Why New Mothers Are Missing Out On Sleep
3.5 hours. That’s how much sleep most new mothers get each night for the first 4 months of their babies lives. That’s according to a study in the UK from Mother & Baby Magazine.
An article in the Guardian about the study repeated a number of statistics that might shock those of us who haven’t lived through this:
One-third of new mothers get even less than three hours sleep and this sleeplessness is affecting other areas of life, in particular marriage.
Half of the study participants said that the sleeplessness had caused arguments with spouses
13% said that it had almost led to breaking up
3% said that it had actually led to breaking up
83% said that sleeplessness killed their libido
Surprisingly, the article doesn’t mention depression, eating more sugar due to lack of energy, more dangerous driving, less accurate work or making more mistakes while doing cooking or housework.
Not surprisingly, 94% of mothers said that they would rather sleep than do anything else.
The average new father reported getting 7 hours sleep each night.
A generation ago, new mothers reported getting six hours sleep a night. They recommend letting babies cry-it-out, pacifiers and bottle feeding.
Are there other reasons? Baby monitors, crib alarms, breathing sensors and video monitors all of which ensure we hear every peep our children make. Co-sleeping and extended breast feeding may not increase the amount of sleep we’re getting either.
Tags: how-much-should-babies-sleep, how-much-sleep-do-new-mothers-get, sleep-and-new-mothersRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Breastfeeding, Emotional Wellbeing, Exercise, The first 6 weeks, Weeks 12 to 18, Weeks 6 to 12, Women's health, baby care
13 opinions for Why New Mothers Are Missing Out On Sleep
Angela
Sep 14, 2007 at 11:19 am
That’s so interesting Kate. Shocking, even though I’ve lived through the sleep deprivation myself, and continue to, to some extent.
Tracee Sioux
Sep 15, 2007 at 2:09 pm
This isn’t surprising to me. I’m a 100% die-hard believer in the Sleep Training method The Baby Whisperer teaches.
Sleep deprevation causes insanity. It’s very unhealthy for mothers to get only broken sleep. It’s very unhealthy for the baby as well. I used the Sleep Training method on both my children. Sleep deprevation causes all kinds of real problems in the house, including conflict between the parents, post-partum depression, etc.
Sleep Training the Baby Whisperer way is kind both to the mother, father, siblings and the baby. The baby is not getting rest if you don’t teach him/her to sleep either.
It’s so hard for mothers to listen to the baby cry. It’s the first truly painful mothering experience I had, but it was totally worth doing. I wish I hadn’t waiting until my first was about 8 months and the whole family was in the luney bin from sleep depraviation - including the baby.
Lots of mothering includes pain I’ve found.
Angela
Sep 15, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I bought The Baby Whisperer and was so disgusted I returned it to the store. There’s a reason it’s hard for mothers to listen to a baby cry. It goes against every maternal instinct. Letting a baby cry is detrimental to the baby in many ways - crying is stressful and sleep training undermines breastfeeding.
Tracee Sioux
Sep 15, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Sleep training only undermines breastfeeding if you think a 6 month old baby is actually waking up cause they are hungry. They aren’t. They are just trained to wake up.
It’s painful for mothers to listen to the baby cry because we never, ever want our children to feel any discomfort. But, that’s not really how life is. Life is full of discomfort and its up to us to teach our children how to handle it. They have to learn to self-sooth or you’re being a detriment to their growth.
We have to learn to sleep. You can delay that until a child is 5 or you can teach them how straight from the go and actually get some sleep yourself.
Angela
Sep 15, 2007 at 6:59 pm
My daughter remained in the 97th+ percentile for height and weight throughout infancy and toddlerhood, so obviously the night-waking was not a detriment to her growth in her case (perhaps because she was not expending energy crying, nor was she waking for extended periods of time — all it took was a couple of minutes or less of nursing and she was back to sleep).
My daughter slept well on her own from about the age of 2.5 on. I didn’t have to teach a 6-month-old anything about discomfort (how sad) or self-soothing, nor did I have to ignore her cries. She learned that she was safe, secure and loved, and that’s all she needed for a good night’s sleep.
SoloMother
Sep 18, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I tried sleep training, beginning when my son was four months old.
It didn’t work. I had a child who would cry and scream for hours. HOURS. he didn’t stop. he didn’t slow down. He didn’t throw up or otherwise throw a fit. he just wailed. The first night I tried to let him cry it out, we sat on opposite sides of a wall and sobbed for four hours. The second night? Five hours. While my husband grumbled and bitched and made life even harder for us all. The third night, I picked the kid up after 20 minutes of crying and never forced any of us to go through that again. Every child is different. Mine just wouldn’t conform.
He still doesn’t. But he did start sleeping through the night at around 2 years. This was after night weaning and all those other things that they say cause a child to wake up at night.
Tracee Sioux
Sep 18, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I found the 3rd day is key. The third day of bottle weaning, breast weaning, sleep training, paci weaning. The 3 days are total hell, but once the 3rd day is accomplished and lived through then it’s never an issue again.
I guess it’s whether you have the stomach for the 3 days. It really was terrible with my first child, but after it was accomplished and she was a well rested baby with self soothing techniques we never had to deal with waking in the middle of the night again.
It was easier with my son, for one thing I started with naps rather than when I would also be trying to sleep. I also didn’t feel as cruel because I knew it was a very temporary pain for a big payoff that was better for everyone.
I find lots of parenting painful. I find it painful to inflict punishment on poor behavior, withhold and say no to unhealthy foods or bad toys or television and all kinds of things. Sleep training was really only the first place in which I felt like “I really, really wish I didn’t have to do this.” But, after that, it became easier to be a good parent. I knew I could cope with my pain and cope with witnessing theirs.
Angela
Sep 20, 2007 at 6:19 am
Earlier in the week I wrote an article that refutes the “temporary pain for big payoff” argument. There’s a lot of science that says there’s long-term harm to the child.
http://www.breastfeeding123.com/why-sleep-training-makes-me-want-to-cry/
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