I am sooo sleepy. Our sleep patterns are completely up in the air with the baby and with the sleep deprivation has come some amusing brain-dead side effects, my favourite being the inability to speak.

Lately I have talked to a furniture salesman about my inability to keep “crapping jokes”, when I meant “cracking jokes”, the Other Half has been frustrated as he tried to explain something about the “indoor bicycle” in my spare room which turned out to be my exercise bike and today when on the phone to the doctors I momentarily forgot my own name, then my son’s name and finally where I lived.

Coffee and Red Bull don’t help, they might keep you awake (if you have enough of them as our body becomes immune to their stimulating powers) but all they do is keep your body moving and allow you to put one foot in front of the other and occasionally one foot in your mouth for good measure.

I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve put my shoes on as I’m just about to go out and then caught a glimpse of my dress on inside out, what’s even worse are the days it’s actually on back to front as well! At least the dress was daywear because I’ve almost gone out in my pyjama bottoms (which was not a one off unfortunately and only noticed as I was about to double lock the front door on leaving the house).

I’ve also tried to leave without brushing the birds nest that is my hair. I’ve let my hairstyle go so much I make Russell Brand look like James Bond and it’s only catching a quick peek of my backcombed beehive frizz in a shiny surface that has me querying the picture and realising that I best fix myself up or risk being mistaken for Amy Winehouse.

All the best intentions in the world fly out the window and although I have spent years feeling grosed out by anyone’s bodily functions, having a baby has made me gain a serene calm when greeted by very smelly baby poo all over my leg and freshly washed trousers when a nappy fails, and I now think nothing of getting peed all over and just scrubbing it with a baby wipe when some time ago I would have burned my clothes and contemplated doing the same to whatever flesh the wee touched.

My perfume is no longer for simply wafting a light scent to passers by to enhance my outfit, it’s there to cover the smell of baby sick because I just don’t have the time to change - again - and my small handbag that contained essentials for day to day living has been replaced by a huge travel bag heaving at the seams with everything I’ll ever need, spare nappies, babygrows, nappy bags, breast pads, milk, bottles, a thousand dummies…..

Dummies….oh yes, I was one of those sanctimonious pregnant women who said they would never, ever use a dummy, but now if there isn’t one sterilised and ready to use in the house I think the Other Half would happily go to the 24 hour Tesco at 4 am to get one, partly to stop the little one’s crying and partly to not be there when the police arrive convinced you are murdering your child from the ear piercing screams he’s producing, and all because you are changing his nappy and he’s a little bit cold around the wobbly bits because the central heating’s gone off.

I’m not able to have wine because it gets in to breast milk and lowers milk supply, I can’t have my usual medication so if mummy gets a cold and daddy gets a cold, daddy can swan around doped up on multi-medicated day nurse where as mummy has to drag her soggy carcass about the place with tissues stuffed up each nostril, an ice pack on her head and a watch in her hand so that she can count the minutes until she can take the next paracetomol.

All these things can really make the strongest of person crack up, but there is one thing that stops me from losing the plot, one thing that when I think you can’t do it anymore my heart melts and I forget everything horrible that’s every happened, this one thing can make me smile when I feel like crying from exhaustion and it has the ability to make me think “What the hell, it’s not that bad really” and that one thing is this:

*looks at her watch* It’s now late, the house looks like it’s been vacated by drunken festival goers and then burgled, I look such a state that I’m scared to look in any mirrors in case they crack, I’m so tired I’ve just realised I have odd shoes on, but I am going to go upstairs and cuddle my boy, and drink in his baby smell and kiss his soft skin and nuzzle his warmth, I’ll look at his brown eyes and hopefully get one of his big gummy grins and right there, in that moment he’ll get me grinning like a moron, and I’ll fall in love even deeper than before, as I do over and over every day. 

 Without a doubt he’s amazing……..and totally, and utterly worth it all.

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