Sleep deprivation and noisy nights. Fiona Gibson on the tap-dripping torture of wide-awake weeks

A friend called last night. 'Have you done it yet?' she hissed.

'We have,' I confided. 'A couple of nights ago.'

'And how was it?'

'Not quite as bad as expected. But yes, pretty horrendous.'

Another friend – who's done it already – admits: 'You think you've got it over and done with. But every so often, you have to go through the whole thing all over again.'

I'm not talking sex (right now, the opportunity is as likely as squeezing into my size 10 combats). The issue right now is sleep training: i.e. leave your baby/toddler to holler in his cot in the desperate hope that he will, at some point before dawn, 'learn' how to fall asleep by himself.

Then you can enjoy a full night's sleep. Yes, a full night. Something you took for granted until your baby moved in. Now, however, you are sleep-obsessed – comparing notes on how much you're actually getting, to how much you should be getting (a discrepancy of around five hours).

When our twin boys reached their first birthday, we tried the 'controlled crying' technique. The idea is to keep popping into your baby's room but – torture – do not lift infant from cot. However, I worried that all the wailing might do something terrible to our children's insides. More terrifyingly, I suspected that the volume of cries might possibly do irreparable damage to our house's foundations. And so I would crumble and offer cuddles/milk/weary renditions of Twinkle Twinkle.

'I'm so knackered, I feel sick,' my husband would report the following morning, attempting to leave for work via the airing cupboard.

'Call that tired?' I'd retaliate. 'I've been up doing night feeds for three hundred and forty-one days.'

'You've kept count.' He blinked.

Of course I had. Pointless, yes, but that's a cute side-effect of sleep deprivation. You behave oddly. A friend with a nine-month-old son has a serious rock cake habit; she ensures a steady intake of carbohydrate, hoping that one more rock cake might make her feel bouncy and normal again. After the birth of our third child (Erin, now six months), I was known to leap out of bed, shouting 'I might as well not go to bed at all!' and, during one tense, nervous night, banged my own head against the bedroom wall, kind of like a monkey kept in inhumane conditions.

I became forgetful. Life was a merry round of returning to shops to collect wallet/keys/purchases. I've been so tired I've called Jimmy, my partner, Johnny, Joany and, rather worryingly, George.

We know, of course, that things will get better. With our own kids, we've had very different sleep experiences; the twins were pumped with nocturnal feeds until 15 months (these days, at three and a half, there's only the odd 'Wolf at the window!' scenario to deal with). Erin was left to yelp for two nights and now conks out for a respectable 11 hours. Every night, that is, not per week.

I am aware, however, that children's sleep is a fragile thing and therefore should be treated as something rare and precious. A friend, whose baby Benjy was sleeping soundly at five months, took to roaring for a three-hour stretch as he neared his first birthday. His mother confesses, 'It's hard to get through that without a stiff gin and tonic. Maybe it's bearable if you have a very large house and can park them in the East Wing. But Benjy shares with his sister Sally [who's five] so we can’t have that kind of rumpus in the night, unless we put Benjy in the shed.'

She might have hit something there. What we need are nocturnal babysitters: those who will tend to our children's 5 am demands for crackers/milk/stories and are paid handsomely for their services.

And we can sleep in the shed.