My good friend and colleague Jane Cartledge has moved on to pastures new and I'm taking over this column for a while. Which is fine, apart from the fact that I'm so bog-eyed all the words are swimming about on my computer screen as I shakily sip my fourth cup of coffee of the day.

I have a baby who doesn't sleep. For anyone in the same position, those few words should be enough to explain it all.

For other people - or those parents with angelically sleeping cherubs - let me explain.

My baby had her first birthday recently and at this age, most babies are having a good couple of hours nap during the day and 11 or 12 hours at night.

My baby, however, can do a 13 hour day without the droop of an eyelid, wakes during the night if the cat sneezes and never sleeps past 6am.

Many a time I've sat in the living room like an extra from Dawn of the Dead, huddled against the grey morning light and willing BBC Breakfast TV to start so I can feel vaguely human.

This lack of shut-eye is taking over our lives. Along with struggling to do the most basic task, such as typing at work, I have also pranged my car three times, left my purse on numerous shop counters and fallen asleep the last three times I've been to the cinema.

When I was pregnant I thought pah, sleepless nights! I can deal with a few of those. I was used to covering election counts until dawn and working around the clock when huge stories broke.

What I didn't realise is that's fine when you can get an early night or have a lie-in but when it's night after night it's horrendous.

Sleep deprivation is torture - and that's official. It's used as an interrogation technique on prisoners who are kept awake for several days. When they are finally allowed to fall asleep, they are suddenly awakened and questioned, which is pretty much what it's like for me coming into work.

Former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin described his experience of sleep deprivation when a prisoner of the KGB in Russia as follows: "A haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep."

Precisely, I couldn't have put it better myself. I would happily drag a tramp in off the street and bung him a bottle of sherry to babysit for a few hours if it meant I could get some shut-eye.

'At the very least, sleep deprivation is cruel and degrading'

Nicole Bieske, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International Australia, said: "At the very least, sleep deprivation is cruel, inhumane and degrading.

If used for prolonged periods of time it is torture."

Yet there are thousands of us poor parents going through it night after night.

I've been known to text fellow mums at 3am with a howling baby in my arms and they have replied within minutes to sympathise as they too pace the bedroom making shushing noises.

So if you're one of these smug parents whose baby has slept through since six weeks, I hate you and don't offer me any advice as I've tried everything under the sun. If on the other hand you're reading this at 5am, while clutching an espresso and trying to focus on Cbeebies through gummed up eyelids, then drop me a line - us zombies have to stick together!

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