With over a year's worth of sleep debt under my belt, I know how to cope (just about) on very little shut-eye.
But sometimes, the sleep deprivation gets the better of me, and I end up doing some pretty stupid stuff. I know I'm not alone though, right?
Here are 13 signs that you're a sleep-deprived mum, which may or may not be things that have happened to me over the past 12 months (they totally are):
1. You spend 10 minutes frantically looking for your phone, only for someone to point out that you're already holding it.
2. You put salt, instead of sugar, in your mother-in-law's tea - and you didn't even mean to.
3. You repeatedly trip over your own foot. Probably because...
4. Your toe nails are so long that they look like hooves, but you're too exhausted to even contemplate cutting them.
5. You leave the bedroom window wide open while on a 10-day holiday, and try to blame your husband for it. Even though he's never in charge of locking up (because he'd probably do something stupid like leave a window open).
6. You rip the wing mirror off your car by reversing out of your own driveway.
7. You use exfoliating shower gel as hand cream and wonder why it won't rub in. This happens every morning for a week before you eventually cut your losses and throw it away.
8. After breakfast, you put the porridge oats in the fridge, and the milk in the cupboard. (On more than one occasion.)
9. Just a day after wearing your top back-to-front AND inside-out, you realise that you've been walking around with yesterday's knickers trapped in the leg of your jeans. That explains the bulge.
10. You try to pay for your grocery shopping with a coffee shop loyalty card. (Clearly a sign that the loylaty card isn't being used enough.)
11. You forget to put on an oven glove when getting the dinner out of the oven. Ouch.
12 . Eating a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk for breakfast has become acceptable behaviour. It totally is. Isn't it?
13 You're so tired that on the way to work you take a 20-minute power nap in a service station car park.
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