Heidi is a nightmare with her sleeping. A complicated mix of night terrors, separation anxiety and plain old tantrums mean we’re often up with her every two hours in the night. Sometimes we can placate her with a bottle, a quick stroke of her hair, or a rendition of In the Night Garden that would make most human ears bleed. However, more often than not, we’re met with persistent screaming and thrashing that can really test your patience at 2am, 3am, 4am…

Owing to a tickly cough, recently this has become even more unbearable. Despite giving her our combined body weight in pillows to raise her head, applying generous scoops of vaporub to her feet and burning concoctions of lavender, lemon and peppermint all night - this bloody cough won’t budge. Worst still, it often gets the better of her and she vomits all over herself, her bedclothes and, you guessed it, us. Last night alone, we had to give her two emergency baths in the dead of the night to wash half-digested fish and chips out of her hair and eyebrows.

It shouldn’t come as any big surprise then that I’m sleep-deprived. Yet aside from the inevitable nodding off mid meal and bad temper, I’m now questioning my sanity.

I fed the cat Heidi’s bottle

Yep, I recently left a crying baby on the rug in the middle of the floor, fetched a bottle from the kitchen and proceeded to shove the teat of the bottle into the cat’s mouth rather than Heidi’s. Needless to say the cat was traumatised and Heidi was even more put out.

Milk & blackcurrant squash anyone?

Most of us that sleepwalk throughout the day will have experienced frustrations making up bottles. We all know that formula feeding requires a basic sense of mathematics, adding x scoops to x pre-boiled water for example. It’s therefore entirely logical that a sleep-derived mum will forget the number of scoops she’s added to the bottle as she’s doing it. She’ll then be forced to throw away said bottle and waste an entire 250ml of pre-prepared water. Sounds like a minor problem, but when you’re frantically boiling more water at 4am it’s enough to force several new grey hairs from your scalp.

When your baby switches to cow’s milk, you’d think this would be the end of wasted mixes. However, I’ve recently proved this is not the case, having made (and actually fed) my child curdled concoctions of blackcurrant squash and milk in a sleep-deprived haze.

There’s my mum, dad, my brother… (… shit, what’s his name again?)

A hedonistic youth has already seen large swathes of my grey matter turn to mush, so toss in some sleepless nights and my memory is verging on Alzheimer territory. I forget family member’s names, put baby wipes in the fridge and leave taps running frequently.

I invite in Jehovah’s Witnesses to keep me awake

This extends to gasmen, postmen, windows & door salesmen. This despite the fact I’m a stanch atheist, couldn’t tell you where my gas meter is and live in private rented accommodation so have no say whatsoever on major renovations.

Let’s be clear from the start, I respect everyone’s decision to worship any deity of their choosing. I just quite like the thought of nothingness after the stress of life and am totally not bothered whether I receive riches in death. The thing is, you invite a Jehovah’s Witness in, and they’ll pop you on a register somewhere for frequent intervention. Don’t get me wrong, the people that come to see me really are very lovely people, but I struggle to hold a conversation with Craig about Eastenders, yet alone follow any of their guidance on my supposedly hell-bound soul. Poor Craig is forever coming home and finding Watchtower magazines shoved down the sides of the sofa where I’m too shattered to think of a cleverer hiding place.

Stick and stones may break my bones

So it’s all been lighthearted so far right? No harm done. Funny even.

However, there is a more serious side to sleep-deprivation and that is the very real danger you pose to yourself. Fortunately I don’t drive or operate heavy machinery in my day to day life. I’m also crap in the kitchen so have little cause to handle knives. This hasn’t stopped me tripping over toys, children and my own feet however and I’m now nursing my third ankle fracture in 6 months.

The tears. Oh the tears

I cry at everything!

You might think this is entirely normal for a frazzled mum. When Hero has to say goodbye to Baymax, it’s a really big deal for most of us, right?

Yet when you’re literally sobbing for half an hour as the music in the new Activia yoghurt advert somehow communicates with your tear ducts, you know you have a sleep-derivation problem.

You showcase some seriously questionable parenting skills

When you’re tired even reaching for the tv remote requires careful deliberation. Yes, the episode of Teen Mom you were watching on TiVo might have ended and the television might have switched back to terrestrial telly and a headache-inducing episode of Bargain Hunt, but it’s so much effort to get up and search for a remote that your children have no doubt found a creative hiding place for.

In fact, getting off the sofa to do anything whatsoever is hard work. You can see you daughter’s nappy bulging, but can’t smell faeces - that’s got to be a 5 minute reprieve, right? You can see your son rummaging through your handbag and getting overexcited by the black pencil in your make-up bag, but until he actually marks your wall, it’s okay right? You get the picture.

Bad parent? Oh most definitely. Excusable? Let me grab five minutes sleep and come back to you on this one - I’m too tired to remember what I’ve just admitted to…