has recommended that I look after Lola on my own for a week.
“Honey?”
It’s nothing to do with the inoculation. It’s all because Lola won’t sleep for more than half an hour at a time during the night. Zsuzsa asked for advice about how to break this torturous cycle.
“Do you need to get out and get some fresh air or something?”
Lola. Our beautiful little meat ball. An absolute angel during the day, but by night? My God, what an utter dick!
“Honey?”
The doctor’s thinking is that Lola has become too dependent on the old night-time nipples. We need to wean her off and that’s where I come in as apparently, my nipples won’t be quite as big a draw.
“It’s only a week darling. It won’t be that bad.”
I consider this and she’s right. It’s just one week. One little, tiny, teeny-weeny week. What the hell am I crying about? I think about my idols. What would the likes of Eric Cantona, Indiana Jones or Batfink have done in such a scenario? They’d have risen to the challenge no doubt. They’d have laughed it off and shouted “Give me that Goddamn baby! I’ve got this!”. Yes, I can do this.
4 days later.
I can’t do this. I haven’t slept for more than a two hour continuous stint for four nights. My head is pounding and I can’t feel my face. How does Zsuzsa do this? My wife is an absolute beast. I start to think about the doctor’s advice and something dawns on me! I didn’t hear him say it, and even if he did it would’ve been in Hungarian! Did he say it? Did he really? Or is this all a desperately devious act by a beyond tired lady? I mull this around in my mind and decide that of course he said it. My little wife is far too honourable (not in the Prince Andrew sense of the word) to make stuff up. If she’d needed a break she would’ve politely asked me. No, it’s all his fault. It’s all due to the doctor!
I begin to fantasise about torturing him. Nothing too sinister, just a classic, British, passive aggressive revenge fantasy. Things like sneaking into his flat in the dead of night and replacing the odd good battery with a bad one, loosening the top of his salt cellar, mixing his caffeinated and decaffeinated teabags together, turning the setting on his toaster up to maximum so that he over cooks his toast. That sort of thing. Maybe I could even secretly superglue a teaspoon to the middle of his back so that he can’t reach it and it drives him crazy! . Mwah ha ha ha ha ha! MWAH HA HA HA HA! I decide I’m going mad
Angel by day, absolute fiend by night.
5 days later.
Another night without sleep. Now I’m thinking about my idols and decide that I’ve got them all wrong. There’s a reason why there’s no Indiana Jones and the Crying Baby! It’s because Indiana would have crumbled! And I don’t recall ever seeing a Batfink cartoon where he had to soothe a restless infant either! And as for Cantona, the guy went mental and Kung fu kicked a guy just because he called him names! He’d probably had a good nights sleep too! Imagine if he’d been kept awake for a week by a crying baby?! Carnage!
6 days later
Oh my God, it’s working! Lola only woke up once last night! Maybe I’ll have to fantasise about sneaking back into our doctor’s house, sorting out his teabags and turning his toaster setting back down!
7 days later.
It’s over and unbelievably Lola is now sleeping far better than a week ago. I survived and I now know that I can do it. I can go a week living on basically no sleep. I’m so tired that I now look like a walking, talking ball bag, but hopefully that’ll pass.
Later that morning I’m sharing a coffee moment with my somewhat revitalised wife. Lola is playing nicely in the corner, the sun is shining and the world seems to be a lovely place again.
I turn to Zsuzsa and say…
“Do you think we should have another one? Another baby I mean. Not now, obviously, but in a year or two?”
Zsuzsa stares at me, I return her gaze.
...
...
We both burst into manic laughter.
Like utter fuck.