OK so technically this isn’t the first time I have EVER done this — I’ve spent many a nights alone. But this is the very first one I have done without my little one curled up beside me. Nor was she even in the house! She was hundreds of miles away with Daddy at her Nanny’s in Cornwall.
I very much enjoyed the evening bit, this is often not so easy as we have bedtime slapped right bang in the middle of it. However it was a smooth transition from work to play — the laptop went away and I settled to watch some TV before dinner.
Feeling impulsive, I wanted to get takeout — at first considering pizza but then opting to try the much raved about new vegan burger from Burger King. I have to say it wasn’t all that but I didn’t have to cook it so yay. I also decided to crack open a mini cocktail a friend bought for me at Waitrose a few days before (yet I had not gotten around to drinking it). It was an espresso martini.
That poured and food delivered I sat to watch some trashy Christmas films, starting with the Family Stone (mainly because I know my partner hates it) and I LOVE IT. I bawled my eyes out at the cancer death story as it brings it home from when I lost my Nan a few years back.
Deciding I should continue I put on another film and now drank water and tried to wind myself down for the night.
I eventually retired for bed around midnight which is crazy late for me, as my little one usually wakes around 1:30 without fail and so my body clock is too wired to join her. I didn’t check my phone, or text Ben to see how they were getting on with Ione, however it did cross my mind I hope she’s OK without cuddles with mummy.
I lay there in bed alone, in the quiet house alone, and struggle to get comfy/ sleepy. I do a few yoga stretches and calm my breathing however for the rest of the night I feel I barely get myself into a great sleep and just feel enormous insomnia.
I wake up around 7:30 after having had some sleep and feel hungover. From the lack of sleep, from the fried food and from the one alcoholic cocktail I allowed myself.
Not the way I planned it, but I slept like a dream once she was back on the monitor next to me, and even better when she came in for her 1:30AM cuddles.
Keep on trying I think then.
