By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor
The day you become a parent changes you forever. You cross the Rubicon, you leap into the breach, there’s no turning back. Your washing machine and kettle yearn for the simpler times of a bygone era. But nowhere is the paradigm shift more palpable than the bi-annual event that is the changing of the clocks.
In the rose-tinted, good old days of pre-kids, I used to worry about getting to work on time the day after the switch to BST. Being robbed of that final hour of perfect sleep felt like a violation of my human rights. Of course, nobody, parent or otherwise needs to remember to adjust their clocks since the machines started taking over, terminator-style and changing them automatically, but that’s irrelevant to me since I’ve not needed a mechanical alarm since 2008. The memory of that blissful, uninterrupted sleep is now like a siren who lures me to bed, but dissipates into the mists of the night. My bedroom should have a sign above the door saying ‘Abandon all hope, oh ye who enter here’.
This Sunday though, please permit me to take on the air of smug parent for one day only, as I get at least the illusion of a lie-in. 5 o’clock will become 6 and I’ve come – exceedingly begrudgingly – to accept that anything after 6am is fair game.
Sleep deprivation is consistently reported to be the number one challenge for new parents. It hit me hard. I expected to have sleepless nights, but I didn’t expect them to last so *insert your expletive of choice here* long. With a few years of parenting now under my belt, I have one solitary tip; download a white noise app. The one that sounds like a vacuum cleaner is dual function; it works like magic to get the baby to sleep and it also makes you feel like your house has had a good clean. I can at least reassure you that things do slowly improve. My oldest is now six and a great sleeper so I’m looking forward to a full night’s sleep around 2020.
So, roll on Sunday and please don’t anyone mention October.