It wasn't so much Sleepless in Seattle as Sleepless in My Own Bed - and this isn't the first time it's happened. Now that son number two has moved out I reckoned not to ever again have to lie awake at weekends waiting for his gentle totter/full pelt stumble home and crash through the back door in the early hours after a night out.

It wasn't so much Sleepless in Seattle as Sleepless in My Own Bed - and this isn't the first time it's happened. Now that son number two has moved out I reckoned not to ever again have to lie awake at weekends waiting for his gentle totter/full pelt stumble home and crash through the back door in the early hours after a night out.

However son number one - a grown man with a grown up job and a mortgage - was at home for the weekend, and indeed was out at son number two's new abode - but as the hours ticked by so I waited and I waited. That was Friday night.

As probably every mother knows, it doesn't matter what age your child is or how good or bad, sober or tanked up they get when they go out, there's simply no chance of a bit of proper deep, slow-wave or delta sleep for you if you are subconsciously waiting for one of them to return to the fold - even if it's a visiting one.

Once they are back and tucked up, bingo, you can continue on to the Land of Nod, it just seems to be Mother Nature's inbuilt counting them all out, counting them all in processes and you can't do anything about it. My worst case of Worried Mother Syndrome (WMS) occurred when the Dreaded Daughter still resided at home. I'd got very concerned that she wasn't home in the middle of the night and at one point checked her room for signs of inhabitation (not easy when you take into account that her entire wardrobe was usually draped and/or chucked all over it) before going back to bed to toss and turn some more.

Finally sometime much-frettingly later I caved in totally and did the extremely un-cool thing of going downstairs, so as not to disturb Mr H, to call her mobile. He, like other male persons doesn't seem to suffer WMS. And, of course, that was the time that I had dropped off to sleep at some point and not realised it and she was actually fast akip in her pit and thought I'd gone mental.

Anyway it's my problem, not theirs, but a behaviour I seem unable to break - so you can imagine how thrilled I was when the boys decided to go out on Saturday night as well…