Emily-Jane Clark - Sleep is for the weak: how to survive when your baby wont go the f**k to sleep

Emily-Jane Clark is a freelance journalist who lives in the East Midlands with two VERY lively daughters and one tired husband. She writes regularly for Metro UK, Huffington Post, Good Housekeeping online and the New Statesman. Other writing credits include Mirror online, Femail, Kidspot, Scary Mommy and the Telegraph online. She has written sketches for Crooked Pieces and Directors Cut Theatre and BBC Radio 4s The Show What You Wrote and was a finalist in the Funny Women Awards 2016. Emily-Jane is also a volunteer at Home-Start, a charity that helps families in need.

PART I
FROM BUMP TO BABY AND BEYOND (EXHAUSTED)

PART II
HOW TO GET YOUR BABY TO GO THE FUCk TO SLEEP

PART III
HOW NOT TO LOSE FRIENDS AND IRRITATE PEOPLE

PART IV
NO SLEEP SOLUTIONS A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SURVIVING WITHOUT SLEEP

PART V
WHEN YOU CANT FIND THE LIGHT SLEEP-DEPRIVATION V POSTNATAL ILLNESS

PART VI
HOW TO WIN AT SLEEP-DEPRIVATION

Thanks to the People Who Get All Offended By Silly Stuff I have to point out that this book is based on MY experience of babies. If you read this and think, Oh I dont do that with my babies is this woman insinuating I am doing babies all wrong? then you are one of these people. Just because I say I get my baby to sleep one way does not mean that I believe that all the other ways are wrong. What I am trying to say is that if babies were cats and we lived in a world where homemade cat-skin jackets were all the rage (bear with me) and we all skinned our cats differently we would still ALL end up with beautiful cat-skin jackets. *

I also have to point out that not all babies are Sleep Thieves. I can confirm that other babies are available including Happy To Go Down Drowsy But Awake Baby, the Couple Of Times a Night Baby and even the rare Magical Sleep Through The Night Angel-Baby.

*By the way People Who Get All Offended By Silly Stuff, I am not endorsing the making of homemade cat-skin jackets.

Sleep-deprivation can kill. I know this because the Internet told me. It was about 4am and I was up yet again with my new baby. I needed answers. I needed to know that I would survive the torture of being kept awake, night after night, after night. So with my heart in my mouth, I frantically Googled, Can you die of sleep-deprivation?

I was so shocked by what I found out that I woke up my husband, James, to break the news:

James, James, wake up! I cried, until he finally opened his eyes. I am going to die.

I waved my mobile phone at him. It says here that in the 1980s this scientist bloke conducted a series of ground-breaking sleep experiments and, after staying awake for 32 days, all of his subjects died. I should mention at this point in the story that those subjects were rats. But still, it was a terrifying thing to discover after many months of barely any sleep.

Well, in that case, you really ought to sleep while the baby sleeps instead of messing around on your phone, groaned James, before rolling back over and (annoyingly) going straight back to sleep.

Yes, sleep while you can my love, I whispered manically into the darkness. Because soon Ill be dead and youll have to deal with the baby every single night. Alone. See how you like that!

So it is a fact. Sleep-deprivation can kill you, if you are a rat. But thankfully, if you are a human parent it probably wont.

I know this because I was severely sleep-deprived for four years and I did not die. I was exhausted, depressed, anxious and often felt like I was dying, but I lived to tell the tale. This tale.

I should start by telling you about my two daughters, aka the Sleep Thieves. The two tiny, beautiful girls who stole my heart, my sleep and almost my sanity.

Babies wake up at night. I knew this going into motherhood. But my offspring didnt just wake up a few times for a feed or a nappy change. On a bad night, they woke up every half hour; on a good night, every few hours; and on a really bad night, they would just refuse to go to sleep at all. Born just 18 months apart, they were both highly adept in the art of wakefulness.

People told me things would improve.

Babies settle down at six months, they said.

They will sleep better when they start on solids, they reassured me.

When they start crawling/walking/talking, theyll definitely sleep, they promised.

They were liars. Mine did not. Both my children saw sleep as unnecessary until they were well into toddlerhood. As a result, I spent the first few years of motherhood living like some kind of weird zombie, surviving on reheated coffee and half-eaten biscuits.

Parenthood was nothing like I expected when I was expecting. I expected babies to be tucked up in bed by 8pm (because theyre babies and they do as we say, right?). I envisaged my husband and me heading downstairs after we had kissed our little angel good night. Then wed open a bottle of wine and happily bask in our post-baby bubble. I did not expect my daughter to wake up every half hour and scream the moment I put her back in her cot. Neither did I think that we would spend our evenings tensely watching TV with the subtitles on, not daring to talk, laugh or flush the toilet for fear we would wake the baby. I expected to love my baby, but I didnt expect to fall in love with her and for it to give me strength I never knew I had. And I certainly did not expect to lose my first year of motherhood to postnatal depression and anxiety. In hindsight, the only thing I should have expected when I was expecting was a baby.

I know what you are thinking, Why the hell are you writing a book when you could be sleeping, you dickhead? Well, back when I was in the pits of sleep- deprivation, knowing that there were other babies who hated to sleep as much as (or more than!) mine always made me feel better. There was great comfort in knowing my child was not an alien freak baby and that I was not alone in my nightly battles. I also discovered that when it comes to parenting on barely any sleep, if you didnt laugh you would cry. A lot. And possibly never stop. So I guess I wrote this book in the hope it would provide some laughter and comfort to tired parents.