DAVE GOODERHAM: Trying to get to sleep keeps me awake

My wife is a switch. Now I appreciate I could describe her in so many sweeter ways, especially with St Valentine calling in 15 days.

But I am referring to our sleep patterns, irregular as they are with a two-year-old who likes reciting the alphabet or prefers counting numbers rather than sheep in the middle of the night.

For the last few months, his sleep has been very much hit-and-miss.

Back to my lovely wife who hears every cough, spit and splutter, but who can then hit the hay once again quicker than you can say, well, ‘hay’.

I, on the other hand, am very much a different kind of beast.

More often than not, it usually goes like this:

George wakes up, it might be my turn to tend to him. I return to bed and my mind starts to wander. I might not be stressed, but I will think about the next day at work, the tasks I need to complete and the regular day-to-day occurrences that any normal family encounters.

So for about an hour, I think about these things, tell myself not to think about these things, maybe look at the clock, maybe worry about the time – and so on and so forth.

Something had to give.

First step, looking at my routine. Reading has always helped me fall off to sleep, but there lies another problem.

I am of the generation where Twitter is king. I use it to check football scores, catch up on news events, laugh at photos or videos and read about things that I might otherwise have missed. The apps have continued with a rather fine one called ‘Pocket’ which simply stores website links on whatever device you are using.

Come the end of the day, while much more refined people are snuggling up with a book, I am on my iPad going through various web stories.

Now I know the idea of the glare hitting my face in the midnight hour is hardly conducive to a sound sleep, especially after computers form much of my working life. Don’t get me wrong, I am still very much a fan of traditional means. I remain very loyal to newspapers, and local papers in particular.

That said, I don’t read half as many books as I should and the bundle of largely untouched magazines is growing steadily.

The iPad, meanwhile, allows me to dip in and out, focus on the stories that I am really interested about.

And my sleep patterns will improve as George gets older. Won’t they?