Aunty Cookie - How To Look Like A Good Mum
13th September, 2011
Another brilliant 'How To' from Shannon Lamden aka Aunty Cookie, today taking on the task of How To Look Like A Good Mum! Remember to leave a comment before 10pm on Thursday for a chance to win a Aunty Cookie Lap Quilt valued at $150! - Jenny x
Spending most of the day and one night at sleep school taught me this – my kid and her sleeping issues are NO WAY NEAR as bad as some others. Which of course made me feel better. Because seeing someone worse off than you always makes you feel better. Just like the way you always had an ugly mate at school so you could feel prettier. Yep just like that.
All I wanted was a little more sleep. Is that too much to ask? Just an unbroken 6 hours would do.
My Favourite Cookie, busted on the computer and yawns all around
Once I was in that parallel universe of bogan babies who refused to sleep (and no bogan babies aren’t the only ones who don’t sleep – hipster babies also carry this rogue gene) of course my baby slept just fine. Settled just sweetly and woke smiley and rosey at 7.15. It wasn’t kicking and screaming, shaking cots and calling for Daddy for hours on end until passing out. Only to wake an hour or so later to start it all over again, repeat that a few times and then start the day at 5am. I’m not dealing with that whole bag of crazy. THANK GOD.
Shhhh, the kid finally sleeps and hoochie plate
I came home with some tricks up my sleeve and 21 days to make a habit stick. And then it all started again, the waking, the unsettling, the non-sleeping fuckery, which of course lead to the meltdowns of everyone else in the house. Ok maybe not everyone. Maybe just me.
So I took matters into my own hands – wedge towels under the doors, move the other kids to sleep in our room and let the baby go for it. Scream your head off kid because eventually you will fall asleep. Feel free to berate my actions.
- Shannon aka Aunty Cookie!
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one. It makes me feel so much better. Four boys under five, the youngest 9weeks old. (A result of sleep deprivation and a lack of concentration. Put the two together and hey presto a baby!) I am obsessed with sleep. The boys call our bed Daddy’s bed, I am never in it. One day I am sure I will be dragging teenagers out of bed until then I will dream of my doona. Loving your blog.
I nearly pee-ed my pants I laughed at this blog. My first baby splet at 12 weeks. Fuss? what fuss? My second baby let me know what it was all about. Whack!
My boys sleep really well now (7 and 9 yrs) but me… well I still aint got the knack.
ha! like Jo above commented, my 4 y.o also calls our bed ‘daddys bed’ and i never sleep in this bed! the scary thing is I am really enjoying my own single bed bunked in the same room with our two y.o. i secretly dread the day i must give up this arrangement. i too have been a deranged hyper pyschopath due to butchered sleep most of the past 2 years……sleep…. plees!
Hey sisters, been there too! My 11 year old only this year has started to go to sleep well (‘Can I have a back rub, Daddy/Mummy’ is sweet, but not for 11 years). No, I can’t tell you that. You’ll top yourself if you think it’ll last 11 years. I could have just said to her ‘Go the f*** to sleep’, but I didn’t know I was allowed to do that. Having said that, my 6 year old has always slept well and announces ‘I’m tired, I’m going to bed’. You can see why there’s a 5 year gap between the babies! They’d have been closer if the order had been reversed. But you know what else? Sometimes I sleep in till 8am on the weekends, children either happily entertaining themselves, getting themselves breakfast or even sleeping in themselves! It’ll happen to you too, and yes it feels goooooood
Shazzile you always make me men chuckle. I so wanna be your Rick, sans trackies
my 5y.o has only slept thru the night twice… that makes roughly 1,853 nights where i haven’t had a full nights sleep….
good luck xxx
bah ha ha ha!! I’ve so been there… It will pass.
What a relief to hear it how it really is! Yep, I’m in it too and I’ve just put your blog on my fav’s page – cos it is going to keep me going and give me a laugh. Goodluck with it all. Oh, and of course I would love to win one of your gorgeous quilts, perfect for one of my kids bed when I have a boy and a girl sharing a room – love the red colour theme!
You are so funny, at least you keep your sense of humour through no sleep torture.
Is it ok to steal the term non sleeping baby fuckery….genius!
did the towel under the door but still couldn’t switch off optimistically tool a sketch pad to bed if i was up i may as well ( gosh the ideas were crappy)… and i day dreamed about sleep… it will pass and then you will be up waiting for them to come home!
After 8 weeks in baby sleep clinic with Miss Indepence, now 4; and 5 weeks with Mummy’s little shadow, now 2.5; I have concluded that the little cherubs (-insert own profanity here) cannot be tamed! I have tried it all and endured many (moslty unwanted) pearls of wisdom about bedtime problems. I still don’t get a full night sleep and seem to be a bit denser upstairs then I was pre kids. I blame it on sleep deprivation. Our kids sleep with us ( well sort of sleep). And I have been labelled everyuthing from a bad mum to a fantastic mum who is very caring – go figure. But despite all this non sleeping, bed invading fuckery my kids are very loving and when they havent just drawn on the walls I love them to bits!!!
…at least Aunty doesn’t call her children ‘crotchfruit’. Love your work.
Woaoowwwww!!! This is actually pretty funny, once you have been without sleep for a few weeks because of a little one! You forget how many of us… we need to work, mantain a house and also learn how to be a perfect mum!!!
Love Aunty work!!!
Can sooooo relate! While non sleeping babies are the pits, it’s nice to know that there are other babies out there that do the same as mine! Towel wedge away!
Poor thing! Feel terrible for you, but love your venting approach… let it aaaalllll out.
that baby is such a trickster! My son did the same thing. Fooled them all at sleep school and then morphed back into his nocturnal self when we got home. L
Loving your blog.
I’m totally adding ‘fuckery’ to my vocab….
viva aunty cookie!
‘fuckery’ and ‘crotchfruit’! Great words, just what I needed when Mr 3, had a monumental over dressing this morning, and such fun to say naughty words on DF! Lovin your work!
Love this! Shannon, I have twins (now aged 3), and we spent 17 nights in one of those blessed facilities. My babies were the wildest ever spied by a mothercraft nurse, let alone us parents who hadn’t slept longer than an hour for 7 months, and I was somehow breastfeeding on demand for both (akin to being a bowser at the Pura factory). Probably could have been let out a few days earlier, but I needed the sleeping tablets (for me) and it drove home the fact that my husbz definitely had to get that vasectomy.
how funny and surprising to read this on TDF! love it, Shannon. i have a baby that everyone describes as “alert” which is polite for “extremely nosey little bugger who will not sleep”.
so i feel your pain!
Your baby is BEAUTIFUL! Well, really beautiful when asleep! I’m also adding fuckery to my vocab xoxo