Night Terrors

A decent nights sleep has been a treasured thing in my book for some time now. For years I have suffered from varying degrees of insomnia brought on by a variety of different causes. By rights I should be the Maggie Thatcher of my time - able to survive on next-to-no somnolent hours, yet still able to rule the country with a rod of iron. Frankly, I'm not interested in a whole country. I'd just settle for successfully captaining my own little vessel after a diminished night of 'restorative' sleep.

I can still remember being rudely awakened by my mother as a teen. Having the duvet yanked from the bed sending a shockwave of cold air cascading over your half-clothed body is not my idea of a gentle wake-up call. Yet, as time has shown me, this was just the tip of the iceberg (so to speak.) As a hormone-high teenager, I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was actually enjoying the best sleep years of my life!

Two children were guaranteed to put paid to any chance of a decent sojourn in bed. Babies with croup always choose the middle of the night to begin their breathing troubles. In the early years I became adept at snatching sleep just about anywhere. Several times The First Mate found me fast asleep on the shower room floor, baby asleep in her bouncy chair and the hot water all used up, after a night of steaming open her little airways so that she could breathe.

My problems really took off though when I was pregnant with The Little Guy. I guess it was my fault for having a third. The insomnia hit during the last trimester. I'd wake up at 3am with the baby racing around like Jensen Button unwilling to make a pit stop. Sleep was impossible, so I'd get up, do the ironing, sew, read, cook....whatever. As with all babies, years of broken nights and semi-comotose days have, ofcourse, followed.

Then I completely screwed my sleep up by taking evening classes. Ignorance was bliss. I had no idea when I started that four years of two nights a week would just about ruin my sleep pattern for good. I discovered that I had a lot in common with shift workers, I'd just about get back to normal on a break, only to mess everything up again as soon as I went back to school.

Add to this picture all the nights that I've slept in the bathroom (or even the kitchen) because I've searched the house for a place to escape from the SNORING plus the irregular disturbance of sharing my bed with my travelling husband some weeks and not others, and you can understand why I've longed for the day when I could finally get my sleep in order.

Thanks to the yoga and the 5.15 am starts, I've mastered the art of dropping off within 5 minutes of my head touching the pillow. The Little Guy rarely disturbs us now either (once I explained that he didn't need to wake me to tell me he was going to the bathroom at 2am!) So, I was really beginning to think that my nights were going to improve. Until last Thursday!

At 2 am the telephone beside my bed rang. The display said 'Unknown Caller,' which usually means it's someone from overseas. "What's happened back home," I thought. "There must be a crisis!"

Dazed, I whispered "Hello" into the receiver. The voice on the other end was not English. I hung up. The phone rang again. " Something, something, Salam" greeted my exhausted ears. I heard voices speaking Arabic in the background. I hung up. "Bugger, it's not home." The telephone rang again........

"Hello, hello" they said, copying my English. I hung up. By now I was wide awake. The next time I let the answer machine take the call, but that was a bad move. I ended up with the blasted thing beeping downstairs. As our house is open-plan, I now risked waking the entire household. The phone rang yet AGAIN.

This time I answered in Norwegian. "Hah! I thought, "That'll get 'em." It didn't. Finally, I swore profusely as I slammed down the receiver and stalked downstairs, where I ripped every imaginable telephone/answermachine connection out of the wall (did I mention that I get ratty when my sleep's disturbed?)

On Friday, I looked like the walking dead. I'd been unable to go back to sleep, despite earplugs and sleeping mask. ExpatOwl, realising that I was handling the situation, had drifted merrily back into the land of nod and snored contentedly all night long. After tossing and turning, I resorted to drinking vast amounts of coffee to get through the day. I drove with my eyes out on stalks, was extremely laid back in Costco, propping myself up on the cart, and snuck a power nap on the way back home whilst waiting for DD2 and her friend to load the car with all the stuff teenage girls cart to sleepovers.

In an effort to make peace with me on Friday night, ExpatOwl kindly offered to unplug the telephone himself that night. I readily agreed, thankful that at least it was Saturday the next day and, with no sports to go to, I could have a lie in. The teenage girls would be doing just as I'd done at their age and wouldn't surface until half the day had gone. I guessed I was in for a clear run.

At 4.30 am, a frantic tousle-haired boy landed on my bed making the most infernal bodily noises!

"Mum! MUM!" whispered a sleepy voice, "Mum! My fart machine won't turn off!"

"What?"

"MY FART MACHINE WON'T SWITCH OFF!"

"Shhhh! Go and put it in the bathroom and close the door," I said, rolling over to try to rescue my night before too much damage was done. But it was too late........

The Little Guy did as instructed, then went back to bed. I lay there listening to six different types of flatulent noises coming from our uncarpeted bathroom. The sound seemed to echo all through the house and I was terrified that everyone would wake up. Thankfully, as the noise turned more into 'silent but deadly' mode, I drifted off into some semblance of sleep once more.

The next morning sunshine was streaming through the window. I rolled over and addressing the large mound of bedclothes beside me, asked,

"Did I dream it, or were we woken up in the night by a frenzied fart machine?"

The bedclothes sniggered.

"Yes," he said, "Pretty unbelievable really."

"Thank God for that," I replied, "For a moment there I wondered what you'd had for dinner!"