EUAN McCOLM: How the cry of a baby helped restore a little perspective in the wee small hours of a very sleepless night

Published: 20:32, 14 July 2026 | Updated: 20:40, 14 July 2026 My insomnia’s been back for more than a fortnight and this time it’s of the wide-eyed, pulse-racing variety. This bout of sleeplessness is sparked by the discomfort of a back injury and then sustained by the receipt of some disorientating news that pitches me into a spiral of anxiety and anger, each fuelling the other. A day after this latest damned thing in a list of damned things, I’m lying in bed at 3am, the thump of my pulse echoing around the room, my skin vibrating. I pick up my vape from the bedside table and bite into the tip so hard that I dislodge the dental bridge concealing the damage caused during an assault 35 years ago. I focus on that horrible night, playing it over, reliving the shock and fear. I feel the same adrenalin rush as I did then. My chest tightens, the room swirls. And then, just before I touch the ceiling light and explode into a trillion tiny pieces, I hear a piercing cry. Our columnist has found himself plagued by insomnia these last couple of weeks I drop back into the mattress, sinking so deep that for the briefest moment I dip into the flat below. When I come to a rest, my pulse begins to slow. For the next few minutes, the parents of a newborn living somewhere up there in the block soothe their crying baby. I barely know these people to nod to in the street but for the past few weeks, I’ve been following their nighttime routine. They are, I think, having a pretty normal time of it all. On most nights, the cries come every three hours or so and are swiftly hushed; a satisfactory feeding pattern. But sometimes things aren’t so straightforward and the wee one will not be comforted. There have been a few nights where the baby’s cries have stretched on towards an hour. I know, because I can hear their footsteps, that Mum and Dad are together through these more stressful moments. All of my lenses come in the same shade of pink, these days, and so I lie in bed picturing joyous nights where my kids’ mother and I would share the burden, entirely equally. I was always smiling and patient and ready to spring into action. I reconnect, briefly, with reality and content myself that I was not the worst. I think this man’s making a better start of things than I did. A day after the levitation incident, I leave the flat to meet friends for lunch. We’ve not been together for a couple of years and I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. But I’m not at my best. Tired and distracted, I don’t contribute much and what I do offer up should be considered a warning to anyone tempted to ask a friend how he’s feeling. Later, sitting at the bus stop and starting to annoy myself, I’m snapped out of my self pity by the most beautiful sight. Over the next few minutes, I learn she’s called Maisie, she’s just turned one, she has two teeth (which she shows off if asked), and in four months she is to be a big sister. I glean all of this after opening with the eyes-closed-then-POPPED-open move that I cannot remember not performing whenever a baby looks my way. Sometimes, I notice that not everyone does this and I wonder if they know just how great it feels. And it’s free! You can literally walk down any street in any city and smile at every baby you see and nobody can charge you a penny for any of it. As I chat to Maisie’s parents (who have excellent names chosen for either a brother or a sister), a woman arrives at the stop with two toddlers on reins. A man in his mid 70s, dapper and half-cut, offers the woman his seat at the stop, and starts fishing in his pocket for coins. The woman nods and he crouches down and presses pound coins into pudgy palms. I can’t recall the last time I had coins and, anyway, I think you probably have to look properly Grandfatherly to be able to give money to a child in the street - even after asking a parent’s permission - without seeming at least a bit odd, however, by the time I’m wearing slacks and those slacks are belted above my navel, my pockets will jingle with change, there for the daily doling out. The sharpness of the insomnia fades and I get three or four unbroken hours on consecutive nights. Even as my sleeping pattern creeps back to something approaching normal, I hear my baby neighbour every night and glad of that I am, too. My closest friend visits with his youngest daughter, a just-graduated 21-year-old and, inevitably, there’s talk of the future. She’s got a great post-grad place in London that could make a big difference and she’s infectiously enthusiastic. Other people’s babies make you feel better long after they stopped being babies. They indulge my talk of my own 'plans', such as they are. I’m years from retirement but my thoughts have turned to where I might settle. For years, I daydreamed that I might shuffle to some rural idyll, there to make jam and listen to Fairport Convention into my dotage. Now, I tell them, the plan is to be as close to my ex-wife as is comfortable for both of us. There are not, currently, any babies in my life and, given the ages of my kids, I’ll be happy to wait a good few years. But I have started to indulge fantasies of, perhaps, one day opening a front door to visitors from the next two generations. And if there are going to be babies, I explain, I need to make visiting as easy as possible. 'I’ll warn you,' I say, 'This is what happens if you’re not careful. You end up having to be your ex-wife’s neighbour.' The boy, all but nocturnal since the start of the World Cup, surprises me with a visit. A calming presence, he crawled out of the womb like Dylan from the Magic Roundabout and has remained largely unflustered for the past 16 years. Just sitting with him helps restore perspective. 'Things are mostly great,' I think… 'Get some sleep.' Ready for his second dinner, the boy announces his departure for his mum’s place. In the hall, we go through the usual routine of him refusing to untie his shoelaces and me muttering that he’s 'ruining a perfectly good pair of trainers, kicking them on like that'. He opens the front door and looks at me with resignation. I pull him towards me and kiss him on top of the head, just as I have since he was a baby.