BEDTIME RITUALS HELP ME COPE

IN HER 30s, as a mother of four young children, Nicci tried to make insomnia a virtue. ‘I would get up and make cakes in the middle of the night,’ she remembers, ‘and now, sometimes I’ll work.’

She has also established a good bedtime regimen to create the right environment for sleep, which has helped.

‘I go to bed at more or less the same time, where possible, I avoid too much caffeine or alcohol in the hours before I retire for the night and I keep my room cool,’ she says. ‘I also keep the room dark and ban mobiles and laptops — nothing winking or bleeping.’

Nicci has thick curtains to block out the light and wears a sleep mask if she’s going to bed in a room where the light gets in.

And she makes an effort to keep her bedroom tidy, as it creates an atmosphere of order and calm, but chuckles: ‘This one’s hard, as I live with a man who piles up books and magazines and clothes round the bed, so it’s like a teetering fortress!’