From competitive tiredness to Millennium Madness

Date Published: 06-Jan-2011

I bumped into an old friend over the Christmas who was filled with equal measures of unbridled joy and sleep deprivation because his wife had given birth to their first baby four months earlier.

The joy was natural and understandable because your first born completely changes your world. And apart from the fact that you really do believe no one ever had a child before you, those parents of a slightly older vintage will allow the newcomers their first flush of fatherhood.

The sleep deprivation, however, is the one thing that those more experienced parents most certainly do not miss; the 4am feeds, the teething, the colic, the chest infections – although obviously not all at the one time – combine to bring a reality check to this new life.

In our house we used to call it competitive tiredness, because whatever few minutes of sleep one of us had snatched the previous night, the other could half that and then some.

So it was with my friend with the new arrival now, because he was bang in the throes of this phase when he seemed to think that his wife abandoned all mothering duties the minute he arrived home from work.

“She’d have me bathe the baby and eat my dinner at the same time if she could; in actual fact, I think she cannot see any reason why I don’t eat my dinner on the bike as I’m cycling home so that I have nothing other than minding the baby to do when I arrive home,” he told me.

And I smiled knowingly and remembered how it once was – and how it had all changed.

Last week, after the final day of school before the Christmas break, that same first born – now almost a teenager – was attending his second disco in Leisureland as I waited in the sub-zero temperatures looking out on Galway Bay.

For some reason that’s lost on me, they called these gatherings Millennium Madness. Maybe they began in 1999⁄2000 which might explain the millennium part. And ten minutes spent watching the teenage girls making their way in or out would explain the madness.

Togged out like they were heading for a beach party – and on the basis that they were at least eight years older – they wouldn’t be any less suitably attired for the winter weather if they were buck naked and wearing flip-flops.

The boys, about three years behind them on the developmental front, are casually dressed in jeans and tee-shirts – for them too coats are for wimps – but the girls are kitted out like something you’d meet on a street corner in Amsterdam. I’ve never been to Amsterdam.

Hot pants, tops that are barely there and more make-up than a Clarins plant, they look like they’ve come from one of those Miss Teen America contests and forgotten to bring a coat with them on their way.

In fairness, the organisers of these events leave nothing to chance and the level of supervision should set every parent’s mind at ease; until the event is over at midnight, your child is in their care – and then they burst out onto the prom like some horror movie version of Glee.

As I sat there waiting for the doors to open and the next generation of Ireland’s leaders to come bolting onto the streets, I thought of the sleepless nights of 1998 when the cause of my insomnia was lying and crying in a cot at the foot of the bed – and I knew now that my sleepless nights for the next ten years would be caused by something very different and entirely out of my control.

We have a second fella coming through the ranks who never got a fraction of the attention his brother received as a baby – and who will no doubt thrive in the Millennium Madness pit when his turn comes in two years time.

I know of parents who smile as knowingly at the disco experience as I do at the tales of new-born highs and lows – and they spend their weekends waiting for the inevitable call at three in the morning for a lift home in the free family taxi.

But it only seems like yesterday that Salthill’s disco scene was mine – Twiggs, Whispers, the Holiday, the Oasis – and now I’m waiting in the car, having passed on the baton.

So sleep deprivation comes in many guises it seems – it begins at childbirth and with a bit of luck ends the day you stand, eyes glistening, and applaud them down the aisle.

See also Amazon’s plan to end bad presents on page 13 of this week’s Tribunes.