Am living in swathe of guilt and stress. Am falling into phobic vortex of being unable to telephone friends, such is my ‘tight baby schedule’. Which isn’t actually a ’schedule’ as such, but just how the day seems to hang together. I have forty minute pockets of time when Z sleeps, in which I try to grab handfuls of my previous life and stuff them in. I generally fail. My days are thus:

9amish - Z’s first 40min sleep: I run around and do houseworky things so not as to go mad with filth and flies for the rest of the day, just the flies. (This is despite M doing one huge scouring clean at least once a week.) It’s hard to wash up after dinner at night due to Trailer life ensuring that the kitchen is on the other side of a one centimetre wall to the baby’s head, so it gets done in the morning.

12pmish - Z’s second sleep. Am ravenous enough to begin eating self. Compose something within limits of current elimination diet (an effort to find which food causes the rash on the baby, bet it’s one of the good ones, goddamnit) and eat it. It’s usually rice, or something derived thereof. Takes about 20 precious precious minutes. Probably hang out washing. Look longingly at phone and computer. Consider calling friends, but have now not contacted anyone for so long, am paranoid about saying “Sorry, got to go!” five minutes into conversation due to waking baby that needs changing.

3.30pmish - Z’s third sleep. Completely knackered. So knackered that have to do what all the books say and sleep while baby is sleeping. But can’t sleep with baby, as will both be eaten by flies. So baby stays in pram. Beth sleeps with body completely covered by sheet as flies land on her sheet covered ears. Lie there trying not to think of all the things I could also be doing, and chant to self ‘need sleep to live, need sleep to live’.

6pmish - Time to settle Z for night sleep. Lie next to her for feed with huge inverted pyramid swirling above skull, filled with things like “Call Chris, find new phone/internet plan because ours is stupid, pay idiotic air conditioner bill, start listing things to sell on ebay, tidy up study, flea the cats, call jody, remember to put air in tyres, remember to check oil/water, email Anne Marie, renew drivers license as have been illegally on road all year, pay that trailer rego, call Jen, find headset for phone, tell Snipe that M needs empty ice-cream containers, remember the four month vaccinations, call Jan to thank for Z’s clothes, call small brother and find out if he emerged from New York, does our new anand blah, and blah, and blah….”

Z is great at night, but I am changing nappies anywhere from three to five times and feeding about three times. So I head to bed around eight or nine (which feels like about midnight, so it’s not so bad) in order to get my quota of snooze. She changes and feeds pretty much while still asleep, and doesn’t pop awake like an EverReady Battery Bunny until eight in the morning. So my other quest is to find the all conquering night nappy (meaning, a specially absorbent one that doesn’t wake her by becoming soaking). So far, only the Wild Child cuts it - giving us five whole change free hours. And no. Don’t tell me to try eco-disposables. I have. It makes no difference.

Reading back what I just wrote. None of it seems to illustrate just what it is that makes me so tired and unable to get anything done. But basically Z commands 95% of my time, as she should, and I am trying to squeeze more in than is actually possible. Gah. I am under the gun to go back and have one day at work a week instead of working both days from home, but it means a two hour round trip for Z and I (torture) and then leaving Z with my mum and having to leave work every two and a half to three hours to feed, as she still doesn’t know what to do with a bottle. I think the people at my work merely think I need to get out of the trailer where they feel I am going insane - they may be right, but doing lots of driving to achieve what I can easily do here is not going to help. At all. So my two days where M is around to wrangle Z are spent working unless he takes a day off from working on the boat, which means living longer in the trailer. And there endeth my vent for today. Please ignore.