Purge

 This blog is everything I'm thinking at the moment. It's my therapy. I need this. Please bear with me.

I am so tired I can hardly see straight because Pickle has stopped sleeping properly again. Not only this but every night it is at least a two hour BATTLE to get her anywhere near sleep. We are in this weird window of her development where she still needs a nap in the day, even if it's just 20 minutes, and so if she doesn't nap, she makes our life a living hell until she goes to sleep at night, which she fights with body and soul, so in the evening it's approximately 4 hours of horrendousness which I start dreading around noon. If she does nap, however, no matter what we do, like go to the beach or the playground right after daycare, or go and climb one or two of the Himalayas with her, she still will not fall asleep until after 10. 11:30 was the worst one, one of the weeks when my husband was in the UK and we were here. By the end, she was crying, I was sobbing, and we were holding each other in a sort of desperate embrace. It was awful but at the same time rather magical. Having a kid is nuts. 

When I am this tired, my dominant emotion, aside from having an incredibly short fuse, is a feeling of guilt. I kept Pickle out of daycare yesterday because she was so tired from a big weekend of a hell of a lot of fun and beach and fayres and grandparents and friends, and frankly I didn't fancy the insane morning palava of trying to get her out of bed and dressed and fed and sun-creamed in time to get there. By the time I drop her at daycare I feel like I've run a marathon whilst simultaneously losing a sword fight with a sea monster. I phoned daycare quite a few times to tell them I was keeping her off but they didn't answer. When I walked in today with Pickle, I was overwhelmed with shame and guilt that I had kept her off yesterday and hadn't let them know properly, and because one of the teachers didn't smile at me, I instantly assumed that they all hated me and had deemed me unfit and irresponsible and they were, collectively, furious with me and were going to take it out on Pickle. In reality, I know, they probably were glad that there was one less child yesterday and had not given it a second thought. The worker was making a smoothie and was concentrating on that which is, I am pretty sure, why she didn't lavish us with praises  and beaming smiles to welcome us in. 

Last night, in the midst of her tantrums when we were trying to put her to bed, I went in and sat on her bed and read her a little story (the fourth that night). I was feeling angry and frustrated, and so I wasn't reading it with very much joy or colour. Then, I just saw her lying there, her little face listening to the story, my beautiful little angel, eyes wide and listening and I grabbed her and drew her to me and gave her this huge hug. She flung her arms around me and absolutely clung to me, hugging me back hard. We had a small moment of connection, just my baby girl and me. It was perfect and precious and I cannot express the love I felt for her in that moment, and I know she felt it too. Even now writing about it makes me well up. Maybe...in moments of great adversity comes intense emotional connections. That seems to be true on a macro scale, like the phenomenal camaraderie that occurs after a natural disaster or a great tragedy, and like last night, on the micro scale. For me, though, it felt pretty big. 

Thanks for reading x