Having a baby and tiredness

I know I should be going to bed earlier. After all, little one could wake up at any moment. The earlier you're in bed, the more sleep you get, and the healthier and happier you are. But I *can't* go to bed earlier. I'm too weak. I want to stay up and drink tea and surf the innernet. I need to decompress after an easy day at the office.

What does it matter, what does it all mean?

A few thoughts on this. I've just started reading The Tao Is Silent, by Smullyan. In it, he talks about the difference between allowing oneself to sleep when one is sleepy, and forcing oneself to sleep because it's sleepytime. So i'm sadly in the latter category at the moment. I don't know what kind of life I'd have if I allowed myself to sleep when sleepy - if I could even do it. I'd probably get fired for starters, plus go to sleep around 7pm. Can you believe my eyelids start getting heavy around 7 or 8? I have well and truly bade farewell to my old late night self. And yet - an even later self has emerged, nappy in hand, somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30 recently.

But let me now backtrack and say that I feel lucky. Little Miss Hammertime has caused us very few problems. My health is fine, despite occasionally interrupted sleep. From my straw poll of other parents, I think we're pretty darn lucky. The devil of sleeplessness and concomitant insanity and rage and desperate resignation has not bedevilled us, nope, not at all.

My new goal, as of this sentence, is to get in a nap - hang on, not to nap, but to allow myself to sleep when sleepy at some point this weekend. I am going to Canberra for the wedding of a close friend - maybe too close. No, not too close after all.

Canberra, where I'll allow myself to sleep when sleepy. I'm excited!