There are good and bad nights. And, as we were talking about yesterday - the word ‘bad’ is all relative. A ‘bad’ night with PartyPie doesn’t really mean any crying, it means that she wakes up and wants to be fed - but then goes back to sleep - and wakes up because she’s wet - and is then hard to settle without another feed.

Last night was OK until about three in the morning, when she began inexplicably waking every hour. I had finally settled her down for the third time when her nappy leaked and she could not be settled without the Magic Power of Boob. We went through six nappies. I was at the end of my tether and had a small whimper to myself. We both passed out until 7.15am, and then M came in from where he now sleeps - Out In The Cold.

(Now I have to type something I should have started out with, but I have no planning capabilities atm.) Yesterday, before visitors arrived and while Z slept I very hastily made kangaroo stew. Because the trailer has walls of faux wood and little else, all abrupt noises are potential timebombs. That’s why I often put the pram next to the washing machine with the radio on. But yesterday I’d put her in the bedroom. So in order to cut up the vegies silently I took them and the cutting board into the study/bedroom of M and hacked away at the onions, zucchini, beans, potato etc. I was trying to be swift and quiet, and possibly I was a bit scatty with my slicing. OK? Now back to where this ties into my story.

I told M about my fraught night when he came in at about twenty past seven. And as I told him, I also answered questions before he could ask them - thus: “Yes, at about three she woke up and fed, and somehow her nappy came undone, so then when I had to do it up she woke up, then at four I had to get her back to sleep, and no I don’t want you to stay home and mind her today, and then at five I’d left her in bed with me and her nappy inexplicably leaked and no, there’s nothing you can do and I don’t think I should have woken you up to help…”

I went on like that for a while, while M played with the baby and tried to let it all wash over him like a Super-Partner-Sponge without attempting to FIX IT in a manly manner. Finally I forgot about my Important Suffering Self and said - “And how did you sleep?” and even managed to sound like I cared, despite the fact that he could have been tap danced on by both cats during the night and still slept better than me.

“Oh,” said M sadly and without any apparent irony, “It wasn’t too bad I suppose, but I smelt this smell, and I thought it was plastic burning. So then I thought that you and PartyPie had been suffocated by some plastic that had been left too close to the heater and I had to creep up to your door and make sure you guys were still alive.”

“Ah. Terrible.. You had to get up and walk? Awful. I’m so sorry.”

“So then,” he continued blithely, “I went back to bed and I realised the smell wasn’t plastic - it was onion. ONION. I couldn’t sleep properly because of ONION SMELL.”

By this time he had lost all sense of self preservation and was actually pouting.

“Well,” I said very carefully, “I’m surprised you didn’t wake up in tears. I think that I would have happily rubbed my naked body in raw onion rather than having to wake up a bazillion times, walk a wriggling babe, been wee’d on, sucked on and had several bits of me cut up by tiny razorlike baby toenails. Gah.”

“Ha!” cackled M, “Ha, ha! That’s funny!”

“It wasn’t funny!” I shrieked. “In the end I had to have a little cry.”

This caused M to become sober, and enabled me to have the upper hand for the morning. Thus, when he said that I could stay in bed while he made the porridge I was able to finally inform him that I never want to eat his porridge ever again because he refuses to measure the ingredients and instead just flings them all in with an idealistic hope that it will all succeed. Generally this means we eat something that resembles glue with brown sugar on top. Instead of more crying onion stories, I was rewarded with a pot of tea and Egg In A Hole (breakfast usually only seen at sea) - such was his thankfulness that he had been spared a night in the trenches.

Yeah. OK - trenches is exaggerating, but everything is worse at night. Know Your Onion.