I've got a new secret weapon against insomnia: a £20 strip of padded fabric
I'm having a night-time love affair. A blinding, unwashed, entirely distracting relationship that I turn to when everyone else in my house is asleep. My new bedmate whispers in my ear when I'm supposed to be sleeping and leaves imprints on my neck in the morning. That's right: I'm talking about my new sleep mask with built-in wireless speakers.
When I got pregnant last year, my body appeared to forget, entirely, how to sleep. Which was fun, as everyone around me started to joke rather grimly about precisely how tired I was about to make myself for the next 18 years. But then my husband presented me with a small, padded strip of grey velvet fabric, through which I can play precisely the sort of soporific audio that quells even my most brutal insomnia.
Perhaps it's a hangover from being lulled into unconsciousness by audiobooks as a small child, but nothing sends me off like talking. However, when you share a bed with someone, it can be difficult to crank up the volume on, say, James Herriot's If Only They Could Talk without rousing the rabble.
Which is where the sleep mask comes in. For less than £20, I can enter a one-woman sensory deprivation chamber every night, in which I can't see and can't hear anyone snorting, snoring, coughing or calling for attention at 11.27pm. The story is piped directly into my ears – I have resolutely refrained from looking up the potential medical effects of Bluetooth speakers positioned so close to your brain, and I'd appreciate it if nobody enlightened me. And, as long as I remember to set the timer, they will turn off after half an hour, 45 minutes or even two hours.
In the middle of the night, after changing a nappy, I often forget to do this last bit, and so have the slightly disorienting experience of falling asleep listening to Frank Skinner discuss the works of Seamus Heaney, only to wake up three hours later with a programme about the infiltration of the IRA by British intelligence or the Desert Island Discs of Clarissa Dickson Wright blasting away against my skull.
But that's the thing about love – it's unpredictable.
Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood
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