Day 5

I wake up at 1:52am with a sore throat, but fall asleep again within 25 minutes. I wake up several more times throughout the night but manage to get straight back to sleep every time. I get out of bed at 6:12am.

I’ve been feeling down for a couple of days now so I write down some thoughts and have a good cry. I follow that with some life admin – clearing some leaves from the garden and putting fairy lights outside the house – and I finally feel a bit better.

I play tag outside with my daughter and dog just before dinner time at 6pm, and have some water when I get in. We then eat dinner – pizza, garlic bread and my homemade lemonade.

It’s my turn to do bedtime again and my daughter was wonderful. She was practicing cutting with plastic scissors – I fell asleep as usual but she kept doing her thing until she said she was going to sleep. Beforehand she shows me the lovely rainbow she had drawn and cut around. She puts it under her pillow and we cuddle until we fall asleep.

I wake up around 15 minutes later – it’s 8:45pm. I still feel tired and end up heading straight to bed, where I fall asleep quickly. I only end up waking up once in the night around 5:55am. At last, I have a night of unbroken sleep and wake up feeling energised and ready to go to the gym.

“My sleep feels out of my control – what can I do to regain a sense of safety?” A sleep expert answers your questions