The creeping rot of sleeplessness

I can feel so black some days.  Nothing lifts my spirits.  I manage to perform my mothering duties but then the overwhelming worries flood in like crashing waves on a delicate shoreline dragging yet more debris with them...how to earn money again, how to make my son happy again, where to live now that we burst out of our small terraced house, how to ever get on top of the clutter as my days are filled with washing, cleaning and cooking like never before.  Will I ever regain myself and my dried brain?

Then the following day I have a few more hours sleep.  I wake and seem to glide down the stairs a little more easily and when L demands a 'snack plate' (a ritual we have), I receive his glare with a smile.  Gosh today I have more patience and the blackness has lifted a bit.  In this mood the incremental shift of the dial in me affects everyone else.  L's gaze softens and he puts his clothes on the second not sixth time of asking and so on and so forth at the Germans like to say...

The effect of profound sleeplessness is so immense,.  And only those subjected to sleep torture or a mother, whose nights have turned into a wakeful stream of feeding, inexplicable demands and anxiety, knows what this really feels like.

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