Sleepless Nights

I’ve had a few now when I go to bed too early.  Stressed about the house.  Stressed about the exchange date changing.  Stressed that the movers are booked and the boxes are packed and the solicitors don’t seem to be making the headway expected.  I manage to sleep at first and then, boom, I’m awake at eleven and then that’s it.  Wide eyes.  Staring into the night.

Then the baby isn’t moving (because the little bean is asleep) and full on paranoia rears its unwelcome head.  Loo trips are then needed every hour.  Cold water drunk to wake up the baby.  Stephen Fry enlisted to read Harry Potter to us.  By now poor Toby is awake too.

All the while the children, thank God, peacefully sleep.

Then my half sleep is littered with fragmented dreams of Fenrir Greyback, the terrifying werewolf with a taste for small people, and I pull myself from them in a tangle of sheets with clammy hands.  Don’t listen to The Half-Blood Prince.  It’s really frightening in the small hours.  How many times.  I start to deeply ponder the ramifications of the world being on fire.  What are we doing to save our planet?How can I bring another child into this upside down inferno? Is it not utterly irresponsible?

But then the sun climbs slowly up, soft light - pink and blue and dusty gold spills over Dartmoor.  Dew covers the thirsty lawn.  The birds begin their sweet, restoring, uplifting dawn chorus.  Pippin stumps in, ‘I love you the same size as a brachiosaurus, you’re my favourite mummy in the world.'

He’s now lying here in the crook of my arm.  He smells like chamomile and honeysuckle.  The top of his head.  It’s intoxicating.  And reassuring. And fleeting. I hold on tight.

Perhaps everything will all turn out well after all.  It has to, doesn’t it? There have been bigger problems before.  There will, most likely, be bigger ones after.  I guess I will just carry on trying to do the best that I can, and keep on praying for rain 🙏🏼