Hopefully you've gotten a few winks in since posting this, but I just wanted to chime in--if my son's first two years didn't kill me from a lack of sleep, I'm fairly confident sleep deprivation itself won't do it. I'm serious...3 hours a night was *lucky* for me. I was living on energy drinks and coffee.

What IS dangerous is the activities you try to do while sleep deprived. Don't drive unnecessarily. And if you have to, take slower roads that you know well. At my absolute worst, I was driving back from a doctor appointment 30 or 45 minutes from my home, with the baby in the backseat, going 65 on the highway, and I suddenly realized I needed to get. my. butt. off the road. I took calmer streets the rest of the way home that day.

I've learned to recognize it coming on that badly now. When I get severely sleep deprived, the cortisol build-up in my body makes me itchy, and that's when I know I need to find a way to sleep, even if it's taking some kind of medicine to induce it.