That honeymoon period with a new love is a blissful time. You are likely rocking your best-ever body courtesy of the divorce diet and that phase of unfamiliarity that stops you scarfing carbs in plain view of your new partner. Everything is new, nothing is niggly and you are only one step short of having Snow White’s best life, surrounded by helpful woodland creatures and indulging in tuneful duets with baby birds.
You may have even met your potential stepchildren, and if its early days, spent time indulging in an array of joyous kiddie activities, with only the tiniest shot of vodka to take the edge of the meeting-the-kid nerves.
The point at which it becomes a whole new ballgame, or in fact a whole new ballpark, is the first sleepover where the stepkiddies are involved. Here are some tips.
Leave it for as long as possible
Have as many kid-free sleepovers as you like. This is something to be encouraged and practically mandatory in case the white-hot early days of a romance flames out, revealing a certain shallowness or long-term incompatibility amongst its smoking ashes. You want to know this before you share a sleepover with kiddies. If this is another relationship that will be rendered to the Nope File, you do not want to have been unnecessarily exposed to the wayward spitting involved in junior bedtime teeth brushing rituals or been anywhere remotely within the vicinity of an awkward bedwetting phase.
If you aren’t yet ready to commit to being friends on Facebook, give the stepkid sleepover the swerve.
Consider your attire
Sleepwear for the first blended sleepover requires some careful thought.
If you’ve made it through the worst of your singledom heartache, then you’ve likely buried every item of sleepwear that was the equivalent of comfort food during your periods of darkest despair. The polarfleece bathrobe that kept you alive while your bloodflow tried to warm the daggers of ice where your heart used to be. The forgiving snuggie that accommodated that period of time on the couch where you lived off Netflix and sauv blanc, helpfully providing oversized pockets for stashing snacks that were reassuring in their sky-high percentage of saturated fats. The tracksuit that sheltered you from the cold hell of sleeping alone, then conveniently doubled as daywear.
If you’ve carved out a #revengebody through a diet of clear spirits and tears during your being-single phase, you’ve likely revitalised your bedroom wardrobe by rocketing to the VIP list on Victoria’s Secret. You’ve purchased garments of immense fragility at a gigantic cost per gram of fabric which now make you look all shimmery and svelte.
These are not the outfits for the first sleepover where children are present. You do not want to greet a child in a hallway in something skimpy, since these nuggets of childhood experience are invariably the first to be conveyed in graphic detail to the biological mother. As fab as you might feel, all juiced up on early-days oxytocin, you do not want to make a teenage step-kid feel like they have woken up in the playboy mansion.
The desirable state is somewhere vaguely in between. Leave the French lace at home, but equally don’t try to rescusitate your despair-encrusted snuggie. Go for some respectable PJs with good coverage, skipping flannelette versions involving cartoon characters if you fear regressing into frumpsville.
Talk about the arrangements
As pedestrian as it may seem, it’s very wise to have a pretty frank discussion about the bedtime rituals that are about to unfold. Shared time between two households and a desire on the part of a split bio parent to appease a child can make for some fairly loose bedtime boundaries.
You want to know if there is a tendency towards night terrors that is going to cause you to wake suddenly to unearthly screams. It’s worth knowing that there will be a full-blown tanty involved as toothbrushing time looms. You need to know if there is a well-established door-knocking protocol or if a kiddie could just bust into the bedroom without warning.
From personal experience, you absolutely need to know that a six year old will shimmy into a pair of pull-ups and plant himself on your side of the bed, given that’s been the way this household has rolled since the split. You need to have a strategy in advance for that one.
Don’t be setting any breakfast precedents
During the first sleepover event, aim to be a background person. Now is not the time to indulge any long-repressed desire to be a Gwyneth-style earth mother. Regardless of your horror at the dietary damage being wrought on a miniature human, do NOT try to wrest the box of Coco-pops from their grasp and aim to explain the virtues of a green smoothie. If you are truly determined to create a nutritionally balanced haven in the wasteland of Disney-dad indulgence, it’s a game of stealth and subtlety and a long game at that. It’s not something that you should leap into immediately after the first overnighter.
Don’t try to demonstrate your extensive research into the realm of the mummy blogger and make buttermilk pancakes complete with human features in the form of blueberry eyes and a smeary raspberry coulis mouth. If it turns out well, you’ve created a precedent that you will needed to replicate, which will become immensely tedious. If it goes awry, you’ll have created something that invokes that particular child’s fear of clowns.
Don’t expect that the child has the first clue about the joy of a bircher muesli involving steel-cut oats that have meditatively bathed overnight in organic cloudy apple juice. That is like sharing a glass of fabulous prosecco with a cask-wine drinker – unmitigated wastage.
Be prepared to just roll with the brekky traditions that already exist.
Save your energy for the battle to ensure your side of the bed remains free of small humans that are yet to master full continence.