At about midnight, after a sleepless two hours of lying in bed listening to my baby coughing in his sleep over the monitor, I decided it was time to act. I administered a syringe full of Calpol first to him and then to myself before going back to bed and finally falling asleep.
Every mother knows what it feels like to be this sleep-deprived. You get used to it, just like you get to used living in squalor, to having absolutely no personal space and to being a punch bag for a five-year-old in whose eyes you can do nothing right despite the fact that you are trying desperately to please them.
