If this is bad - we should all be doing it -and be proud.

When I was a child, not once can I remember listening (yes, small girl, big ears, and not afraid to use them) to my mother and her friends talk about motherhood or children like something that needed to be talked about, or was interesting to talk about for that matter. They never sat around the kitchen table and debated whether they had enough time for their kids and if this was something they stressed about. They never defined themselves as mother's, it was something they happened to be, not something that they were consumed by.
If they ever talked about us, the kids pretending to play under the table while they drank coffee and smoked Blend Ultra, it was usually because one of us had behaved badly and had needed to be punished, or because one of us had had a stomach bug that made us vomit all over the living room carpet, as something that had disrupted the rest of their day by annoyingly stopping a halt to everything else they had to do.
Most of all they talked about work, or Dallas, or the new Jackie Collins novel. It made them sound interesting. It was a world I was yet to be invited to, something that was a mystery to me, something I was dying to be a part of. To be a grown woman, and sit around a table and talk to your friends about things that only they understood.

(I can only imagine what those small ears would hear, and what impact they would have on me had it been today, and the conversation around the table would have been about my child, my child, my child, my child, taking care of my child, finding the best organic and locally grown broccoli, and my child, and my child's Gymboree class, and swim class, and music class, and me child my child my child. I would probably have grown a pretty large head to go with those big ears, I tell you.)

Most importantly, no one considered them bad mother's. In fact, they were all (maybe except for one, but that was only because she served bolognese sauce without meat to save money, so that was done out of necessity, not evilness, strictly, I guess it doesn't count) very good mother's. They were loving, affectionate, funny, devoted and no-nonsense. Most of them worked full-time, while the kids spent their days in state-funded day care (you gotta love Scandinavia, even in the early 70's). When they didn't work they cooked basic meals while we watched the one hour of TV that was suitable for kids (and often more hours that was not so suitable), they made sure we were dressed and had our gym kit together and they left us with our grand parents at weekend's to get a break. They had fun parties where they all got merry and would dance around with us standing on their feet and had us fall asleep on a pile of coats in the hall-way. They would sleep in when they were tired, ask us to make them coffee when they woke up, and if they had any energy at all they would take us swimming, or for a walk in the park, but if it didn't happen, no one would think they had failed us.

It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong in how we define and perceive ourselves as mother's today - and how we judge all the other mother's around us by comparing them to ourselves. You are not a sufficient mother unless you get down on the floor at all times and actively play with your child for every awake moment of it's day. You have to sign up for activities, and play-dates, and do the home-work assignments, and still have time to show your kids how to relax (because they can't figure that out for themselves). As a mother, your life should be your children - and nothing else. You should not be happy unless your child's needs (which we have ourselves created by obsessing) are completely taken care of down to the very last detail.

And this is still not enough. Only yesterday, Kate moaned because there are so many movies coming out over the holiday's and when I had told her that we simply can't go and watch them all in the theatre, that we have to wait for them to come out On Demand (as if there were ever the luxury of determining your viewing schedule when I grew up - watch your fifteen minutes of Tjeckoslovakian puppet-show right now, or miss it forever).
- It's just not fair, she scowled. Everyone else can go with their mommy and daddy. They have time!

I felt huge pangs of guilt for about ten seconds, until I managed to shake it off.
- They probably can't, I said. And even if they could, I don't care. Different families have different rules.
It felt good saying it (not so good that it stopped me from lying awake later that night, agonizing over how horrible I'd been, though). It felt like I was finally putting my foot down. Making a stand. Separating me from the group and going it on my own. Taking charge of my life, all that sort of stuff.

It seems that in today's hyper-obsessed society (or should I say obsessive) we are not happy until we have completely, totally, one hundred percent thrown ourselves in to playing our roles as mother's that we are quite happy obliterating ourselves, and the people we were before we had children, to the point that what's is left are empty shells, mere cut-outs of what used to be a fully functioning human being. God forbid, we should have time to do anything else - let alone take a break and read a book, or do something that we'd take pleasure in doing for us, for me, not for my child. Only bad mother's take time out for themselves. Only very, very bad mothers.

Which is what I have been doing over the last day or so.
I couldn't put down memoir Bad Mother, written by Bay Area (Berkeley more precisely which makes her observations even more interesting at times) author and mother Ayelet Waldman , until I had finished the last page. This book is funny, clever, thought provoking and sometimes very, very close to the heart (when you read about how she nearly - unknowingly - sacrificed her son's life for breast-feeding, I had lock myself in my bedroom and reach for the tissues).
Waldman has been in the spot light before. To a lot of people she is most famous for a column she wrote about loving her husband more than her children, which led her to a sit on Oprah's sofa where she had to endure much harsh and personal criticism by the audience.
When I read Waldman's book I struggle to find anything even remotely offensive or inappropriate in her stories. They are all very nice and polite reflections on a society gone bonkers over Motherhood. Her book is open, truthful and very honest without being provocative for the sake of shocking. Waldman comes across as someone I would like to have a conversation with. Someone who has found an ideal balance between home, work and herself and who should be praised for that, rather than chastised.
She can come and drink coffee by my kitchen table any day - it would be an honor!

Bad Mother - A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman is published by Doubleday.

For more information, go to www.ayeletwaldman.com

First world problem, and a first world syndrome.

Most days are OK. In the grand scheme of things, I do OK. I don't get too mad at the kids when they play up, act out or forget their homework in school. I take deep breaths and get on with things without snapping.

Some days are not so good.

The 2-year old will act out in play-group. He will snatch toys away from other children, or he will (it has happened) hit another boy over the head for no apparent reason. He will throw tantrums all day and nothing seem to be working to stop him. I try to diffuse the melt-downs by taking him to the playground or going for a walk, but if I'm unlucky it will only add to his frustrations and we will both end up feeling exhausted. Pick up time at school will be a nightmare because of road-works. I get there late and will miss curb-side pick up and will have to park and walk in to school and have to carry a hefty 2-year old three blocks and then back again. My back will be aching, my head will be pounding. My husband will call and tell me he'll be home late so I have to prepare dinner, help with home-work (while fighting off a jealous and attention-seeking boy from my leg), do night routine, bath routine, violin-practice, clean the rabbit hutch, tidy up and do reading with my daughter by myself. And through out this the kids will fight, argue, scream and cry. The noise level will be unbearable and I have not had a minute to myself all day. I feel exhausted, drained, un-attractive, tired and haggard, not to mention ugly and un-sexy. I'm in my mid-thirties but my body is aching like it had lived a 70-year long life.
Was this what I signed up for?
Exactly where, on the road towards starting my fabulous life did things go so horribly wrong?
Those are the days when I feel like packing a bag and just drive away from it all. Forget that I have a family. Forget that I am a mother, a wife and a person I don't really enjoy being anymore.

No, this was not what I signed up for, and yet, there seem to be no way out.
Dark days, indeed.

It doesn't seem to matter how much I try to cut down on our social life. I still feel stressed out to the point of breaking down. I have consciously not signed up the kids to too many activities. I turn down dinner and drinks invitations, and I make sure that the weekends are free from obligations, just so that we can rest, and recharge our batteries, yet it doesn't seem to be enough.
How much more can I cut down? There isn't anything else to cut from.

Is this a problem that only concerns mothers in the city? Would things get easier if we moved to small village in the country? Or do I just have to accept that this is it. My life as a broken down wreck of a thirty-something on a road to nowhere?

Dar, dark days, indeed.

I close my eyes and hope for a better, sunnier day tomorrow.

Playgroup

When is it OK to hit someone over the head with wet wipes when that person talks absolute rubbish and you know you are going to have to face that person for two hours every week until you kids are old enough to decide for themselves what playgroups to go to?

My local playgroup often turns into a battle field where the more experienced mothers (older and/or more than one child) fight it out when the new mothers (first baby, everything is new and confusing) ask an innocent question about introducing solids or how to fight sleep deprivation.
There will be at least two or more mother honchos, opinionated, strong-willed, have read every baby book known to man who will give not so much advice but more a long list of what is right (their way) and what is not (other mother's ways).

They will not listen to anyone else, they will interrupt you if you talk, and they will not think twice about telling you that you are wrong should your advice be different from theirs. These alpha-mothers have made it their life to know everything about raising children and they consider themselves experts in the area. They get very emotionally attached and take it personally when someone isn't following the same sleeping or feeding schedule as they do, they will report you to child services if you don't breast-feed for as long as they consider proper, and they will pretend to be your best friend just so that they can enter your home and get a good look at the surroundings in which you raise your children, just to dissect it and criticize it.

These are the mothers fighting it out at playgroup every week. That is their life, and they are devoted to it.

Everywhere in this country, Damien is born, and born, and born again

What mother does not think that they are doing their child the biggest favor in the world by stop working and staying at home, spending their undevoted time to them? 7, or maybe even 8 out of 10, I guarantee you. Guess what?
You are most likely making them a huge disservice, catering to their every need, teaching them that you will wait on the 24 hours a day, not giving them a chance to ever, ever learn through trying by making mistakes, by hurting yourself every now and then.
It's not malicious, but a lot of times, we create a false sense of security by building up a very distorted reality that our little angels will mistake for true.

We drive them in the car everywhere. We have every snack you can possibly imagine packed, ready to be served within seconds of the slightest hint of a dissatisfied sound. We talk to them in fake baby-voices. We are always there to stop and solve any conflict that might ever happen in the playground before they even take place. We teach them that they will never have to be bored, and God forbid, they will never have to make up games of their own, because we will always, always be there, putting everything else we were doing away to yet again read that wretched Thomas the Tank engine book instead of saying, 'Not right now, mommy is busy.' We show them that they will never have to eat anything that might possibly look or smell a little different because we have all the time in the world to make them the dinner that they will eat. They will never experience pain because they'll never have a chance to graze their knees, or bump their head on the kitchen table.

By doing this, and more, we will create little monsters, and they are our future.

Our home is our own private government

My mother-in-law raised boys to become men. Today, he's more traditionally conservative in-laws look at him and say: He's one of those 'hands-on dads'.
Like, he can change a diaper!!
My mother-in-law didn't do gender stereotypes. As far as she was concerned, in her home, everyone chipped in to get the job done. Her husband, who couldn't even make himself a cup of tea before he married, soon learned not only to cook a Sunday roast, but to do a pretty damn good one too. Shocking, I know.

After posting the questions about equality-definition the other day, I realized that it really doesn't matter much what the government does to help families create balance in the home. If we are not up for changing our attitudes within our own personal sphere it's not gonna work anyway. It has to start in the home, from the beginning, otherwise it's a lost cause. We can get all the paid paternity leave, job-shares, shorter working days and cost-affordable day-cares we want, but if mommy is still doing all the ground-work in the home, it's not gonna change the signals we send our kids anyway.

So you're a woman and your fed up with being stuck in the trap of home-making and being a full-time mother. You'd like to work? Earn yourself a little money? A little independence? Would like to send a positive message to your kids, shake up the gender-rolls a bit?
Good.
But your children won't applaud you for suddenly turning in to a regular Erin Brockovitch, what they will remember is that you came home from a long day at work and still cooked their dinners, washed all their clothes, always made their beds and helped out with the homework, falling a sleep at the table when daddy was surfing on the computer or said goodbye as he left for tennis-practice with the mates.
Guess what your son will be looking for in his future wife? Guess what kind of wife and mother your daughter will become?
Policy change starts at home, in the family.

Alpha mothers are the curse on our society

Don't you just sometimes want to ram your Mclaren stroller in to the group of alpa-mothers hogging the swings at the playground, or at least 'accidentally' knock over their triple wet no-milk no-coffee hot-cold americano or something.
This breed of zombie-like women staring at their children, not letting them go for even a second, their vacant smiles glued to their faces as they keep a steady stream of nasal yapping coming out of their mouth:
- Good job, buddy. Good girl - let's grab the bucket, good job, now let's use our shovel to put some sand in the bucket, that's it, good job, buddy, no let's turn the bucket up side down, good job-
I mean, come on, if they don't get bored by the sound of their own voices, please spare a thought for the rest of us.
And in between the nasal yapping of fake enthusiasm is the conversation with the other alpha mothers, the high-pitched, too fast for the human ear to catch, stream of competitive note-swapping on pre-schools, play-groups, toddler science, music fun, which sun-block works and how much of an age gap is appropriate between kid two and kid three?

These alpha mothers reassure me that being a mother is the best thing that has ever happened to them and yet they are sucking every last drop of want out of my own body. Being a mother and ending up like that?

Just what the Doctor ordered

It is typical, I have caught the bugs of my children, and am confined to my house until I feel better. There is no time for me to actually take to my bed and sleep it off, a mother's prerogative is such that she will never be able to be sick, but I will come back very, very soon with some new posts.

We need to shout it out over the roof tops.

After I wrote the posting on my PPD someone send me a link to this article from the Guardian.

Although I'd be the first one to say that I agree with whatever takes anyone through a rough time, I am not a great advocate of anti-depressants. I think there are a lot of cases where they work, and where they have helped people out of a very bad place, but I also think that there is a tendency for Doctors to prescribe them quite liberally, without sufficient monitoring, and without an agreed dead-line with advice on how to come of them properly. I don't think medication should be used as a final solution, it should be a help on the way, a kick in the right direction, to stabilize a condition together with other means of treatment. The most important thing for a mother with PPD is that she is not left to believe that she is alone in her experiences. If health-visitors, OB-GYN's, nurses and mid-wives where properly trained to spot signs of PPD they could catch falling mothers a lot earlier, and guide them in the right direction. To brush a falling mother of with a prescription of anti-d's is like putting the lid on the whole situation. She's not likely to seek further help, but she's also not likely to actually get to the bottom of what's going.

It is important to inform expecting women about PPD when they are expecting so that they can read and understand potential warning-signs themselves. It should be right up there with epidurals and pain-relief. And it is time that all the cutesy mother-baby books stopped talking about "the mother can sometimes feel a little blue but hey, that's OK". We need to start telling it like it is and be honest about what happens when the post partum experience becomes to over-whelming to deal with.

Mothers need to be able to talk to someone who will listen to them and take them seriously. What they don't need is someone who sends them of with a box of pills, and a "now you will live happily ever after".
We don't want zombie-mothers. We want happy, healthy mothers!

It doesn't matter, at the end of the day, inequality is a lost cause

It is a well know fact that no matter how hard you work at it, after children, there is no such thing as an equal relationship.
The article in the Guardian today comes as no surprise to me. It doesn't matter how hard you try, the mother will know the names and numbers to the pediatrician and the kids' dentist, she will know which morning to pack PE gear, and she will deal with the play-dates, the birthdays-presents and the 20 Valentine's cards that need to be written. Nine times out of then she is also responsible for making sure home-work and violin practice is done. Of course, the mother will be the nagging b**ch and the dads? Oh, they get to be Fun Dad, who come's home and plays for fifteen minutes before sitting down to eat.
Not a bad deal.

Baby talk is cheap

I had dinner with a few girlfriends the other night, some of which I haven't seen for a long time. There was a lot of catching up to do, what's been going on in our lives, how high our hopes are for Obama, are going skiing this year, and so on. And, for a few around the table, inevitably, the baby-talk.

Fact: I am not big on the baby-talk.
I like relaying a clever comment that my daughter made after school, or stating the fact that I will be brain-dead during our conversation because I didn't get any sleep - again, but apart form that, let's keep it real.
There is one obvious reason why this is, and here goes: Talking about your your own children is OK. Talking about other people's children is B_O_R_I_N_G. And if you talk about your own, the polite thing to do is to reciprocate too, and that's where I draw the line.
I mean, come on, we all think that our own little spawns are God's gift to the rest of the world. We think they will grow up a Super Model with a PhD in quantum physics and be a professional, classically trained piano player, that is how it is - but no one else can see what you can see, and if you go on about it too much, everyone is going to think that you are incredibly self-centered - because you are!

It is also not interesting to talk about strollers, play-groups, organic crackers and the latest sing-a-long craze. We are grown-ups and we are intelligent. Why oh, why do we need to let ourselves down like this?
The contra-argument would be that if you are a proud mother (and there is no reason why you shouldn't be), you want to share the joys of your life with the rest of the world. Sure. I can see that. But let's be realistic here. If you are not particularly in to dogs, you wouldn't be that keen on listening to a dog-owner and how she has just potty-trained her Alsatian. If you couldn't see the point of soccer, you'd hate to have to go through every single minute of the Spurs-Arsenal game (yeah, we all know that Spurs lost, yeah). So why on earth do we just take for granted that our children is by default a suitable subject for a conversation?

My time is simply to valuable to be wasting it on things I have no interest in. There was a time when I was young, free-spirited and had all the time in the world to sit around and talk nonsense for hours on end without getting any wiser (and guess what, that was in my life before children!), but these days, I want to spend my time doing things that matter, and, to be brutally honest, other people's children don't matter that much to me.
Also, listening to a group of women squel for hours over nap-times, baby-spoons, zippy-cups and organic snacks gives me migrane since it's so mind-numbingly hard to even try to look even a little excited about it.

And here's the thing: women struggle to claim and define their space in this fast-changing society and they often feel that they get pushed out, brushed to one side, walked all over, as soon as they have babies. Suddenly, their place is not where the fun and action happen anymore, their place is the home, whether they chose it or not. At least, that's what society would like women to think. You had the babies, so now you should have everything you ever asked for, right?

Well, if women want to be taken seriously even after they decided to enter the scary world of no-return, we have to cut down on the baby-talk, literally. If you start acting like you went in to hospital to have a baby, but came out like you had a lobotomy you're going to get written off as a reliable human being pretty sharpish.

Sure, before I get my head kicked in with someones diaper-bag I'd like to point out that I do talk, and I take a deep interest in talking about the children of my close friends, should they feel the need to let of some steam or otherwise. This is not about me being a terrible friend, cold- hearted and emotionally fucked. What I don't buy into is that if you are a mother you should, by default, have to OD on baby and let it take over your life. My children are important to me, but I accept that talking about them might not be that interesting to everyone else, and all other baby-related stuff, like Gymborée classes, organic cheese-sticks and the necessities of two nap-times a day, well, that really shouldn't be interesting to anyone.

We are used to the pain, used to suffer in silence, so what's the problem?

I pretty much slept my way through the first 18 months of my daughter's life. Even when I was awake, I was sleepwalking myself through the day, isolated from the rest of the world by a veil of zombie-like tiredness. I found it hard to keep my eyes open, and if I wasn't trying to hide a yawn, I was fighting hard to concentrate enough to find my way from one room to another in my apartment.
The health-visitor, who I took my daughter to once every two weeks to have her measured and weighed, and, who's job it was, technically, to see what was going on, always asked me the standard question: And how is mummy doing today then?
- I'm tired, I said. I don't seem to be able to find energy to do anything.
- I know, the health-visitor always replied, smiling vacantly. It is hard with all them sleep-less nights, innit? Don't worry, it'll get better.

She should have seen the signs. But, then again, I never pushed it any further. I never told her that I did in fact get a full nights sleep, because my daughter slept through the night very early, and I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn because she was happy playing in her bed for hours by herself, and even though she was the easiest, happiest creature alive, I still felt exhausted and constantly on the verge of death. For a long time, I felt it was my own problem to deal with, and how could anyone help me if I didn't spell it out to them? (I feel very differently about this today, but that's another blog-post.)

When I finally did muster up courage to talk to my doctor about this, he prescribed me a dose of medication which was supposed to help me up from the black hole and make me function properly. What he forgot to do was to monitor my response to the medication and as it wasn't the right dose for me, it just sent me spiraling deeper down a spinning vortex. I wouldn't be able to give you a specific time when I finally got better. The journey back to normal life was so long, and so full of re-lapses that I have stopped keeping track.

Needless to say, during the second pregnancy both me and my husband was very worried that I would fall back down again and when I finally mustered up enough courage to talk to my OB-GYN about it, she made a few notes in my papers and I felt safe.
This time, both birth and the after-care experience was wildly different, in a good way, from the first time, and I felt very positive that my mental approach to motherhood would be too (this too is another blog-post).

One Sunday night, about two weeks after the birth, we eat a family dinner around the table when the phone rings. It is my OB-GYN.
- I just wanted to call to see how you are doing, and how the baby is.
- Everything is fine. We're doing well.
- Good. Good. And how are you feeling?
I give her an update on the physical state of my body.
- Good. Good. And you? You are doing well? Good. Fine. So I'll see you for your six week check up. Have a good night.
At the check-up she didn't even ask me any questions. She only confirmed that I was in good enough shape for light exercise. That was that.

One thing motherhood has taught me is that unless you're making a lot of noise, a hell of a lot of noise, you're not going to get heard. And most new mother's don't know how to make noise. They are tired, confused, low on energy and very reluctant to complain, because, after all, they are new mothers who should be feeling like they're in seventh heaven. What could you possibly have to complain about when you've just had a new baby?

Even though it is believed that between 13-15% of new mothers experience PPD in the UK, until recently it was still a very taboo subject. In the US, a study made by PRAMS shows that one in five American women suffer too but again, no one talks about it. So many women, so few voices.
It is not deemed as 'appropriate' to be feeling anything but joyful since you're embarking on this supposedly best of all journeys. At a strech, "Baby-blues", or "feeling a bit low for a few weeks", is something that society has taught us to brush off as "hormones". After all, women show all kinds of weaknesses due to our hormones, don't they?

Unless professionally trained (and even there, I have showed you how arbitrary that can be), few people would know how to respond if you told them that you found it hard to put on your own clothes or leave your apartment every day. Or that you can't pick up your baby because you are worried that you will hurt her. Or that you are missing every single mile-stone in her development, the smile, the gurgling, the rolling from one side to the other, because, if you're not sleeping with your eyes closed, you are drifting in and out of a vacuum, not really sure where you are.
How could they understand? After all, you should be smiling. You've just become a mother, what could possibly be wrong with you?

A little background

One of the first things that hit me as I became a mother was how isolated women became as soon as they stepped out of the hospital with their new baby and in to their home, where they are expected to adapt this new role as a mother and subsequent house-wife as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Having a baby is not only physically challenging, it is also a mental fuck-up which will take long time to get used to, and there I was, in London, with no support-network, having to find mother-baby groups, learning to maneuver my way around Babies 'R Us and find new and exciting playgrounds to discover. This was very new to me. I had been working as an TV advertising exec, and I knew my job, how to hide a terrible hang-over from the boss, and where to find the best Sunday-brunch.

Some women have planned their own motherhood since they were little girls. Diapers and rash and snugly-toes comes natural to them. But most women, I dare say, find themselves lonely and confused and with no-one to talk to. They become isolated through motherhood because they are suddenly forced to know their way around a a brand new environment without manuals or instructions.

As I was sitting through yet another mother-baby group without being able to share my feelings with anyone I felt more and more desperate. It was clearly obvious that most of these mothers felt as exhausted, and fed-up as I was, yet everyone tried to smile as if nothing was wrong. We were all acting like lobotomized maniacs on Valium.
It was quite scary.

Yet I was telling myself that it must be something wrong with me. I did something wrong. Why wasn't I enjoying every single second with my new child? If all the other mothers were happy, or at least tried their best to be happy, why did I have to go against the grain, as always?

Late night on a school-night?

I have discovered that staying out late on a school-night is not a motherly thing to do. Especially not if you pair your lateness with a few drinks.

The talk amongst the mothers at school pick-up is that you should refrain from leaving the home after six o'clock mid-week, and only stay out until no later than 9.30 on a weekend. If you really feel the need to drink (and why should you as you drive because you couldn't possibly take a cab because that would be way too... what's the word?...inappropriate?) you should definitely stick to one glass of wine. Or one cocktail - but that's pushing it.
There are still a few decadent souls who likes to flaunt the fact that they still consider themselves rock'n roll enough to talk both loudly and openly about how they go out to dinner with other mothers mid-week, and have at least one glass of wine and stay out until eight, or even nine o'clock. These mothers regard themselves as adventurous and young at heart. These are also the mothers who come up with the crazy initiative of a "mother's only-night" where one mother invite the rest of the mothers to their house for finger food, strictly BYOB, to talk about......your kids. And school. And after-school activities. Just like you do at pick-up. But with a glass of wine that you are desperately sipping very slowly so it will last the duration as you can't possibly be seen to want another glass.

And then there is the exception, the special mother, who not only goes to dinner, but then also rounds of her evening back at home, at 8.53pm, with a mojito.
- That was probably not a very good thing to do on a Tuesday, she says, and looks for sympathy, but secretly she thinks she's really cool and out there.

One mother was complaining yesterday about how tired she was when having her mother and sister around for dinner because they stayed 'till 11.30.
- 11.30!!! Can you believe it? I mean, come on!!!
Mojito-mom's jaw hit the floor.
- That is just too late.
- She turns around to me:
- I have a friend visiting from out of town. I have not gone to bed before ten o'clock three nights in a row now. I am starting to feel it.

OK. So do I or do I not tell them that I went to a gig last week and didn't come home until 3 or after? I am thinking it's probably not a very good idea.