Friday, 13th January 2006.

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes

Over the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that anyone who uses the phrase "sleeping like a baby" has never had children. Babies, as most parents will tell you, do not sleep. Actually that's not really true. When babies do sleep, they can be out for hours, in a deep, untroubled slumber. But what annoys me about this overworn piece of cliche is that it implies that babies sleep calmly and peacefully for hours, undisturbed. Again, almost anyone with children will tell you that this does not last long. About three months in our case: Josh slept relatively well for the first quarter that we had with him, before suddenly deciding at three months old that he was going to wake up more. Particularly at night.

I shouldn't really be complaining: it's Emily who has to bear the brunt of it. Expressing milk is more trouble than it's worth, she says (I think her exact words were "It takes ages"), and so when Josh wakes up hungry in the middle of the night, it's always her who winds up feeding him. The positioning of his cot right next to the bed - on her side - makes this relatively simple, as all she has to do is reach over and grab him. Unfortunately, it also means that she ends up doing the bulk of the settling down when he gets cross and upset between feeds. This isn't really fair on her and I feel even worse for sleeping through a lot of it. I've always told her that she can wake me up in the middle of the night so that I can share her discomfort, but she seldom does, and for that I admit I am grateful.

On Tuesday, Josh had his bath and was handed to Mummy for a last feed before going down for the night. I was tapping away in the study when Emily called me in to collect him: she'd just finished and Holby City was on, so I'd agreed to put him down. "He's asleep," she said, "so could you try and wake him up before he goes in his cot?"

The rationale behind this is simple: if Josh falls asleep while he's latched on and then wakes up in a different place, without us watching over him, he's liable to howl. It's far better for us to leave him in his cot in a state of drowsiness: awake enough to know where he is, but too tired to protest about it. So I picked him up and gingerly carried him into the bedroom, jiggling him slightly as we went, whispering "Josh...wake up." Could I wake him? Could I bollocks. We danced a bit. I sang to him, turned on the lights and even the radio for a moment, jiggled him as much as I felt comfortable. Still nothing. I decided that he was in a deep enough sleep to not wake up for ages anyway, and put him in his cot. He was out for ten minutes before the screaming started.

There's a curious irony at work here, in that he refused to wake up when I wanted him to - whereas he's normally quite happy to stir at the slightest opportunity. Never is this more apparent than when I've sung him to sleep and then made the catastrophic mistake of putting him in his cot too soon. Any attempt to do this will result in an instantaneous screaming fit of gargantuan proportions. All right, I'm exaggerating. Let me put it this way: putting him down too quickly is like trying to heat pasta on a hob that's only just been turned on: you can still do it, but it'll take longer. So you sit there with him in your arms, trying very hard to gauge whether he's been asleep long enough to have launched into a deeper, more profound state of slumber, and whether it's therefore OK to put him down because you really need the loo.

When it comes to actually putting him down when he's in that asleep-but-only-just phase, that's a whole other kettle of fish. You can't just drop him in and leave him to it. I'd be the first to admit that I handle my son perhaps a little rougher than I would other people's children - but never dangerously. I'll pick him up by his legs and dangle him, but it's the sort of playful roughness that comes with experience and self-confidence - I'd never dangle Luke upside-down by his legs, for example (although the whiny little snotbag asks for it sometimes). But you can't be playful like that when he's asleep and you're desperate for him not to wake up: you have to handle him like bone china.

I've just realised that this contradicts my earlier point about putting him down while he's still awake. This is a lesson we learned by having him wake up not long after we'd put him down, and letting him go to sleep first is something we try and do less these days. But sometimes putting him down while he's asleep is unavoidable: Tuesday night was a prime example, and there are other occasions where if he's in a bad mood it's easier to placate him until he reaches total unconsciousness than it is to settle for mere drowsiness. You stand there by the cot, trying to work out the best trajectory with which to approach. Do you put the monkey by his head for him to cuddle, or is that just going to rouse him again?

Here's the thing: Josh is fine as long as he's in your arms, but then comes the awkward moment where you have to take him out of your arms in such a way as to avoid him suddenly opening his eyes and screaming. About a month ago I thought I'd perfected this: he lies there, asleep in your arms, and then you gently rock him, and then you stand, still rocking him, only now you're unfolding your arms so that you're holding him out in front of you, presenting him like a sacrificial lamb that's ripe for the altar. And gently you sway him back and forth, steadily descending, until he's in the cot. This is called - for obvious reasons - the Falling Leaf. It works perfectly until the moment that you actually have to lift out your hands from underneath him, because I've discovered that there is no way to do this without waking him up.

Sometimes it happens as soon as his head hits the mattress; sometimes it takes a little longer (say, a minute or two). Either way, he'll wake up. And then comes the screaming. There's the initial whine, and then he opens his eyes - looking at you with bewildered anger as if to say "Why have you put me down here when I wasn't ready?" - and next he screws up his face, turning the same shade of purple as Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This lasts for a few seconds while he collects all the air in his lungs together - then there's a sudden, vacuous moment of silence like an explosion in space, before he emits one almighty scream that could shatter glass...it's a good thing we keep the crystal in protective packaging. Whereupon you pick him up, and then start the whole thing over again.

On Wednesday evening, Emily went out swimming. Josh fell asleep over his dinner, which is overwhelmingly cute to watch but not actually very helpful in the grand scheme of things, because when you wake him he won't eat any more, and this knocks his evening timetable out of whack. I bathed him and then got him ready for bed, but was unable to get anything else down him until Mummy returned: I think there must be a knack to this that I haven't mastered yet.

Last night she went out again. (I am undoubtedly giving you the impression that I am frequently saddled with him for the evening while his mother goes off cavorting until the early hours. This is categorically not the case - this week is the first time she's done it, and even then I didn't have to wait up for her.) When she returned at half past ten, I was resizing photos.

"How was the meeting?" I asked.
"Fine," she said, pecking my cheek. "How are you? How's Josh?"
"I've not heard a peep out of him."
"Really?" she said, surprised.
"No. He's been asleep since we put him down at half past seven. I was putting washing away and he stirred briefly, but didn't wake up. And he is OK, because I checked."
"I figured you would."
"At about ten past ten I got up to feed the cat, and I suddenly thought 'Joshua's been very quiet this evening'. And then I had one of those heart-in-mouth moments and dashed into the bedroom, but he was fine."
"Well," she said, "It sounds like you had an easy time of it." It may have been my imagination, but I think she almost looked put out.

We crept into the bedroom, and he stirred momentarily, and then went back to sleep again - and we were undisturbed until about half past twelve. This five hour stretch is the longest he's managed in months, but you can't really predict what he'll do from one night to the next. We've tried various things to change the pattern: leaving him to scream for longer to help him settle himself (which seems to be working) and even moving his cot into the next room one night this week (which didn't really make much difference to his sleeping pattern, but at least I was able to share the legwork with Emily). Trying to alter behaviour and lessen dependence is tricky, particularly when the subject has no idea what he's doing.

But the simple truth is that when he's asleep he's extremely cute, and when he's awake he's still cute, even when he's screaming. I see a good deal less of him than Emily does, and there have been times when I've wanted to tear my hair out, so I don't know what it must be like for her sometimes. Another well-worn cliche is "We wouldn't have him any other way", and that's true, to be honest - he can be tetchy, grumpy and clingy. But he's a baby, and that's what they do, so any complaints I might have about getting him to sleep are a moot point, really.

There's a scene in an episode of The Brittas Empire when Gordon Brittas is crushed to death by an emergency water tank in order to save the life of his receptionist - and at the pearly gates his life's deeds and misdeeds are measured by God and St. Peter. On one side of the scales are all the accidental deaths, the injuries, the trauma, the destruction of property that he caused. It's not looking good for Brittas when St. Peter pulls out a huge, glowing orb that represents his act of self-sacrifice. It's enough to tip the balance of the scales, and he is let into heaven.

It's like that with Josh, albeit on a lesser level. The whining, copious vomiting, refusal to sleep and anything else that drives us to distraction pale into utter insignificance every time he opens his eyes and smiles at you. You can see yourself and you can see your partner and you can see him. He's like the best of us both, in one compact little form. So the sleeping through the night can wait, as far as I'm concerned. He's our son, and we love him. Although getting a few hours' extra kip occasionally would be grand.