Young David's feeding behaviour is becoming less and less logical by the day. Either that, or lack of sleep is robbing me of what few analytical mental faculties I've managed to knock back into shape since Sarah started sleeping through the night...

A typical evening feeding schedule, as written by David, would go something like this:

21:00 - Wake up and start making loud grunting noises. This means "I am a little piggy, please feed me accordingly".

21:05 - Drink for 45 minutes solid, and then fall asleep again. Mummy normally goes to bed about now, as it's the only sleep she's allowed.

21:50 - Sleep for maybe half an hour, right up until the point where Daddy has finished doing the washing-up and is ready to hit the sack, and then start with the grunting noises again.

22:20 - Chew vigorously on Daddy's finger for 20 minutes, as I'm not really hungry and am just making the grunty sounds because I want some attention.

22:40 - Daddy's finger is getting pretty wrinkly by now, so fall asleep, but snore loudly to prevent him from dropping off.

22:50 to 00:30 - Become semi-awake every 15 minutes to make gurgling, burping and whining noises, and occasionally to throw up on Daddy's trousers. This keeps him on his toes.

00:45 - Wake up and make a face like Winston Churchill chewing a wasp. This means "I am totally starving and am going to tell you all about it".

00:46 - Scream at the top of my lungs and go red like a beetroot, which makes Daddy carry me upstairs to Mummy for some yummy grub. Award myself bonus points for waking Sarah up.

00:47 - Drink for half an hour. Pause occasionally to be sick on the nice clean duvet.

01:15 - Wait until everyone is nearly asleep, then do an enormous and malodorous poo. Do another one halfway through having the first one cleaned up, just to make things interesting.

01:30 to 03:45 - Feed every 20 minutes, for 5 minutes per go. In between feeds, pretend to sleep but make a noise like a sheep being chainsawed to death, so that Mummy and Daddy have to keep checking I'm OK. What fun!

04:00 - Wake up and puke all over my bedsheets. Mummy has invariably forgotten to get the clean spares from Sarah's room, so Daddy has to Be A Ninja and try to extract them from her cupboard without waking her up again. I'm told this involves avoiding the creaky floorboard by using the ceiling.

04:10 - Scream like a parrot getting its testicles caught in a mincing machine. This means "You had damn well better feed me a seriously large amount of milk, or there will be trouble". Drink for an hour without pausing for breath.

05:15 - Sick up almost all of the milk I've just drunk. Now I need to be changed into a new sleepsuit, which is always fun because it's another thing I can complain loudly about.

05:25 - Sleep for an hour or so. This gives Mummy and Daddy the minimum amount of sleep necessary to keep them conscious enough to pander to my every whim for the next 24 hours.

06:40 - Demand more milk by hitting myself ferociously on the nose and then crying about it. Guzzle noisily for 20 minutes.

07:00 - This is when Sarah wakes up and Daddy needs to get ready for work, so everyone is awake anyway. Since everyone being awake no longer has anything to do with me, this is therefore an ideal time for me to sleep peacefully for 4 hours. My work here is done.

I may have missed out a few steps.

Imagine, if you will, the combined effects of the following: being Hosepiped at 3:30am whilst changing a nappy which can only be described as burstingly pungent, also whilst experiencing the kind of headache normally reserved for colliding tectonic plates, plus your elder child yelling upstairs (with a threatening wobble in her voice) that she too requires a new nappy just to be on the safe side, at the same time as your wife is complaining about the lack of clean baby vests and entreating you to nip down to the kitchen and fetch her a chocolate biscuit. And then you have to go to work.

I need a holiday. Or, failing that, a nice big steaming cup of Prozac.

Is it worth pointing out how knackered I am? Will I really be surprising anybody? Having Two Small Children Makes You Really Fucking Tired, reports our man in Warwickshire today. No, I guess you worked that out already, either from painful and protracted personal experience, or from observing poor bastards like me and laughing the evil laugh of those for whom 4:30am is something they read about once. Little David is a gannet of epic proportions, having put on a pound in the last six days, ingeniously, by feeding every hour for 45 minutes. The Missus is bizarrely pleased at this, as the excessive consumption of full-fat milk has enabled her to get into a size 12 skirt within 8 days of giving birth, which is apparently important enough to her that she's spent five gazillion quid phoning her mates to brag about it. I, meanwhile, have developed the ability to change nappies in my sleep, conjure vats of decaffeinated tea out of thin air, and burp the baby just by looking at him funny.

But nobody warns you about the Hosepipe Effect.

Oh, I know, people say, "It's not like changing little girls, you know, he'll wee on you if you're not careful." But we are bloody careful, alright, dammit? They make it sound like there's some warning, or that it's a case of grab-some-cotton-wool-and-on-with-the-mopping. But no. The only warning you get is a brief nanosecond when his eyes cross slightly and he gets this momentary perplexed expression, and then this godalmighty jet of warm wee hits you between the eyes, with enough force to propel you into the wardrobe unless you're holding onto something solid, and then... the Hosepipe Effect kicks in, and suddenly the damn thing is going PSSSSSHHHHHHH all over the change mat, the cot, your duvet, your wife, your nice work clothes you've just finished ironing, and the gargantuan pile of spare baby clothes you've lugged upstairs for when he wets himself.

Tomorrow, we're buying him some crocodile clips.