Sleeeeeepppppppp......

It took four months of struggling along with this sleep-challenged baby - reading everything under the sun, trying technique after technique, hoping things would improve with time and eventually resorting to every sleep aid you can imagine - before I finally asked for help. I was pointed in the direction of Tresillian. A few weeks after the referral was organised, a lovely nurse called Louise came to my house and gently tried to get to the heart of the issue. We talked about how hard it was to settle S, how some nights it would take two hours or more to get her off to sleep, how she would wake every hour or two through the night to feed, how her day sleeps lasted half an hour, if we were lucky. But worst of all, how there was no consistency to this chaos, because where one night she could moan and cry for hours before sleeping, the next she might go off without complaint and sleep for an age (always the night P decided to play up!) Louise left after a couple of hours with the recommendation to begin the babies on some food. I followed her advice but saw little improvement. Three weeks later Louise returned, saw the increasingly dark circles under my eyes and suggested we come in for a four-night residential stay. I nearly wept with gratitude. I was told to call the following day to be given the date for my pre-admission interview, at which I would be given the date for my stay. The interview was set down for a Wednesday another three weeks later. The clock ticked. The sleeping didn't improve. The circles got darker. Finally the interview, and the date I was given for admission was ANOTHER FOUR WEEKS in the distance. Deep sigh.

I was put on a stand-by list and over the coming weeks received no less than four calls offering me a place "tomorrow" or "on Friday" or, in one case, "this morning." Each time it was either impossible to arrange at such short notice or the babies had a lurgy of some sort. So I clung to my admission date and looked forward to it like it was a holiday or a spa retreat.

That date was September 26 - it came and went on Sunday. And still I am at home. Because of the persistent snot. As a 'well-baby facility', they can't admit us until the colds and coughs and conjunctivitis have passed. But not to fear...a  new date has been set...ANOTHER FOUR WEEKS away. Shitty shit shit.