There’s a saying among parents that you don’t get a true proper night’s sleep until your last child moves out of home. Always worrying, always wondering.

My daughter has always been a patchy sleeper. Given my own sleep habits – early riser, over-thinker – it was almost inevitable. My mother calls it the universe’s revenge for what I put her through.

I gave birth to my daughter in the bleakest of winters, during the longest COVID-19 lockdown in the world. For more than 1200 days, sleep – hers, mine, getting it, protecting it, prolonging it – has dogged my thoughts and drained my reserves.

I often look at a cute photo of us napping together, taken by her father when she was one month old. What to some looks so natural, to me has always looked like failure, for I, too, pledged before having kids to never become one of “those” parents who let their baby in bed with them.

When I look at this photo, what to some looks so natural, to me has always looked like failure.

Yet about two months ago, coinciding with my husband and me tag-teaming on some work travel, my daughter started coming to our bed in the middle of the night. Surely, I thought, once the family was reunited, her sleep would return to normal. But it didn’t. Night after night, she would pad to our room in the darkness, water bottle and teddy in hand, to take up........

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