An ode to the mid-life sleepover.

It's 10:42pm, and we're perched around an overflowing charcuterie board. One girlfriend has brought a bottle of Ruinart. Another had personalised mugs made, complete with in-jokes that would befuddle anyone outside our circle, but that made us double over in hysterics when she presented us with them earlier in the evening.

The Meghan Markle Christmas Netflix special is playing on TV and we're yapping, dissecting and guffawing to our heart's content. 

Find me a more perfect way to spend a night. I'll wait. 

Watch the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud discussing 'satellite friends'. Post continues below.

The four of us — girlfriends who speak daily via the kind of WhatsApp group chat that we'd rather die than ever have subpoenaed — are scattered across different states and life stages, but bonded by a fervent female friendship they should write sonnets about.  

So much of life in your forties can feel like an unending slog of 'meh'. When it comes to the maladies underpinning our general anhedonia (a term I learned recently that denotes the not-quite-depression-but-definitely-not-thriving feeling so many of us have at the moment), you can take your pick: sick and ageing parents, young kids and the energy they require, complex jobs and hormonal shifts. 

But for me — and so many of us navigating midlife — those tiny little avatars in my group chat are a balm I couldn't do without. 

They say to look for the glimmers in life. My glimmers are so often found in a dry pop culture observation, a callback to a weirdly specific in-joke, or my girlfriends offering an all-in thundering of vicarious outrage over somebody who has wronged me in the real world. 

As a way to honour our sacred little corner of Meta (ew), we've been holding annual grown-up sleepovers IRL for the past few years as a way to make sure we get some uninterrupted facetime to tide us over.

The difference between a sleepover and a weekend away.

While not disparaging the magic of a girl's trip, our midlife sleepovers differ in a few vital ways. 

For one thing, while we usually book somewhere to stay, there are rarely any plans to leave said accommodation. We want comfort, a television capable of streaming the most ridiculous reality TV slop available, and access to excellent meal delivery services so that we can swan around in fancy tracksuit pants and face masks. 

We've tried holiday rentals in the past, but the ever-increasing list of rules that come with them (having the dishwasher run and unstacked before 10am feels an awful lot like the tedium we came here to avoid, Karen) turned us off. Hotel rooms are fabulous, but a little stuffy for four, so this year a serviced apartment at the newly refurbished Adina Town Hall in Sydney stepped in to fill the void — and was perfect.

Image: Supplied.

Having undergone a modern makeover on generous nineties dimensions earlier this year, our two-bedroom apartment not only had sweeping city views, but also a living room complete with giant wrap-around couch and ample room for enthusiastic re-enactments of standout moments from Oprah's current Australian tour.

A sleek kitchen fitout almost made us second-guess our Uber Eats dumplings order, but rule are rules, which means no member of the midlife sleepover is allowed to cook. It did however provide the perfect drinks station, along with a full-sized fridge more than capable of accepting the (admittedly excessive) amounts of wine we brought with us.

Another way in which our sleepovers differ from your usual girl's weekend: we've found they work best as a one-night affair. Schedules are busy and an entire weekend can feel too hard to tee up. A Friday night, however — with the promise of being home in time for Saturday dance concerts or soccer games — is much more doable, and therefore, likely to happen. 

Online is great but sometimes you need to get up in your girlfriend's faces.

The pandemic might have turbocharged the group chat, but it also showed us that no matter how gratifying the daily online contact might be, it can't replace being in the same room with the people you love — especially for women.

A landmark UCLA study suggested that women respond to stress differently than men. Instead of just fight or flight, women release oxytocin, which buffers the fight-or-flight response and encourages them to tend to children and gather with other women — what the study calls 'tend and befriend'. In other words — our need to form and maintain close bonds is not only biological, but protective. 

Listen to Mamamia Out Loud. In this episode, Holly, Jessie and Em discuss the 'friendship shed' theory. Post continues below.

And until HCF starts offering 'time with your besties' as an optional health insurance extra, I'll keep putting in the work to make our cross-country sleepovers a reality, because waking up without an alarm, having laughed your abdominals sore in the company of women who truly want the best for you, is almost as sweet a feeling as knowing you don't have to make the bed before checkout. 

Writer was a guest of Adina Town Hall.

Feature image: Supplied.