Sleeping

At the airport yesterday we met a woman whose 7 month old baby has been sleeping through the night since she was seven weeks old. Last night the Princess woke at 10.30, 1.30, 3.30, 5.00, 6.00 and, definitively, at 8.45. Something will have to be done. Mr. Waffle has bought a Gina Ford book on how to get our baby to sleep.? If you follow the link above and read the reviews, you will see that opinions on Ms. Ford’s methods vary greatly. Mr. Waffle is keen to try Ms. Ford’s suggestions but I am a little reluctant. Controlled crying sounds terrifying. Over Christmas a neighbour described how her grown up daughter tried this on her son. The baby cried in his cot for 15 minutes while she cried outside his door. This would be me.

In other news, I am sure that you are dying to hear how the wedding on January 1 went. Very well. It didn’t rain and there were no photographs on the beach for the bridesmaids. In fact the bride, who is as kind as she is beautiful, did go out to have some photos taken but told us that there was no need for us to join her. I have to say, the bride did look spectacularly beautiful. The bridesmaids didn’t look bad either although some foolish person tactlessly described them as the world’s oldest. This was probably true although, as you can imagine, it didn’t go down spectacularly well. One of my fellow bridesmaids was a mother of three (I said we were old) and when she heard that our baby still doesn’t sleep through the night she said and I quote “You feckin eejit”. These third time mothers are very heartless.

Wedding was awash with doctors and medical types of all kinds (bride is a heart surgeon and her father is also a surgeon and her new husband is a medical student). I spent the day concealing the fact that I trained as a solicitor. Doctors are not fond of lawyers. I was doing very well until somebody cornered me and said loudly “I don’t know how you could defend someone who you knew was guilty”. Suddenly I was surrounded by people muttering darkly. I didn’t know where to begin my defence, the following sprang to mind –

I never really did any criminal law,

For the past number of years I haven’t practised – I’m clean,

You’ve known me since I was 12, couldn’t we have explored this at a different time (this for the bride’s mother),

Or, most bravely, I think you have misunderstood how defending criminal cases works.

I opted for –

Did you know that one of the other bridesmaids is starting law school in the autumn? I think you should talk to her. It may not be too late to save her.