Doors creaking, loos flushing, lights flicking on and off – a night at our house can feel like a horror film. Yet it used to be bliss!

Knackered by 9pm, my husband Mat and I would conk out shortly after our three children, who all slept like a dream. Then the stress and upheaval of Covid struck, just as Mat and I started to midlife-wobble, and the kids hit their teens.

Our days are fine; it’s our nights that are showing the cracks. After hours of tossing and turning, we creak down the stairs like the Addams Family: dead-eyed and wan-faced with hair like Cousin Itt.

I’m the worst offender (think Morticia in track pants). The early parenting years wired me to jerk awake at the drop of a hat/slipper/baby. Now I find it impossible to get to sleep again. Covid has magnified all the usual midlife fears: for my vulnerable friends and elderly family; for security at work; for an increasingly fragile-looking future. Chuck in a splash of perimenopause, and it’s rare to have a night when I’m not grappling with overheating body – or brain. (‘Should I chase that client email?’ ‘Have I failed in life?’ ‘Where is our hoover?’)

Chasing zzzzzs, I might tiptoe to the spare room, but after 3am I tend to give up – and get up. For the purposes of this feature, I asked Mat what I’m like when I haven’t slept. ‘You always haven’t slept,’ he replies. ‘It’s genuinely joyful for me when I wake up in the night to find you snoring beside me.’

Snoring, ah yes – I forgot to add that one to the list. Mat has always been prone to a little reverberation, nothing that can’t be fixed by a loving kick in the back form his wife. But now I’m snoring too. (‘Like a dragon’ says our youngest). Yet poor Mat daren’t prod me awake for fear I’ll not nod off again (better to stare at the ceiling than his furiously resentful wife). Throw in work pressures and it’s no surprise Mat’s waking every three hours or so. (Running a business during a pandemic is not the stuff of sweet dreams).

Ironically, Mat never slept better than during lockdown. He became, by his own admission, ‘a wellbing nut’: diet and exercise were ‘a way of controlling what I could control.’ He’d lift weights in the morning; row 10km on the machine every night. Upside? He ‘slept like a champion’. Downside, his stress came out in vivid dreams which he’d relate to his wife every morning (sending her to sleep at last).

Now Mat’s back to more normal work patterns, his Hulk Hogan routine has tapered off at the cost of his rest. And the children seem to be following a similar trajectory.

During lockdown, they slept long and hard. Rising two minutes before the start of school, they’d yawn through online lessons in their dressing gowns (cornflakes out, cameras OFF). Returning to ‘real’ school has proved a shock, early starts compounded by GCSEs kicking in for our elder two. Previously Poppy, 16, could sleep past noon, roused only by the need to eat and watch The Big Bang Theory.

Recently however, her nights have grown restless. She struggles to fall asleep, then slips into ‘fever dreams – I always wake up tired’. Stan, 14, is doing a lot of sport, but not giving his body time to recover. ‘I got to bed too late,’ he concedes, ‘forgetting I’ve got to get up really early next morning’ (to do all the homework he’s so diligently ‘saved up’).

Meanwhile our youngest, Rose, 12, is a-quiver with the excitement (and stress) of starting secondary school. As soon as she hits the pillow, her brain ‘starts working and can’t switch off’. Sleep, when it comes, brings nightmares: pursued by a never-ending school bell, Rose opens her bag to find her books gone; worse, her lunch (!)

Fed up (and fatigued) the kids have devised their own ‘good night hacks’: Poppy listens to music; Rose has started writing a diary – to put her stresses to bed. Stan tells himself firmly to ‘stop thinking about things.’ Then does lots of squats.

Meanwhile Mat’s back on the fitness trail; I’ve swapped late-night TV for reading in bed while slurping hot milk. I used to spray my pillow with lavender every night until Mat complained it was like ‘going to bed with his gran’. We’ve compromised on earplugs.

We’re going for early morning walks to circadian rhythms, and trying (trying!) to eat family supper earlier. Anything to stop me padding the rouse at 2am in musky velour.

Tash’s top tips for a good night’s kip

⇒ Keep the bedrooms a tech-free zone. When you head upstairs, you’re mentally shedding the day. And if the kids resist…

⇒ Don’t make bedtime the “bad guy”. It’s in kids’ DNA to resist it. Paint a picture of bed as a heavenly place (ie the adult view!)

⇒ Exercise as much as you can bear. Our soundest sleeper is cross-country runner Stan (endorphins + exhaustion = zzzzz)