The Dangers of Co-Sleeping…With My Husband!
I am currently sat upright in my bed. The blinking light on the alarm clock screaming 2:03 am at me and right now all I want to do is take my fluffy white duck down feather pillow in my hand and wrap it around his smug face. Because let’s face it, at 2:03 am, no woman is sane, or in any way in control of her sense of judgment.
“WAKE THE FUCK UP BEFORE I BLOODY WELL KILL YOU.”
You see, when you first get into a relationship, all is rosy with the world. You fall asleep wrapped in the arms of the man you love, glowing in the love of the post-sex euphoria, and because you are both bloody exhausted, you don’t notice each other’s annoying sleep habits. That is, until you have been married with kids for a while, and all of a sudden, everything they do in the bedroom (apart from the obvious) annoys the proverbial out of you.
I cannot sleep in a room that is lit up like a Christmas tree. It is impossible. Even when I close my eyes, all I see is those dancing lights from the bloody WiFi box blinking at me, demanding my attention. The standby light on the TV is never brighter than at 2 am and all I want to do is unplug every soddin’ device in the room.
I also cannot sleep with noise. Nope, no noise whatsoever! I need silence, cause let’s face it, it’s the only frickin’ time of the day when the world is quiet. I have two kids, a husband, a mother in law and a yappy dog all living under my roof, my house is never ever EVER quiet. Except at bedtime… That is, of course, unless you live with my husband.
He is the opposite of me, in the most fundamentally annoying way possible. He has to have both noise and light to get to sleep. I have committed myself to a life of rage, because the person I married is literally the worst fit for me when it comes to bedtime routine. This combination is what creates what is known in my house as Night-Time Madness.
And if that is not bad enough – he snores! Just to top it off. And not that cute little snore that your kids do when they are babies that you find adorable. My husband sucks in every item in our bedroom with his snoring. It is neither sexy nor cute, and it’s impossible to ignore. For the last 8 years I have been in a nightly battle. I have trained myself to ‘switch off’ the lists that are going round and round in my head… for long enough to get myself to sleep as quickly as humanly possible. Because if I don’t fall asleep before my husband, I will have to lie there awake for at least 2 hours until he is in a coma and his snoring stops.
One problem down, but the worst is yet to come! Brace yourself!
I also have to try and block out the noise of the TV (which he has left on to fall asleep to) or the debate show on Radio 2, which he swears blind helps lull him into beautiful dreams. All this does for me is raise my blood pressure and suck me into conversations and debates that I wouldn’t have during the normal hours of the day, let alone in the wee small hours!
So – last night, after hours of battling the blinking lights, the TV, radio AND then the incessant snoring, after I had finally fallen asleep, I was woken by a screeching noise like nothing you could even begin to explain.
I sat up bolt upright in bed. The TV lit up every corner of the room, the volume so loud I was sure that people in ALASKA could hear it, and my husband was dead to the world.
How was that fucking possible?!!
“WAKE THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!”
I screamed like a mad woman, trying to get him to hear me over the giggles and screeches from children running around on some god awful TV show.
He is still asleep. Dead to the world, snoring louder than an F2 Fighter jet, and the TV remote, which of course is in his hand, is gripped so tightly I can’t free the damn thing. His fingers are resting on the volume button, and with each tug I give the remote the volume is getting louder and louder.
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, YOU WILL WAKE THE KIDS!”
2:07 am – I am now freaking out. If he wakes the kids, it’ll take an hour to get them back to sleep, then two hours to get me back to sleep – that will make it 5 am – which gives me an hour and a half of sleep before the alarm goes off for the day. With the quick calculations in my head done, my anger is now boiling over.
“What the hell?? Fuck off! What is the matter with you, you crazy cow.”
Yes, that is my husband talking to me. Right now, in the middle of a proper rage at 2:07 am, he really thinks it is wise to talk to me like this. But of course he doesn’t realise his faux pas because he is still asleep!
And he has become oh, so good at it over the years. In the morning he won’t even remember this, not a single tiny detail.
“Please, for the love of all that is holy, switch the TV off.”
I am now trying the sweetness and light approach. Or the passive aggressive approach, depending on what you believe is passive aggressive behaviour at 2:07 am!
Grumbling under the duvet and shifting over to face the other side of the bed he mutters:
“It IS off. I’ve switched it off.”
The TV is still blaring, lighting up the room like we are stood in the middle of frickin’ Times Square, but he is convinced he has switched it off.
“It. Is. Not. Off!”
“Yes it is.”
Repeat these lines at least five times, and add the image of my face getting more and more crimson with rage and the pillow in my hands climbing higher and higher with each word, and you can imagine what is coming next.
*SMACK*
Yes, I did just wallop my husband with the pillow. My first reason being that he fucking deserved it, and the second, and more practical reason, being that if he doesn’t wake up and let go of his vice like grip on the remote, I may actually find something heavier to hit him with.
“What the HELL are you doing!”
“Please, darling husband, before I kill either myself or you, please for the love of God switch the GOD DAMN TV OFF!”
My husband is now wide awake, looking at me like he has just seen the spinning head of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and with a pitiful look on his face while he rubs his sore head says:
“Ok, ok. All you have to do is ask. No need to be such a stress-head.”
Wow – at this point I am not sure if lack of sleep, or just pure rage has over taken me, but I swear I just imagined myself smacking him full force in the face. Instead, I turn over, pull the duvet up tight under my chin and swear to myself as I try to get back to sleep.
In the morning, all he will remember is me being a psycho bitch, screaming at him at 2:07 am. Me, I will be far too exhausted to even tell him the real story. Because the fact of the matter is, that now after that hideous altercation, my blood pressure is through the roof, my heartburn is raging and I am shaking with anger. It will be at least 2 hours until I can lull myself back to sleep – and with the husband already swallowing the ceiling with his snoring, I know that tonight is a write off all together!
