sharing stories | Sleep is for the Weak

The Sleep Deprivation Carnival 2009!

Posted by Josie on Sep 20, 2009 in Blogging, Kai, Parenting | 52 comments

Hello all!

I’ve got something a bit special planned for you this week – Sleep is for the Weak’s very first Sleep Deprivation Carnival 2009!

Now doesn’t that sound fun? And not at all weird and depressing?!

As most of you know, sleep is an especially big problem in our house. Kai has never slept well, rarely managing more than a couple of hours unbroken sleep at a stretch until recently, and having immense difficulty both falling and staying asleep, with a horrendously out-of-wack body clock that still often thinks that 4.30am is a very good time to wake up and start jumping up and down and screeching like a frickin banshee.

It’s been an especially tough couple of weeks for one reason or another (as you’ve probably noticed from all my “I’m tired!” tweets! – sorry about that, very dull I know) and I thought what better way to put the ‘fun’ back in ‘barely functional’ than to host my very own carnival.

I know I’m not the only one for whom sleep is a difficult issue. Like it or not, sleep deprivation is a real experience for most parents with a new baby and effects everyone to a greater and lesser degree. If you’re lucky, it will only be an issue for perhaps the first few weeks, but for more many of us, severely disrupted or lost sleep can be a major problem for many months (or even…dare I say it…YEARS! *gulp*).

In the middle of those long nights and exhausted, bleary-eyed days, sometimes a sense of humour and the solidarity and support of my fellow parenting peeps (and chocolate and twitter of course) are the only things that gets me through. So I thought it would therapeutic and a bit of fun to invite you all to share your sleep deprivation stories.

You could write about:

The worst night’s sleep you every had
Something stupid you did while seriously sleep deprived
The sleep problems you may be experiencing with your child at the moment (you never know, people may have some tips for you)
How lack of sleep has effected your day-to-day life
Your best sleep deprivation survival tips or no-sleep remedies

Or even better

How you survived sleep deprivation and came out the other side and now have babes that sleep like angels -giving us poor parents still in the thick of things the hope that THIS WILL PASS!!

Write your post (or use an old one) and either post a link in the comments section below or email me using the contact button on your right. Next week I’ll post a review of all your submitted stories for us all to share in.

Feel free to use the badge at the top of this post and link back to me if you like, or just to make it extra easy for you here’s a HTML code that will insert the image directly into your blog with no uploading required (cause I’m nice and super clever like that):

Joining me from Twitter or Facebook and haven’t got a blog? You can still take part! Just write and submit your entry via email and I’ll be sure to include them in the round up next week.

As an extra bit of fun I am also inviting you all to submit photos of yourselves looking seriously sleep deprived.

Tired Mark

Here’s one of my very brave friend Mark to start us off who is busy looking after his very elderly grandpa (which I think counts as parenting in any one’s book)…

Tired Ant

Again, email me your pics and I’ll display them in a rogue’s gallery next week. My lovely husband Ant and fellow sleep-deprivation partner will pick his favourite who will then be awarded a random sleep-themed not at all crap fabulous prize. And just to prove to you that Ant has suffered with the best of them, here’s one of him to add to the mix…

Enjoy and good luck! The deadline for submissions is midnight next Sunday 27th September so don’t miss out!

P.S. If you fancy giving this venture a plug via the share buttons below that would be just FAB and I will love you forever.

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