On Friday night, I got eight consecutive hours of sleep. It’s been a long time since that last happened—months and possibly longer. I woke up feeling great. The stressors I’ve had stemming from Covid-19 related fallout and a bunch of other things were washed away immediately. I was full of energy and had an incredible weekend with my family. All from just one night of great sleep.

I have two wonderful sons. I love everything about them. The problem is, they’re both terrible sleepers. That fact, combined with some conscious choices my wife and I make about how to parent, means that we have been experiencing sustained sleep deprivation for nearly four years. I’ve probably slept as well as I did on Friday no more than a dozen times since my oldest was born in 2016.

The impacts of my lack of sleep are piling up. I’m exhausted and it’s taken a toll. It took just one night to wake me up to the reality of how badly I need to get better sleep (see what I did there?). Now I wonder: is much of my stress reducible to this one problem of not getting enough sleep? Maybe so.