On nights when Ted isn’t sleeping well, I sometimes sleep on a swag on the floor of his room with him snuggled up against me. This arrangement is not very comfortable, partly because it’s a single mattress and partly because Ted is a restless sleeper. This morning at around 4.30 he was thrashing around in an irritated manner, then rolled and draped himself over my head and relaxed, snoring sonorously into my ear. I used to worry about his weight as he’s not very high up in the percentile charts, but I can now definitively say that when he is lying across your head, he feels rather weighty.

The nights of broken sleep over the 15 months of his life have made me regularly frustrated, but sometimes, more often now, I can find enjoyment in sitting with him at night – watching him staring into the dimly lit room, or finally sleeping, his mouth slack, limbs relaxed floppily in strange positions. It reminds me of the first night after he was born when I couldn’t sleep, lying on my hospital bed just staring at the baby lying in the cot beside me, watching his chest rise and fall in tiny movements. My memory has mistily dispensed with the sounds of a woman vomiting and crying and a baby howling that were in fact keeping me awake. Now there’s just a single picture of me gazing at tiny Edward, thinking to myself that I should really sleep, but unable to look away.