Comment by gubatron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gubatron | Hacker News Reader

Me, I've been looking for a Provigil prescription.

My daughter though is my biggest treasure, nothing in life will ever make me as happy, fullfilled and scared of loosing than her.

I've been a dad now for 3 months (currently working long hours and waiting for baby to wake up for her 3am feeding)

I've learned to value sleep, I think of weekend afternoons as brain-rebuilding sessions, I sleep as much as I can saturdays and sundays.

Now, I try to do email, hacker news and all the dilly dallying after I'm home and everyone is asleep, during the day I try to be as productive as possible, since I feel I should head home as early as I can to be with my daughter and help my wife.

Congratulations and welcome to the club (it's indeed a club, you'll notice other parents nodding back at you when you have your baby with you, also you'll notice how babies are to women as hot girls are to guys, they can't help but turn around and look at you and your baby)

I'm convinced modafinil and the like would help a lot in sleep crisis moments in the early stages, though a problem is that you need to catch up on the sleep /eventually/ so it could never be a regular, routine solution. Another problem is that such drugs take time to kick in and you might not know when such a crisis moment would be in advance.. You tend to break fast under baby and sleep related stress. For the birth and first night, though, it'd really help the father stay up and take some of the stress off the mother.

Interestingly the Wikipedia page doesn't say what it actually does - you'd think it would be headline info, what's the intended result of the medication.

Seems modafinil replaces amphetamines for keeping you really awake when your body wants to sleep. I don't think that the first response to your body saying it needs sleep should be to reach for some mood altering drugs to make it pretend to itself that it doesn't really need sleep.

Grandparents. If you've got 'em close enough (ours aren't) then they, or other friends/family that will do a couple of hours with the kids, are what you need IMO.

I don't think that the first response to your body saying it needs sleep should be to reach for some mood altering drugs to make it pretend to itself that it doesn't really need sleep.

Sure, it shouldn't be the first response - I mentioned "crisis" and high intensity situations. Modafinil has a longer term but similar effect to caffeine, but without most of the negative side effects. Like you shouldn't be fueling your short nights with caffeine (though many parents do), you shouldn't be popping modafinil every night either. Temporarily? Both techniques could provide a respite from soul crushing fatigue.

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