It’s 1am this morning and Milo is coming to the end of one of his many nocturnal feeds. He’s slowly dropping off, while I sit on the edge of the bed with my eyes tightly shut, willing him to sleep. I rock gently, more, I suspect, for my own comfort than Milo’s. All of a sudden, the bed shakes, the room moves and I have to work hard not to chuck Milo in his cot and check under the bed for monsters. ‘Blimey,’ I think, ‘the sleep deprivation is really starting to take its toll.’
As Simon stumbles into the room asking, ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ I realise that the shaking may not just have been in my own head. Turns out it was an earthquake, though it did briefly cross my mind that the rubbish builder we had in the summer had somehow broken my house. The quake measured 5.3, apparently, and was the biggest in Britain for 25 years.
Needless to say, the seismic activity put paid to a good night’s sleep for all of us: Milo because he hadn’t finished his feed and therefore absolutely had to wake up 500 times thereafter to make up for it, Simon because he was totally freaked out and me because I was convinced I had lost the plot.
I slept through an earthquake. I’m that hard.
Wicked.
I have vague recollection of leo saying “the bedrooms shaking” and me going “no it’s not” before diving back into a dream about a jar of marmalade.
Nah, you’re not hard, you’ve always been a good sleeper – according to Mum, you were one of those angel babes that slept 12 hours from the minute he was born. Shame Milo’s not more like you!
I slept through the Great Storm of 1987 in Brighton – in the morning my flat mate asked me where I was going, and I said “to college” and he said “erm, no you’re not – look out of the window” and I did, and all the trees had been torn out of the ground and scattered across the road like twigs.
Ah, so *now* I understand why you never wake up when Milo needs a night feed… (joke, joke, it’s a JOKE!!)