A rude awakening: The worst ways to wake up when you have kids

This week has given me an eerie sense of deja vu. We’ve been back to school a matter of weeks, and as is tradition, we are now welcoming various lurgies into the house – although so far though, no corona this time. Thank heavens for small mercies.

As I’ve recently discussed, as my kids get older they do tend to sleep a little more reliably. It is therefore a bloody great shock to the system when one of them gets ill and I have a very disturbed night. I can barely function the next day – which is hilarious given that I used to get by on mere snatches of sleep. I wasn’t happy about it, mind, but I got by.

No one likes to be woken up in the night, but children have a unique way of make sure it is as painful as possible.

My kids have three primary methods of awakening me from my slumber:

There is the popular ‘shout from the bedroom at increasing volume until I appear’ method.

This is a particular a favourite of my son’s, who I am convinced must believe that I sleep curled up outside his door listening out for his whimpers, as he seems to get very annoyed when I take more than 5 seconds to appear when summoned.

My daughter has recently become a fan of the rather surprising ‘turn on the big light and almost put you into cardiac arrest’ way of waking me up.

This is a heart-stoppingly sudden way to go from deep sleep to wide awake and I can definitely not recommend it for a second. It is generally related to there being a spider (real or imaginary) or other bug somewhere in her room, aka an emergency.

The third is the absolutely terrifying ‘appear like an apparition at the side of your bed’.

(Aka the ‘Creeping Jesus‘ as named by Roxanne).

An absolute classic, both of my kids can pull this one off. It is something out of a horror movie; nothing makes you more at risk of actually shitting yourself than waking up, eyeball to eyeball with a small, silent child who – since it’s pitch bloody black – could quite easily be the malevolent spirit of a Victorian orphan.

I asked Facebook to vote for their least favourite method of being woken up by their kids, and here were some of the best:

The Carrie

The ‘standing patiently at the side of your bed, face dripping with blood because you’re having a random, violent nosebleed’ type of scenario. When you come to, you believe you are living a horror movie, or your child is auditioning for Carrie. Yes, that has happened to me on more than one occasion! – Maddie

The Clockwork Orange

My 4 year old once came into my room at 5am when I was fast asleep, jabbed her fingers into my eye sockets and tried physically pulling my eye lids open – Lottie

The Psycho

A single scream. Just enough to wake you but they go straight back to sleep/never woke up in the first place – Dawn

The FML

Popular one this one…

The sound of retching, especially while co sleeping – Morwenna

Hearing one of them being sick in their sleep….. Daughter had long, thick, wavy, red hair which was full of vomit. Resulted in a 3am bath and hair wash – Helen

Woken by sixth sense at the presence of little person staring at you from the side of the bed like a serial killer, followed by the words “I feel…” interrupted by projectile vomiting over you, the bedding and the floor – Emma

The conversationalist

When my son was little, he woke me in the middle of the night to ask me, in a very excited/shocked tone ‘did I know that Vikings had their toilets outside?’ – Lisa

The physical assault

I was once woken up by my eldest daughter coming in and slamming a hardback Peppa Pig annual down on my face and shouting “Daddy read!” – Stephen

The ‘I must have been Hitler in a past life’

My daughter woke me up this morning by plugging in, and playing her electronic drum kit on my bedside table – Natalie

And the hands-down winner/loser

Hearing the words in the pitch black.. “Daddy, my fart fell on the floor” – Sam

You can read the rest of the comments here.