How to Fall Asleep When Your Baby Is Born
You may have one of two responses to this heading. First, an outburst of laughter at the simple stupidity of trying to help parents of newborns fall asleep. Or, secondly, the desperate, fragile hope that this article will come to your aid during this sleepless, foggy and difficult time. And quite understandable, but the truth is, this article is here to save you. Because good sleep is one of the best things you can do for your well-being and your baby.
Why sleep is so important
“Sleep is the foundation of everything,” says Karla Naumburg, clinical social worker and author of the upcoming book How to Stop Losing Shit with Kids . “Trying to function properly when we’re tired is like driving a car with a flat tire.”
Sleep is when our body and brain regenerate on their own. This helps us consolidate memory and process information. And sleep deprivation is associated with an increase in mood disorders such as depression or anxiety, as well as irritability and loss of concentration.
“Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor,” says Jill Krause, creator of the Baby Rabies blog and family platform Happy Loud Life . “This causes me great anxiety, which means that I am useless for my whole family. You have to come up with a plan for how you are going to protect your sleep. “
Strive for quality, not quantity
Parents of babies may not expect to get 7-8 hours of sleep, but you can do something just as good: a full sleep cycle. A three-hour nap will give you time to go through all the stages of sleep, including the most recovery phases that come at the end.
So how do you do it?
Divide your nightly responsibilities equally
If you are raising a child with a partner, chances are good that night parenting will be a little one-sided. Often, a lactating parent or someone who is at home with the baby may end up in charge of most of the night shifts.
“One of the things I’ve heard from women is that when they received help at night from their partners, they felt guilty about accessing it,” says Leslie Swenson, a sleep specialist at Ann -Arbora, Michigan. “They had the feeling that they could do all this, and this is simply not true. It’s impossible.”
If you are on a full-time night shift, free yourself of guilt and ask your partner to intervene. “Maybe the other partner needs to get up and go to work, but if you’re at home with your baby, it’s hard work. too, ”says Janet Krohn Kennedy, author of Good Sleep: The Essential Sleep Guide for Your Child (and You) .
Create an alternating shift schedule where you each get three hours of sleep. This can be pretty straightforward for bottle feeding parents. If you are breastfeeding, try expressing milk right before bed so the other parent has a bottle ready, and then oversleep the first feed.
Ask others to participate
Single parents or those whose partners are unable to work enough shifts for whatever reason, ask friends or family if they would let you spend the night here and there to share responsibilities. Let them know how important sleep is to you, and tell them that this is the only gift you want from them. Nothing is more important than baby equipment than a rested parent (well, maybe diapers).
Another option is to hire a night nurse or postpartum doula. To cover expenses, ask friends and family for donations to the Night Support Fund (maybe even keep a jar at the door).
MayMay Fox, a writer and mother of twins from Paris, France, entered the “night nurse session” into her registry.
“We hired a night nurse to come three times a week,” Fox says. “I couldn’t have survived without her, the premature twins. Three to four hours of uninterrupted sleep and then pumping and going back to sleep was a real godsend. ”
Change things when you need to
Parenting is a continuous process of adaptation to new norms, including sleep. You might have an approach that works for two weeks and then flies out the window when your baby has teething or gets sick. When that happens, take a look at what has changed and see what you can move to keep getting those 3 hour chunks.
Get creative
This old auburn “dream when the baby sleeps” worked well for me, and I was able to get stable sleep cycles throughout the day. But not everyone likes (or can) take a nap, so consider other ways of working in your sleep.
“If you’re feeding a baby, she goes to bed at 8 pm and you’re tired, then there’s no reason you cannot sleep,” says Robin Stremler, a registered nurse studying baby sleep in Toronto, Canada. “If you feed your baby at 6 in the morning, he will fall and you feel like you can still sleep, go back to bed.”