Cars, Caravans and Sleep Deprivation

When my daughter grows up she is going to be a scientist.

This might sound like quite a bold statement to make when considering that she is only 21 months old but I know it to be true. She will be a scientist.

Please don’t think that this is the statement of an overly proud father or a father who has already decided for himself what his children are going to do because this simply is not true. However, she will be a scientist.

She has not officially stated this intention and we’ve yet to find any scientific equipment hidden within her bedroom but it does not make it any less true.

I know that my daughter Sophie will become a scientist when she grows up because it is the only logical explanation that I can come up with for the sleep deprivation experiment that she is currently putting my wife and myself through.

Now, I know that sleepless nights are nothing unusual for young parents. I’ve become quite familiar with them and I certainly know that I’m not the only one to experience them. I’ve spoken to enough tired and blurry eyed parents to know that they are regularly denied a quiet night’s sleep too. We’ve all suffered sleep deprivation.

And I had become quite good at operating on a certain level of sleep deprivation too. As long as I was not required to operate heavy machinery, do anything productive or use cognitive thought I was able to manage and sort of function.

However, this is no longer the case. The sleep deprivation has become more extreme. It is as if the financial backers of Sophie’s sleep deprivation experiment have threatened to pull out unless they start to see results. As such she has doubled her efforts when it comes to keeping Mummy and Daddy awake.

This was no more apparent than on our recent weekend camping trip in the East of Holland.

The Camping Trip

We’d spent the morning packing and getting ready. My wife and I putting things into bags, Sophie taking them out again and putting them back where she thought they came from. After we recovered the car keys from the washing machine and my shoes from the kitchen cabinet we set off.

Sophie took care of the in car entertainment during the long drive to the caravan by sharing with us her latest musical creation, a post modern peace combining the familiar Sesame Street tune with elements from both the Nijntje and Bob the Builder theme songs. I’ll be honest; I don’t think it is going to be a hit. There are more than a few copyright issues.

After a two hour drive we arrived at the campsite and got settled in. Sophie was going to be sleeping in her travel bed in the caravan while my wife and I would be sleeping in the front tent attached to the caravan. At least that was the plan. Sophie, it seemed, had been working on a plan of her own.

We should have realized something was up when she happily went to bed with no objection. She had even been smiling and happily waved goodbye as we left her in bed. As we sat in the front tent, enjoying a cup of tea and a much needed moment to ourselves everything was quiet in the caravan so we naturally assumed Sophie had already fallen asleep, hugging her favourite rabbit knuffel.

It came as quite a surprised when (a short while later) the window blind of the caravan suddenly shot up to reveal a happy little face grinning at us proudly.

It seemed Sophie’s brain had been working on a particular problem for the last few days and our visit to the campsite coincided with her finding the solution to the ‘How to climb out of my bed’ conundrum.

“Mama, Papa,” we lip read through the caravan’s plastic window as she stood on the caravan seating.

Getting her to sleep again was impossible. The excitement of her successful escape from bed was too much for her (and too easy to repeat).

So we were forced to form a plan B. We took out the travel bed, set up the large family bed and (after she had worn herself out a bit) we all went to bed and let Sophie sleep between us since this usually calms her down. Unfortunately for us Sophie was already working on her own plan C.

The Sleep Deprivation Begins

At about two in the morning Sophie decided that she was not quite comfortable yet (despite having already been asleep for a few hours). We were suddenly woken by movement as she turned over, rolled back, sat up onto her knees, looked around, laid back down, turned, spun around a few times, sat up, stood, hopped once or twice (she’s not yet got the hang of jumping), sat on her knees, laid down on her tummy, spun around again so that she was laying sideways and rolled over on to her back.

She then decided to take a small break before starting the whole process over again. This went on for quite some time despite our best attempts to settle her down. She was having too much fun to sleep. This was particularly distressing for us since it’s very hard to sleep when someone is training for the Olympic gymnastics right next to you.

Never the less, I must have dozed off at one point between workouts because the next time I open my eyes I suddenly became aware of a tiny figure looming over me in the darkness, silhouetted by the window of the caravan. Sophie had positioned herself on her knees right next to my head and was mimicking the snoring sound I’d obviously been making just a few seconds before. Realizing I was now awake she fell silent, sitting there quietly for a moment, deciding what to do next. I stared back, desperately trying to will her back to sleep with my mind… It didn’t work.

Sophie was the first to break the stand off. In the darkness I saw her tiny little hand slowly reach out towards me, with it she leaned in closer until her face just millimetres from my ear and I heard her whisper, “Tickle, tickle, tickle.” We should never have taught her that.

Neither my wife nor I were safe from the tickle attacks. Sophie alternated between the two of us as we unsuccessfully tried to convince her that it really, really, really was time to sleep. More time passed.

We tried gentle persuasion, heartfelt negotiation, authoritative commands and final resorted to full on blackmail with an extra bedtime bottle.

“Thank god,” I thought as she quietly sucked on the bottle and I was finally able to lay my head back down on my pillow, “I don’t know how much more of that I would have been able to take.”

“Toot-ta, Toot-ta,” Sophie suddenly started to chant a few moments later, having finished the bottle. I groaned into my pillow.

Toot-ta is Sophie’s word for a car. She has become quite obsessed with cars lately. I am happy that my daughter is fighting the fight against pre-assigned gender roles and so-called gender appropriate interests. I just wish that she was not doing it at three in the morning. I’m fairly certain that both genders need sleep.

“Toot-ta, Toot-ta,” she continued to cry while pointing outside indicating that she really, truly, desperately, urgently wanted to go and look at the Toot-tas (I guess to make sure that they were still there).

Try as we might she could not be dis-persuaded from this early morning car inspection either. In what I can only describe as an act of desperation I took her outside to see the toot-tas. I tried to quietly explain to her that they were sleeping and we had to be very quiet so that we did not wake them up. I silently curse the toot-tas for getting more sleep then me.

But at least Sophie will now be satisfied I thought to myself. I could go back to the warm caravan and finally we might all be able to get some sleep.

And then she started pointing in the direction of the play ground. For a second I actually considered it. I didn’t have to be completely awake to push a swing, did I? It would keep her quiet too. It could work. Then I realized how creepy it would look for anyone passing by on their way to the toilets, a father and child silently playing on the swings in the dead of the night like something out of a particularly creepy horror story.

So instead I took Sophie back to the caravan, something that she was not happy about. Almost an hour and half had passed. We were about to lose our minds. In fact, I think we had lost them. Now the heartfelt negotiation had became more like desperate pleading for mercy, our authoritative commands an official surrender. We had officially ran out of ideas. Tired and exhausted, we resorted to blackmail again and tried yet another bed time bottle.

Thank god it worked this time. Sophie slowly drifted off to sleep with a tummy full of warm milk. When a safe amount of time had passed my wife and I allowed ourselves to breathe a sigh of relief. We could finally get some sleep. We desperately needed it.

But we stayed awake for just a moment longer. We watched as Sophie fell deeper into sleep. Despite everything she looked so peaceful. I guess from her point of view she’d just had a fun late night morning playtime with Mummy and Daddy. Maybe it was the Stockholm syndrome talking but I suddenly realized that the sleep deprivation didn’t matter. I would happily forgo sleep if it meant I could have this amazing little person in my life. It might not be easy at times but it is worth it. Tired, exhausted and in desperate need of sleep I smiled and felt happy.

*sigh*

… and then she started snoring.