When you announced you were pregnant, what did your parent friends tell you about what you can expect when you become a parent?
Did they say "Oh man, being a parent is going to change your whole life." or "You better catch up on your sleep, man, 'cause you're not going to get any after the baby comes." And did you take their advice seriously? Or did you just shrug it off and think to yourself "Ah, that's okay. How hard can it be? I mean, it's temporary, right? A couple of weeks after the baby is born everything will go back to normal and I'll have my old life back, plus a cute little baby." Um. Not so fast.
Your friends were right. Your life isn't going to be the same and you're not going to get much sleep. For a long time! This is the pink elephant. They don't tell you that you won't get a good night's sleep for maybe the first five years of your child's life! Although I was reading in an article just the other day that parents of children who are less than 10 years old rarely get a good eight hours of sleep a night!
Do you remember anyone telling you anything even remotely like this? No. Because it's the secret no parent is talking about. I'm sure there are some parents out there whose children slept through the night from two weeks on for the rest of their lives, or close to it. But there are a lot of parents whose babies don't sleep through the night until they're almost three years old! Or older!
Of course, then there are those in between, like mine. My son began sleeping through the night when he was eight months old, my daughter when she was 18 months old (and that's only because we let her cry instead of constantly going to her--I put off doing this for 18 months until I realized that it wasn't good for her not to be sleeping through the night at her age).
The pink elephant in the room is just how difficult the sleep issue can be for babies and children. And just when you think you've got it licked, they go through another developmental "phase" and start getting up in the middle of the night again. At two years old it's separation anxiety, at three it's fear of the dark and monsters. In other words, there always seems to be something to keep parents from getting the amount of sleep they need.
If my parent friends had sat me down, given me a serious look, and said "You better have a back-up plan for getting some sleep" I would have thought more about it and planned for it. I would have lined up my friends (and anyone else who offered to help) and had them watch the baby/two-year-old/three-year-old for a couple of hours so my husband and I could sleep. I did this for a friend of mine who had a baby a few months before me. I stayed the night and fed her baby so she could sleep. She said she felt like a completely different person.
You see, sleep and the lack thereof, affect every aspect of your personality, your energy level, and your attitude. Sleep deprivation, which is a prolonged period of time where you don't get adequate sleep, affects your memory, your concentration, your energy level, your patience, your confidence, your judgement, and your perspective. I mean, sleep deprivation is used as torture! Can any more be said about how important getting enough sleep is? And yet, no one talks about it. At least not in a serious tone.
Well, I'm talking about it. If you are pregnant, have a plan set in place. If you've already had your baby, start planning now. Make a list of people you can count on to help you. Call out all your favor cards and line people up for weekly (or more) babysitting sessions of at least three hours and when that person comes over, SLEEP! Don't clean, don't read a magazine, don't feel guilty--SLEEP! Have I made myself clear? Good.
What blew my mind is when the public health nurse came by after we had gone home from the hospital and asked, "If you add up all the catnaps and sleep periods over the past 24 hours, did you get at least 5 hours' sleep?"
Not five consecutive hours, but five hours TOTAL. If you get at least that much, you are considered sufficiently rested.
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