Why does the day feel like it lasts for hours but night only feels like an hour?

This question was asked of me first thing in the morning, in shock, because it had felt like two minutes since my son had fallen asleep. Oh, the irony. I say that because on this particular night we had had the worst night’s sleep ever known.

Sleep for my son has been a challenge right from the beginning — especially as a neurodivergent child. He didn’t sleep as a baby, neither during the day nor at night. I had the usual crap from the health visitors.

Colic.
“He’s a colicky baby.”

I mean, what even is colic? It’s a label given to babies who cry for more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week for more than 3 weeks. But in reality, it often feels like a catch-all term for babies whose nervous systems experience the world differently. The ones who hate being touched. The ones who can’t settle.

And if it wasn’t colic, it was reflux. And when you tell the health visitor your baby isn’t ever sick, they say, “Oh, it’s silent reflux.” Again, I can’t help but wonder what the correlation is between babies labelled with silent reflux and those who later go on to be diagnosed as neurodivergent.

I remember when my son was a baby, I stopped going out anywhere during the day. I stayed in and concentrated on getting his sleep pattern better — and it worked. There was just me and him in the house all day, every day, for a good while, and over time his sleep and general demeanour improved.

If only I’d understood the reason behind it then, maybe the next few years would have been easier. Because ironically, staying in now — just me and him together — is his favourite way to regulate.

Sleep has never meant the same thing to the two of us. What exhausts me can regulate him. What feels endless to me can pass unnoticed for him. Even back then, when he was a baby and I stayed in all day trying to fix his sleep, we were already experiencing the same days very differently. I was watching the clock, counting naps, measuring hours. He was simply responding to how safe or unsettled his body felt.

So even back then, I had worked out what helped — I just wasn’t sure yet of the reasons.

Over time, I got my son’s sleep to the best it ever could be, knowing that sleep difficulties in neurodivergent children are rarely linear. Today, we have good nights and bad nights. Good nights — which are rare — he will sleep from 9pm to 7am at best. One wake-up during the night I also class as a good night, usually for a wee.

Bad nights, he can be up a few times.

On this particular night in question, it was a very bad night — the worst we’d had for a long time. My son went to sleep as usual at 9pm. He woke at 11.30pm for a wee, then went back to sleep. He woke again at 1am after a bad dream. He had recently been to see the panto Jack and the Beanstalk, and he had dreamt about the giant eating him.

I settled him back down, but from 1am until 4am he shouted for me every fifteen minutes or so. At 4am, I suggested I lie in bed with him because I was so tired — and so must he have been.

The only issue was that his bed is very small. I had it specially made to fit the box room in our previous house, so it’s only 170cm long instead of the usual 190cm. The problem with this is that I am also 170cm tall, so it’s not ideal. However, needs must. I curled up next to him, and he went to sleep.

At 5.30am, I still hadn’t nodded off, so I thought I’d go and get into my own bed. Surely he was in a deep enough sleep for me to sneak out. But as soon as I moved, he woke up and asked me where I was going. I told him I needed to lie in my bed for a bit.

I got into my bed and slept soundly from 5.30am until 6.30am, when he shouted for me again. He asked if we could get up. I honestly just wanted the night to end, so I said yes. Then he asked if I could get into bed with him for ten minutes.

I did. And we must have both fallen asleep, because the next thing we knew, we woke up at 8am.

And that is when he said:

“Why does the day feel like it lasts for hours but night only feels like an hour?”

I didn’t answer him straight away. But the truth is, there is a reason. When we sleep — or when we feel safe enough to drift in and out of sleep — our brains aren’t really tracking time. There are no clocks, no light changes, no expectations. Time isn’t being measured, so it shrinks. For him, the night genuinely had passed in what felt like minutes.

The day, though, is different. The day is full of transitions, demands, sensory input, and expectations. His brain is busy all day long, processing and coping. And when the brain is working hard, time stretches. Minutes feel longer. Hours feel endless.

And the irony wasn’t lost on me. We had lived the same night — the same hours — yet experienced it completely differently. To him, the night was short because he eventually felt safe. To me, it felt endless because I was awake, alert, listening, responding, holding it all together.

Two people.
The same time.
Two entirely different experiences.

And neither of us was wrong.

The same time can feel entirely different, depending on whose body you’re living in.

Right now, we’re in a very bad sleep phase again. One of those phases where it feels like whatever fragile rhythm you’d built has disappeared, and you don’t quite know how to get it back on track. Sleep challenges like this are exhausting. I don’t have answers this time. I’m just here in it, doing what I’ve always done — responding, adapting, getting through the hours.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
And if you’re in it too, I see you.