Being a new parent is one of the most beautiful and exhausting things to happen to you. You are bombarded with a whole bunch of responsibilities and tasks to perform you have no prior experience of. Alongside all the beautiful moments and joyful memories comes the lack of sleep.
Just when you have fed your newborn and have managed to put him/her to sleep, you feel like its finally time for you to rest. The clock strikes 2 a.m., and your newborn starts crying. You ask yourself, “will I ever get a good night’s sleep again?”
Although life with a newborn is a total roller coaster adventure, don’t give up hope. By ages 3 to 4 months, many babies can sleep at least five hours at a time. In the meantime, a little creativity and lifestyle tweaking can help you catch up on sleep deprivation by quite a fair margin.
Sleep and Infants
Sleep insights
A recent study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation revealed that about 76 per cent of parents have trouble catching up on their bedtime. This should come as no surprise after you have been blessed with an infant. Even after losing copious hours of precious sleep, parents can still regain the time lost by implementing clever strategies.
There exist two different types of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM), referred to as dream sleep, and non-REM. Non-REM is further split into stages -
Stage one is a drowsy state when the body relaxes while you still have a semi-awareness of your environment.
Stage two is when the body and eye movements stop, and brain waves become recessive. This is the stage we coin as “falling asleep.”
Stages three and four are deep sleep; breathing is consistent, and you show no response to whatever is happening around you.
Moving through these stages takes up a total time of 90 minutes, and happens about four to six times a night.
Newborn Sleep Patterns
An infant has sleep patterns completely different from an adult.
First, his/her sleep includes a higher dosage of REM; at 3 months, your child spends 50 to 80 per cent of their sleeping phase in REM, compared to your mere 20 per cent. Second, his/her sleep cycles last about 50 minutes; unlike your 90-minute lapse.
All this data involving figures and magnitude means that your child won’t sleep a second longer than three or four hours with a disordered sleep pattern.
Getting up in fragments for 20 minutes in between an 8-hour sleep cycle immensely takes-the-edge-off of your deep sleep habits. Every time you hit the bed, you have to start the sleep cycle over again, the direct consequence being exhaustion. This is more toxic than a 5-hour uninterrupted sleep.
Tips To Improve Sleep
Consider the following strategies to get a good sleep -
- Sleep with your baby — Pick a time to sleep just when your child sleeps. Put away your gadgets, ignore the sink full of dishes and let go of the random chores to be done. Get some sleep while your baby is drowsy, so you don’t have to worry about getting only 10 minutes of sleep until your baby wakes up and starts crying again.
- Ask someone to watch over the baby — When friends and loved ones visit, instead of being the host and gracing everyone socially, be honest about your lack of sleep and ask if they could watch over the baby while you take a nap. This way, your baby can also be adhered to while you catch up on the much-needed sleep.
- Split Duties — It is not necessary to work together every time when both of you are fatigued down to the bones. Split chores and other duties to take naps in between while your partner completes their share. Work can be completed without sacrificing sleep by implementing this simple yet effective strategy.
- Good sleep hygiene — Before actually hitting the bed, develop a healthy routine to comfort you and help you sleep better. Take a hot shower, read a book, and turn off all electronics 1 to 2 hours before bedtime to reduce eye-strain and chances of insomnia. Filling up your room with white noise would go a long way in putting you to sleep quickly.
- Healthy sleep environment — Always ask yourself before sleeping whether your bedroom is comfortable enough to fall asleep easily. It has been highly recommended to keep clutter, unfolded laundry or exercise equipment away from your sleeping space. Keep the place cosy and dark at night to help to fall asleep better. Opt for separate beds for a while if you have trouble sharing the bed with your partner.
- Sleep train your baby — Consult your paediatrician as to what should be the right time to sleep train your infant. Parents should consider sleep training to increase nap stretches for their babies. Usually, it is convenient when the baby is four months old. The final decision, however, rests in your and your family’s hands.
- Keep work away — Work and meeting deadlines have pushed us to extremities, with people being forced to bring work back home. A new parent hence has to manage both taking care of the child and making ends meet at the workplace. Hence it is advisable to keep texts, emails and phone calls away for a while. Sanctioned workplace napping and flex times at your office may be viable after consultations from your HR department.
Women and Sleep
Motherhood is not always a pleasant road full of roses. It can often be very bumpy and full of hurdles to surmount. Women often are deprived of sleep and can bear high consequences of sleep deprivation. Women’s health is adversely affected by the amount of sleep they get after childbirth.
Certain tips can be followed by women to maintain their sleep cycle and ensure good health in the long run namely -
- Discuss your sleep needs — Being a mother is one of the hardest jobs anyone could take on. Often anxiety and body strain can lead you to wake up in the middle of the night or not get any sleep at all. You should discuss with your partner about how your sleep cycle is being affected and what all can be done to improve upon that.
- Refuse unnecessary responsibilities — You must not ignore the responsibilities you consider are paramount like looking after your baby, taking care of yourself and your partner, and getting adequate levels of sleep. However, you can be approached and asked to take up some other responsibilities that might be unnecessary or not that significant in the face of taking care of yourself and your child. Let go of them so you don’t have to stay up for long catering to those unnecessary burdens.
- Lie down — After looking after your baby all day, it’s time for your partner to take care of your child. A woman must regain her strength to feed the baby and take care of him/her the entire day. Get off your feet, lie down even when you aren’t sleepy and keep your phone on silent to maintain a healthy sleep cycle.
- Indulge in snooze-inducing activities — Many women can have trouble sleeping even after an exhausting day. That can lead to the temptation of resorting to social networking or simply using your phone or watching Television. However, anything involving screens won’t induce sleep but rather act counter-productively. Listening to the radio, on the other hand, does not involve a screen, and hence can induce sleep. Prefer indulging in your hobby or meditating for a couple of minutes.
- Avoid caffeine — It’s not unusual for mothers to wake up to the sound of their child’s cry at 3 am. Women then stay awake to cuddle and feed their babies until they are finally asleep. This can lead to the mother resorting to caffeine consumption to get her to stay up to care for her child. However, this can severely damage their health, not to mention it makes them prone to sleep disorders. Instead, you can ask your partner to look after your baby while you get your much-needed sleep.
Final Words
While extreme tiredness is normal during the initial days of parenthood, if your level of exhaustion is so significant that it is impairing your capability to make sound decisions or execute daily functions, it’s necessary for you to have a talk with your doctor. New parents can often miss out on large amounts of sleep every day, leading to frustration, irritation and a short-tempered mood.
You need to understand your baby’s sleep cycles and why he/she only sleeps for four to five hours. You must undertake certain measures to ensure that your baby is catered to while you receive your precious sleep too.
Women must take the issue of sleep deprivation seriously as it can impact their bodies and health after delivery. They must make up on the lost sleep and rest sufficiently to ensure they are recharged enough to take good care of their newborns.
The good news is, the tiredness won’t be prolonged. New parents claim that they get receive six hours of bedtime sleep and a one-hour nap during the day by the time their baby turns 2-months-old, however, they can repay their sleep debt as their baby ages ahead and develops habits like sleep training.
