Last Thursday Ingrid was due for her 4-month immunisation. For some reason I was totally sure that Friday was the day, and only found out I was mistaken on Friday morning, when I wanted to check the exact time.

Today I was on my way to the Estonian embassy to get a passport for Ingrid. Halfway there I realised I had forgotten my own passport at home.

So while the acute sleep deprivation phase may be mostly over, long-term chronic sleep deprivation is definitely still here with me, with all its subtle ways of undermining me. My brain feels broken: I forget and misremember things. I cannot concentrate. I am short-tempered and irritable during the day. My immune system is messed up: I was actually really sick for several days, for the first time in at least 3 years.

I need at least 8 hours of sleep a day in order to feel rested and fully charged. In wintertime, with those long dark nights, slightly more. Now, of course, I’m nowhere near that.

A typical night can go something like this:

• Go to bed at 10. Give Ingrid a last feed. She is done and sleeping by 10.20. I fall asleep a bit later, maybe 10.30.
• Ingrid half-awake at 0.30. I try to get her back to sleep because if I feed her now she will be hungry twice more before it’s time to get up. Give up at 1 and feed. She falls asleep at 1.20. It takes me a while to go back to sleep since I’m now wide awake.
• Ingrid wakes again at 3. Feed. So drowsy that both of us are asleep again within 10 minutes.
• Ingrid starts making noises at 4 – probably because the previous feed was so short (since we both fell asleep halfway through). Feed again. Ingrid asleep 4.10; myself 4.20.
• Ingrid starts shifting around and floating out of her sleep around 6. I manage to keep her almost-sleeping for another 30 minutes by gently rocking her now and again. At 6.30 she’s awake for real, kicking and wanting to play. I take her out to the living room, change the nappy, and let her spend a while on her own. I go back to bed and doze for 15 minutes, by which time she is bored – not crying, but making enough noise to wake me again. I move her to a new place and doze for another 10 minutes.
• More noise from the living room at 7. Give up and get up.

Time spent in bed: 9 hours.
Sleep: just under 6 hours, broken into 34 pieces.
Dozing: around 1 hour.

Somehow I still function surprisingly well despite this constant shortage of sleep. Mothers have been doing this for hundreds of years, after all.

Ingrid’s recently discovered ability to fall asleep in the bed has meant a huge improvement in this regard. I used to have to wait until the weekend for a chance to catch up at least part-way. Now I can get an extra hour or so, if I’m lucky, during her morning nap. When the morning nap didn’t work (this weekend) I was reminded again what a difference it makes. I was so relieved when I managed to get her to sleep in the bed again today!