Ahhhh, sleep deprivation… You don’t appreciate how truly important sleep is until you can’t have it. With the arrival of your beautiful mini human, sleep may become a long-lost friend, especially if your baby is a long-term non-sleeper.

To help you emotionally prepare, here’s a rundown of the 21 phases of sleep deprivation new parents need to be aware of.

Sleep deprivation: 21 phases every new parent goes through

1  You regret every morning your pre-baby self woke up and took your well-rested mind for granted.

2  You buy every book Whitcoulls stocks on how to get your baby to sleep.

3 You read exactly one sentence of one of those books a total of 57 times and still cannot remember what that sentence said.

4  Showering becomes a “nice to have” luxury rather than a hygiene necessity.

5  You start doing the supermarket shopping in your pyjamas underneath your winter coat.

6  Snoozing while on the toilet becomes a very tempting proposition.

7  You start emptying the dishwasher, and you’re almost done putting everything away before you realise they’re actually not clean.

8  Every single thing your partner does annoys you. Every. Single. Thing.

9  As well as every single thing they don’t do.

10  You decide the humble horse is your spirit animal because you’re pretty sure you, too, can sleep standing up.

11  You take Mark Zuckerberg’s one T-shirt wardrobe strategy a little too literally and just don’t change your clothes for a few days… Or a week.

12  Your sister, who was previously on the fence about whether to have kids, has decided that’s never happening because “You look like refried zombie.”

13  It seems like every day, at least 23 people smugly tell you their “little darling has always been a solid sleeper.”

14  You decide to retry co-sleeping now your baby is older.

15  Then give up after a week of your baby pirouetting in their restless sleep and keeping themselves, you, and your partner awake even more than usual.

16  Have one okay night with the baby and decide this is the downhill slope.

17  Followed by a completely awful night.

18  You manage to finally coax your baby to sleep and stay that way.

19  You celebrate by serving yourself dinner and pouring a half-glass of wine.

20  Then you fall asleep before any of it gets to your mouth.

21  You scrape together three whole hours of sweet, sweet sleep and awake feeling like you could climb a mountain, then marvel how you weren’t more productive back when you were getting a full complement of sleep every night.

This, too, shall pass. Until it does, check out Breastmates’ range of baby sleep products to help your little one visit The Land of Nod.