Name:  Jo Middleton

Age: 32

Children: Bee (15) and Belle (8)

Lives: Somerset

Likes: Gin & Tonic, Colin Firth, talking to Grown-Ups

Dislikes: Housework, poor spelling, playing 'shops' with children

Before I had children I could sleep for England.

Seriously, I was the heaviest sleeper, a proper solid nine hours a night girl. My mum and sister would quite often worry that I was actually dead – they could shake me, shout in my face, but I wouldn’t wake.

And then I became a mother, and I haven’t slept since. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but that’s sometimes how it feels. I certainly have never recaptured that blissful semi-comatose ‘dead to the world’ state of sleep. As a mother, your whole attitude to sleep changes – maybe it’s the protective instinct, the need to guard your cubs from predators, but mothers tend to sleep with one ear open, regardless of how old their children are, or even if they are in the same house.

Taking the credit

My relationship with sleep as a mother has been varied to say the least. My first daughter was something of a miracle baby – sleeping 12 hours through the night from about two months old. I can see now that this is not normal baby sleep behaviour, but in my young, naive, first time mum state I didn’t fully appreciate just how lucky I was. I really hope I didn’t come across as smug, but I definitely was happy to take the credit for my sleepy baby, bragging about the effect of my ‘laid back parenting style’ – I cringe now thinking about it!

Unfortunately, my relaxed approach to parenting didn’t have the same soporific effect of my second child. It just goes to show that each baby really is unique, and that no amount of nurture can totally override nature.

Thrown a lifeline

When my second daughter Belle was a baby, I made a fantastic group of friends at my local breastfeeding group. These women were my lifeline – when I was being woken multiple times every night, feeling like I must be the only person awake and rocking a baby at 3am, I would think of them, and think ‘I’ll just hang on until Thursday’…

Thursday mornings were my chance to seek solace in the misery of others. “Belle woke up 13 times last night!” I would announce dramatically, as I entered the small room above the church and slumped onto the carpet. “Beat that!”

“Ha! I was woken up 14!” my equally tired and competitive friend Lucy would answer. “I win!”

A form of torture

Long periods of not sleeping are awful, and I can totally understand why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. A world tinged with exhaustion is a difficult one to live in, and ordinary things are seen with a whole new and less manageable perspective. Parenting is hard work, but parenting under a cloud of exhaustion is a lonely business. If I could offer any words of wisdom to new parents it would be to surround yourselves with other parents who understand the frustration of being woken at hourly intervals, and who will forgive you the forgetfulness, irritability, and unreasonableness that comes as a result!

Jo Middleton writes an award-winning blog about the ups and downs of parenting at slummysinglemummy.wordpress.com