A night with a couple of hours of broken sleep is normal when you’re a parent, and while unpleasant, more than bearable.

What’s slightly harder is when that night of broken sleep is followed by a day of doctors and hospitals, a night with no sleep, a day helping prepare for the wedding, another night of no sleep, and another day preparing for the wedding, and then a wedding rehearsal.

This evening, after bathing the baby at Lizzie’s dad’s farm, I had to get someone to take the baby off me before I collapsed. Possibly because, looking after Izzie around the clock for four days, trying to get her to eat, keep her fluids up and soothe her, I was not only in desperate need of sleep, I had neglected eating or drinking myself.

Lizzie, of course, has been understandably preoccupied with arrangements for Saturday, leaving the brunt to unfortunately fall upon me. Izzie is very grizzly, has a fluctuating temperature, and chronic diarrhoea – all a result of her gastroenteritis. Worse, since Wednesday’s stint in the Children’s Unit, she has developed a phobia of syringes. Every dose of Calpol or Ibuprofen or gripe water is met with stubborn resistance and followed by two hours of misery.

As a result of the experience of hospitals, she has become remarkably clingy. I have never been hugged so hard. If I so much as lean forward an inch, this vice-like grip tightens around my shoulders and she starts to scream.

So she will only sleep on me.

That’s great if you’re able to sleep with a baby snoring on your chest. If you can’t, after a few days it seems to result in a spinning head, pink eyes, trembling hands, a stiff neck, an aching back, a sore chest, intermittent breathlessness, and a face that twitches as though attached to a whole mesh of electrical wire. All I need now is a rash that doesn’t disappear when a glass is pressed over it, and I’ll be really worried!

Tonight, for the second night in a year, I am sans baby. The night before my wedding. I was always meant to spend it alone, but after my near-fainting episode, they sent me home early. And instead of luxuriating in my aloneness or living it up, or at the very least working on my speech, I can’t open my left eye, my head feels like someone is sawing through it with a spoon, and no matter how hard I try, I’m too tired to fall asleep!

In all honesty, I’m a tad worried about my little one. But there are fifteen people there, including her mum, aunt, great-aunt, grandmother and grandfather. It’s an important lesson to learn: I’m not invincible and I can’t do it all alone, despite how much I think I can. I guess that’s what marriage is all about.

And on that note, I’d better at least try to get some sleep, or they’ll have to Photoshop my eyes open in the pictures!