Last night, my girl wasn’t feeling too bright, she didn’t want her supper and had a bit of a temperature, so we had a bath together and then she went to bed early… an hour later, I crept in to check on her and felt she was very hot so took off her little (sheet thin) blanket and opened the front of her pajamas … she woke up and probably would have gone back to sleep but I thought I’d take her temperature as she did feel hot and I was concerned it might be a recurrence of the UTI she had a few weeks ago.
The under arm thermometer must have been cold to touch and it woke her right up … she got (understandably) very cross with me but a little cuddle and some milky helped calm her down. Temperature of 39 1/2 degrees … I called the nursing station in A&E where we’d had to go a few weeks back to ask whether I should take her in or what to do, they said to give her some brufen and see if that helped … I did, with the mouth syringe … she went bonkers. We had some more milky and another cuddle, and then, maybe it was the sugar (I think there is sugar in the suspension) she started rampaging around the bed, picking up her teddy and throwing it about, then standing up in her cot and banging the sides, and then just standing staring at me rubbing her eyes and sucking on her pyjama sleeve. We had a kind of stale mate like that for about an hour and then she got very cross, I was so concerned to not disturb her grandmother that I picked her back up out of the cot and gave her some paracetamol … another hour passed and she stood on my bed banging the headboard and shouting “Row Row Row Boat”, and then had some more milky and then just did standing up practice … every time I tried to get her to settle she went bonkers and arched her back and howled and thrashed around.
About 3.45am she lashed out when I tried to give her a hug and scratched me, and here is where the confession comes in, and then, I swore … not at her specifically but in her general direction and not bad bad swearing but not what a mother should do in the night to calm a fractious over tired infant. She looked at me and said, “Marmi” and then cried again … I felt terrible … an hour later she finally went to sleep … about an hour before it was time to get up.
I will not become one of those women that swears at their children, I loathe that and I struggle with the lack of control … and there I was, ‘fishwife’ mommy in the middle of the night.
She’s right as rain today, just tired but happy enough playing with two little friends … I have a headache, my eyes are throbbing and I feel shivery with tiredness … and I feel sad that I snapped at my girl …
if this is the start of her terrible twos then I need to get with it and find some zen with which to deal with her feisty confidence and mischief … I’m sure there will be far harder things to cope with than singing and standing practice (oh and mountaineering over me and back) from 12.30 til almost 5am…. oh and she did well in the end and stood unaided for long enough to applaud herself.
Bad mother me … sigh … I hope we both sleep better tonight!
I must remain calm
I must remain calm
I must not become ‘shouting at your child’ kind of mother or paranoid ‘my child is sick’ kind of mother
I must remain calm
bloody hell I’m knackared
aaaggghhhhhh see now it’s becoming compulsive.
