Sleepy Head

Today

Carmen is six months old and her parents are finding it hard to persuade her to settle into good night-time habits. It's all very exhausting and having her in their bed is not the easy solution it might once have seemed.

But it's very difficult to make wise decisions when all you can really think about is getting enough sleep.

In My Day

Lizzie was an all-night sleeper from early on, but with Becky it was a different story. She was not a well baby and suffered from frequent respiratory infections which kept her awake at night. We moved her bed into the adjacent room because her snuffling prevented me from sleeping at all, but the walls of the house were thin and I would awake at her first cry.

Infection followed infection; by the age of nine months she had whooping cough (she was never well enough to tolerate her vaccinations) and chicken pox and German measles added to the trials of the "hundred-day cough". I would be up time and time again, clearing her little lungs of sticky phlegm, settling her down again. Paul was ever ready to take his share, but there hardly seemed any point in waking him up as I was already awake.

By the time Becky was two, night-time waking was a matter of habit. When Mark, Beatrice and Nick were living with us, the girls moved into our room, top-and-tailed into a zed-bed. Sometimes Becky would start crying in her sleep and it became apparent that she was suffering from night terrors. This time it wasn't enough just to soothe her; I had to wake her up fully, after which she would be quite calm and go back to sleep.

I'll never understand why no-one else in our tiny house ever heard these episodes. I'd sit, first on the bed, and then on the landing, trying to persuade Becky to stop crying. On really desperate occasions I would be practically crying myself: "Oh Becky, please stop crying", I'd plead. Which was very helpful. And through all of this I was doing a full-time job.

By the time she was four Becky grew out of it, becoming a rather deep sleeper who was hard to awake. Here is a picture of her, aged about one; I think you can see how tired she is.

We are constantly told that we need seven to eight hours' sleep to function properly. While I'm sure that would be very nice, I think it simply can't be true when I think of the number of new parents who hold down jobs, care for their children and conduct social lives all on about three hours' broken sleep.