Both Parents Need to Get Some Sleep!
©1995 Beth Weiss, Posted to misc.kids Usenet newsgroup, November 15, 1995
An exhausted woman was doing all the night wakings, while the baby's father
was getting a full night's sleep--because "he has to work in the morning".
I don't understand about sleeping--he does not have the right to get a full
night sleep while his wife is barely function and horribly sleep deprived.
Sleep is incredibly important--it is hard to function and thing without
sufficient sleep. And 4 2-hour chunks of sleep is not equivalent to one 8
hour chunk--or even one 6-hour chunk.
Everyone responds differently to sleep deprivation. Some people handle
it fairly well. I know that I don't. After weeks of insufficient
sleep, I become irrational; I can't think clearly; I can't control my reactions;
I hover on the brink of tears constantly.
People who are sleep deprived can be suicidal, they often exercise
poor judgment, and are often plain cranky. I've heard that many (600?
6000?) car accidents a year occur because someone fell asleep at the wheel.
My daughter is not a "good" sleeper, and that's been very hard on me; I
really need a 5-6 hour block of sleep every night, and would prefer more.
She was almost 6 weeks old before she slept 4 hours at a stretch, which was a
real shock to me. My first born slept 5 hours at a stretch at night from
the day I brought him home from the hospital.
If a new mom is really having trouble coping, she might consider whether her
problem is sleep deprivation. If she's bottle feeding, she should get
someone else (presumably her partner) to do the night feedings for two nights in
a row so that she can regroup.
If she's breastfeeding, it can really help if she at least doesn't have to
get out of bed--if he does diaper changes, and picks up the baby and puts the
baby back into bed.
Just because the father has to go to work, doesn't mean that the mother ought
to have to walk around like a zombie all of the time from lack of sleep.
That's a 100/0 arrangement, not 50/50, or even 60/40, and it just isn't fair.
It might be reasonable to expect her to do the majority of the night wakings, if
she can get a nap in during the afternoon, but it isn't right to expect her to
do all of them, if she really needs more sleep than she's getting, and have him
be totally unaffected.
        
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