At such a time of underlying stress, upheaval and anxiety, lockdown was a time in which we could have benefited from the best sleep of our lives. Instead, mine – mixed with grief – was a cocktail of crazy sleep patterns. And I’m sure I wasn’t alone.
No matter what mood I went to bed in, my head would be full of terrifying visuals and dark, sad thoughts as soon as I tried to sleep. Around 12mg of melatonin, possibly a Benadryl and maybe more melatonin on the worse nights usually got me to sleep. It was there I’d meet those wild lockdown dreams that so many people have spoken about. For me they were epic: Hollywood blockbuster level action adventures. I think one night, The Rock even turned up. I’d often wake up with a start as I fell from a burning building, then need to take more melatonin to get me back to sleep again, otherwise I’d lie awake for hours and real life would feel like its own cinematic nightmare.
Lockdown has felt a world away from the good old snooze days of the past. I napped every afternoon before I had babies. I worked from home, writing, and at around 2 p.m. every day I’d become overwhelmed with yawns and would lie down, usually atop the covers, and fall asleep. This nap would last anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours, depending on what I had going on. If anyone tried to contact me in that time I would always get back to them saying, ‘Sorry, was in a meeting’ because there was something about being a grown-up who slept every afternoon that made me feel silly. I don’t feel like that now though; when I hear about grown-ups napping, I think they are legit heroes. Why shouldn’t grown-ups get as much sleep as they can? The pressure on us is huge. Sure, kids have to grow and stuff, but we have to THINK with our BRAINS.
When I got pregnant, the naps became even more important. I was in New York when I found out I was having Art. Chris was playing Lenny in Of Mice and Men on Broadway. He was excited to live a wild après theatre nocturnal life, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open beyond 9 p.m. I’d wake up in the morning and know I had about two hours of energy in the tank before I’d need to sleep again. As it turns out, growing a human really wipes you out. I slept and slept and slept. I’d generally pass out into the heaviest, most amazing snooze at around 1 p.m. and remain ensconced in my wild-but-fun pregnancy dreams until at least 4 p.m. I’d then walk around in a daze until it was acceptable for me to sleep again (usually around 9 p.m., if I wasn’t meeting Chris after the show), and then I’d sleep through until 8 a.m. If I was meeting Chris, I’d just about manage a late-night meal around midnight. We’d often be with other people from the audience, and of course I couldn’t drink or admit that I was up the duff, so it wasn’t me at my best. I’d yawn my way through it and just make up lies about getting over food poisoning to explain why I wasn’t chugging back cocktails. Then I’d get back to our place on all fours and crawl into bed like I’d just walked across a desert to get there. The next day I would sleep, and sleep, and sleep. God, it’s almost worth having another baby, just for the naps. Not that it could be like that again, with the other two needing constant snacks and attention. And also, no more babies. Jesus. No fucking way.
As soon as I got Art home after he was born, I loved it. He was so easy. By easy, I don’t mean it was easy. It was relentless. I was trying to run a business at the same time, and he screamed non-stop from 7–10 p.m. most nights. My nipples were red raw and I felt like my insides were going to fall out of my fanny. But for the most part, the first three months were my favourite part of all. I didn’t get a full night’s sleep, but I hadn’t gone into motherhood to catch some zzz’s. It was all OK, the night feeds were cute, the days were lazy. I could do newborns over and over again.
It’s when my tiny baby started to move that the shit really hit the fan. No one warns you how much more work it is when they start to crawl. I missed my big squishy dollop who just lay there, unable to roll and fall on the floor, who I carried everywhere on my chest and who didn’t knock over my wine. He went down from three naps a day to two, and then to one. During that nap I had so much to do that my own nap got ditched. And now, six years since my first pregnancy, that heavenly ritual of a daytime sleep is well and truly gone. I resent my children enormously for it. Isolation could have been so much more chill.
Throughout lockdown, I would imagine my alternative life. The me before the kids, before such sadness. Back then, if I woke in the night I’d reach for my computer and use the time to write. It didn’t matter if I was up until 6 a.m., because I could then just sleep again until noon. I used to love getting up really early to work, my brain was always so active at about 7 a.m. I’d make coffee then get to it, bashing out thousands of words before 10 a.m. But those days are long gone. When you have kids, I believe you lose the two best times of the day to be creative: 6–10 a.m. and 4–8 p.m. The mornings are so intense with feeding them, dressing them, trying to get them out of the house, that there is no time for anything else. And their dinner, bath, bedtime routine means that those early evening hours are lost too. And then there’s the anticipation of the morning stampede. Of course this means there’s rarely such a thing as a lie-in, and why are they SO LOUD when they wake up? It’s like they are playing a game of ‘who-can-make-the-most-unnecessary-noise’.
The energy we’re confronted with at 6 a.m. means I have to do whatever it takes to get to sleep while it’s dark, and that means night times are stressful. The anxiety of not sleeping is often the thing that keeps me awake. Melatonin isn’t addictive, but I get stressed at the thought of not having it. I think when you’re a parent to young kids, you always have their safety in the back of your mind, and vigilance isn’t exactly conducive to nestling down in bed. I can feel quite jolly and on top of things during the day, then as soon as I try to sleep my brain screams, ‘ACTUALLY THINGS ARE NOT OK’ and that’s when I find myself eating cereal in the kitchen at 3 a.m.
I remember sleeping and sleeping and sleeping when Jane and I were teenagers and in our early twenties. We’d go and stay with our dad in Scotland for the summers, and the memory of him trying to wake us up in the afternoon is very vivid. I distinctly remember one day waking up and noticing that it was 3.30 p.m. Again, I recall a similar pattern when I was at drama school. I guess I did no exercise back then, and my diet was terrible, but sleeping until the afternoon is wild. I couldn’t do that if I tried now. Even on the rare occasion Chris and I get a night off from the kids the very latest I can sleep until is around 8 a.m. Even if I’d only gone to bed a few hours earlier. Sleep as you get older is strange. You need less, but long for more. I’m lucky in that I can be quite functional on a small amount of sleep; it doesn’t ruin me like it ruins some people. Which is why I was one of those freaks who enjoyed all the night feeds with my babies. But still, I’m through all that now and long for an eight-hour stretch with no interruptions. ‘I feel like that might be a part of my near future,’ I recently expressed to a friend. ‘When the kids get just a little bit older, I’ll get all the lovely sleep.’ And she just said, ‘Nope, menopause is worse for sleep than kids. So don’t get too excited.’
Great. I wish I’d never bloody said it.
Lockdown could have been a lazy few months of word counts and naps. Alas, it was a frantic attempt to continue to achieve, on less sleep than normal and, by my own ready and willing admission, way too much weed and booze, which probably didn’t help. But in all honesty, no matter how I complain, the mornings are my favourites. They generally start with Valentine creeping in and getting in with us, then Potato, then Art. Everyone is happy, everyone is cuddly. And no matter what kind of night I had, it always makes me happy because having a bed-full of men that I adore, is all I ever really wanted.