We’re not sleeping much at the moment. The girl is teething and remembers this around 1am every morning, at which point she wakes, screaming. We haven’t yet found the exact cocktail of cuddles and Calpol that will interrupt this cycle, so we mostly sit with her as she dozes and wait until her snoring is sincere enough that we risk putting her down. The very act of putting her down, of course, usually activates some hitherto hidden pocket of pure adrenaline in her body, causing her to leap back to life in more pain than she was before.
So, we take turns letting her slumber in our arms, grabbing whatever form of broken sleep we can that way. It’s not ideal, but we sympathise. A few months ago, her bottom left molar, the size and shape of a Monopoly house, screwed its way out of her gums, and its opposite number is now on the way. I don’t envy her in this. That first molar is so comically large it’s hard not to imagine the horror of it bursting from my own flesh unexpected. In none of these imaginings would sleep be a priority.
Currently, she wakes up at 1 or 2am and usually goes back to sleep that time relatively easily, but her next wake-up, whatever time it arrives, might have her up for good. Usually, she’s crying, but weirder are those times she’s wide awake and cheerful, ready to attack the day in the pitch-black gloom of a London night. There is a strangeness to sitting in a dark room, my eyes adjusting to the drear just well enough to see her huge eyes flashing toward me, fully alert and confused. Even my blackened heart might grudgingly admit there’s a certain loveliness to this. Sometimes – rarer than rare, but occasionally – some small serenity descends upon me and I’m capable of appreciating it in the moment; she, full of stubborn, wakeful peace, resting her head on my chest while I nod in and out of consciousness.
All of which led me to be awake and drooling at 3am last Monday morning, cradling a defiantly chirpy baby in my arms, as we watched a gathering storm assault the windblown trees through her bedroom window, their leaves turned inside out and showing their rheumy undersides, like a million stiff little envelopes. Then something quickened in the air. A moment’s silence and the window panes rattled as rain began to fall. First a spray, then a trickle, then a deluge. It was, to quote Terry Pratchett, that kind of rain ‘that is merely an upright sea with slots in it’, creating precisely the kind of ambient noise you get in Spotify playlists for insomniacs. Her eyelids tremored, and slowly, so slow I could scarcely believe it, closed.
Then the thunder started. Not the usual distant, intermittent rumbling, but a constant, groaning tumult. This, accompanied by staccato bursts of bright white light, their overlapping wedges illuminating the sky like fashion week flashbulbs. Immediately roused from whatever hope of sleep I’d foolishly held, she gripped my finger and smiled, gazing in wonder at the fearful spectacle of nature. I have to believe that one day I will treasure this memory. I am far from sleep, let me hold on to such small dreams.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
