Nights 1-1000: the Death of Sleep

Before January 17th, 2012, I was ambivalent about sleep. Compared to my wife who could sleep in for a week if given half a chance, I’d be up and out of bed the minute my eyes opened. I laughed in the face of sleep. Sniggered at those who needed an afternoon snooze. I was the Donald Trump of sleep trolls. Faced with baby-filled, sleepless nights I was going to be the strong one.

Except I wasn’t. Very fucking far from it. Point Nemo far, in fact (thanks QI).

Seems I should have been grasping at every little bit of available sleep like a desperate politician clinging on to the last vestiges of power. I should have been begging it to stay like a pathetic boyfriend caught cheating who knows he’s lost The One for good. I should have been storing sleep like a squirrel stores nuts because I was about to be hit with three years of (mostly) sleepless, hallucinogenic misery.

Weirdly accurate representation of me after 3h sleep (by Harry, aged 3 at the time)

From that first night of sheer, naked, blind panic (whatdowedowhatdowedowhatdoweDOMAKEHIMSTOPCRYING! NCT never told us what to do when they actually came OUT!), until somewhere around my eldest son’s 3^rd birthday, I enjoyed an average of 5 hours sleep a night. I even had a spectacular week when I went to work on 3 hours’ sleep on 4 consecutive days. I vaguely remember trying to write an email on day 4 and rewriting the same paragraph 5 times. It was a bit like one of those dreams when you’re running up a down escalator and not getting anywhere. In all honesty, I’d probably have been more effective at work if I’d drunk half a bottle of gin for breakfast and followed it with a few shots of Absinthe.

Now, 4 hours may have been enough for Margaret Thatcher but I’m not even half the woman she was. Apparently only about 1% of the population can get by on 4 hours sleep and it’s considered a sleep disorder (lucky freaks). I realise now that I need a solid 7 hours. Seven hours stops me turning into this (in terms of inanimate object breakage, not musculature). Seven hours keeps a roof over my head (my wife has understandably little tolerance for a 46 year old who behaves like an irrational toddler). It stops me losing my shit over something trivial like someone not waving thanks when I pull in to let them past on the road or a commuter standing on the left (WHY DO THEY DO THAT??).

Aside from weathering the storm, avoiding friends whose kids sleep well and storing foam earplugs like a crazy American survivalist, the only way I have been able to deal with the Death of Sleep has been to come to an ‘Alternate Weekend Morning Lie-in’ agreement with my wife, realise that I was not alone (this is my gift to you) and become that which I have always looked down upon with derision – an Afternoon Snoozer.