New Baby? Prepare To Get Less Sleep For The Next 6 Years
jessica albert 
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Pregnancy, labor, and delivery- your sleepless nights don’t end there. Once you have your baby you will have to stay up late all night to take care of the little one. But for how long? “When will I be able to sleep uninterrupted?” This is a question a lot of first-time parents ask and here, we have an answer.
According to a study published by Sleep Research Society, sleep satisfaction and duration of the parents declined significantly after childbirth (1). The researchers found that the sleep issues got to the maximum during the first three months post delivery. The sleep of the mothers was more strongly affected when compared to that of the father’s (not surprised, huh?). Also, both the mother and the father never fully recovered in terms of their sleep satisfaction or duration even when the children reached 4-6 years of age.
The study was conducted among a large population in Germany during an observation period between 2008 and 2015 (2). From the population, 2541 women and 2118 men reported to have their first, second, or third baby during the study duration and the results were obtained from their data.
Breastfeeding was found to be one of the reasons why mothers didn’t get good sleep during the first three months postpartum. They obviously had to wake up in the middle of the night to feed their baby.
Even though it is almost certain that you are going to lose quite a lot of sleep once you have a baby, you can try to make things better. Here are some tips that will help you sleep better and for longer during the postpartum period:
Sleeping When The Baby Sleeps
Try to take a quick nap whenever your baby is sleeping. Do everything else like watching TV, talking to people, and eating when your baby is awake. You may have to wake up in between, but any kind of sleep is better than no sleep at all.
Feed Your Baby Well Before Bed Time
Feed your little one as much as she/he needs before you put them down for sleeping at night. This will lower the chances of them waking up in the middle of the night frequently. Although you cannot completely rule that out since babies do not sleep through the night during the first few months.
Split The Night Time Duty
Yes, the father has to probably wake up early and go to work. But the mother wakes up early to take care of the baby and the house. This is true even if the mother is a homemaker or if she is on maternity leave. Sadly, women end up doing most of the nighttime work thinking that it isn’t right to seek help from their husband who has to go to work in the morning. If it’s not a feeding issue, let daddy take care of the situation. This way, both of you will get a decent amount of sleep.
Go For Quality And Not Quantity
A 3-hour power nap is enough to keep you energized for some time. Do not think that you’ll sleep for 8-9 hours at night because that is just going to be bits and pieces of sleep. Even if you’re sleeping for some time, make sure you get continuous and quality sleep.
Get Help
Sometimes things can get really bad when either the mother or the father is sick, or if the father is unavailable due to some reason. If this is the case or if you both just need a break, ask your parents, other family members, or your friends to come over. Tell them that you need help with the baby for a few days. And if you cannot find anybody who is free, you can always hire a professional nanny.
Ensuring proper sleep is very important because your body is still recovering from pregnancy and delivery. Don’t push yourself too much since you don’t want to be unhealthy when your baby needs you the most. Make a conscious effort to sleep enough and always ask for help whenever needed.
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