We're only planning for one, and my impression so far suggests that it's the second child where sleep and free time get lost more permanently, and that with one child the majority of the sacrifices are only temporary (and getting better as the child gets older), but it's always good to hear some experiences.
Everything is back to normal now our kid is 2.5yrs
Initially children have no circadian rhythm, which is very difficult. Later, they are awake frequently for feeding or otherwise, which is also difficult. Once they settle into a routine, however, it's fine.
I would particularly advise the "cry it out" technique. This seems cruel, which is why I waited with my first-born until he was 14 months old to do it, at which point it took a mere 3 days for him to start going to sleep on his own and sleeping through the night. We did it with our second child at 5 months with the same level of success (at least for going to sleep - very young children still wake up in the night more than older ones).
After around 6 months old, the sacrifices you make for your children are significant but no longer revolve primarily around sleep or the lack thereof.
If you can't stomach cry it out, you can try the pick up-put down method. Let them cry for 5-10 minutes, then soothe them, then put them back down when they're done crying.
Raw cry it out can be a little hardcore depending upon the kid too, I have one friend who tried it and their kid cried for an hour straight and started vomiting.
Leaving a kid to scream for a solid hour with no soothing is not a good strategy. The goal is for them to learn to self-soothe and to put themselves to sleep, not for them to learn what abandonment feels like.
Little babies are fascinating. Have fun, explore, trust but verify. And lastly, your baby usually knows what's up, and you do too. Don't let the "common wisdom" to tell you otherwise.
He is breastfed, and still wakes up about 3 times during his 12 hours of sleep every night to breastfeed. However, that consists of him making minimal noise, and my wife either picking him up or rolling over and feeding him while they lay next to each other. They literally both sleep through most feedings. For his first few weeks of life, he simply slept on her breast, so it was even easier.
Honestly, after experiencing and witnessing this arrangement, I can’t imagine that nature had moms and babies doing anything differently for the last few thousand years. Our lives would have been more difficult if we had him in a separate room right now. If that was our arrangement, we could count on waking up to loud cries and walking to another room multiple times a night, and either comforting or feeding our baby, and then walking back to bed afterwards. If we were doing that, I think folks’ warnings would have been true.
This was not our plan, but it became our plan after having a very strong instinct to stay close to our newborn when we brought him home.
I used to think that we were significantly endangering our child with bed sharing, but then I found these articles from the Mother-Baby sleep lab at Notre Dame : http://cosleeping.nd.edu/articles-and-presentations/articles...
We don’t fit any of the risk factors associated with SIDS in bedsharing (drug or alcohol use, obesity, smoking, etc), and thus consider it statistically safe enough that the benefits far outweigh the risks. YMMV, but I recommend reading one or two of those articles/papers to balance out the blanket warnings against bed sharing that you will inevitably hear if you live in the US.
Enjoy parenthood. It’s been the best experience of our lives.
If you ignore the initial 6-12 months (once they get into a regular sleep schedule), the impact for the parents for the rest of the time between 1 to 17 yrs-old is pretty much the same. The dynamics will change as they get older, but you'll still be spending considerable time on the various family activities: playing with them, having breakfast/lunch/dinner, going to the park, teaching new things, commuting to/from school, attending their friends' birthdays on weekends, helping with schoolwork, maybe teaching them how to code :), etc.
On top of that, you'll also need to find time for you and your partner, family, friends, hobbies, reading, etc. Add a full time job, a school that starts starting early morning, a fixed annual vacation calendar, and you pretty much don't have many hours left in the day.
Sure, some activities can be shared with your partner, and some can be delegated (family member, nanny), but the conclusion is still the same: time management becomes a lot more critical once you have kids.
Which then leads me to sleep. In order to dedicate enough time to a restful night of sleep, you'll need to prioritize things much more effectively, so you don't end cutting corners, and changing drastically your sleep patterns.
I was still totally inexperienced and I now had two kids waking me up.
Two things that helped me a lot:
- don't let a child fall asleep with anything they cannot have the whole night (speaking of >6-12 months). No music, no falling asleep in front of a screen, make sure they don't fall asleep while drinking their last meal for the day. By all means: tell stories, sing, and make sure they get milk before they fall asleep though. The reason is, as far as I know that we subconsciously verify that everything is ok multiple times a night. For small kids that means everything is like it was: if there was music or if dad or mom was in the room - that's what they'll expect during the night.
- small children have to learn to fall asleep. We understand that kids needs help to learn eating real food, walking, talking etc, but it seems at least in my culture we somehow expect kids to understand how to fall asleep. They usually don't, and so the parents get worried: is there anything wrong? Maybe the kid is still hungry? Or afraid?
Instead I've learned to be very clear with myself and my wife when we start teaching the kids to sleep:
- I make sure the child is ok: not hungry, happy etc
- when I put them to bed I make sure they only have things they can keep all night, generally one (safe) toy and a pacifier (don't want to defend pacifier much but what made me decide for it was a slightly lowered risk of SIDS according to one doctor)
- the I sing a small song, say a few words and leave the room. The words I say before leaving are the same, every time.
- I then walk outside and start a timer for 60 seconds, walk in (even if they are silent, verify they are ok, say the same words, walk out, start a timer for 180 seconds and wait. I do this until I'm sure they are asleep. In particular I keep visiting the room every three minutes even if they are happy. This reinforces the idea that you'll look after them. If they aren't happy I give them the pacifier and toy, say the same words, leave.
- next day: first 3 minutes (180 seconds), then 5 minutes intervals until they are asleep.
- increase by two minutes every day (but usually my kids get it by the second or third day: Dad has not left, he'll be back soon enough even if I don't cry so I can just relax and play with this toy.)
- for my first kid it took more like a week because I waited for too long before I started sleep training.
Edit:
- Do use a timer!
- Do walk in even if the kid is just falling asleep!
- Do use the timer once to verify that the kids are actually asleep after you think they fell asleep!
(I think people often misunderstand it so you'll find some people saying he argues that kids should cry it out or something, while the idea is rather to make them feel safe and enjoy bedtime.)
After talking to a lot of dads (and I talk to A LOT of them - RadDadShow.com), the general consensus is that first year is going to be hell no matter what.
First they are little creatures who don't understand sleep, and they eat and sleep and poop on a 24h non-stop cycle. Then they become aware of sleep and start fighting it. Then they become even more aware and decide to read books and have lunch at 3am... it goes on.
In our case, couple things helped the most: no screens, no salt and sugar, and early bed time. This way, when your kids aren't hyped up and go to bed before they are fully exhausted, sleep becomes easier to manage.
Happy to answer some questions. Hope the above helps. Good luck, and as my friend Greg Gottesman said, if you consider a long-term horizon, it's completely worth it!
It's obviously possible for one parent to look after more than one child but it feels like much more work, I'd say, than looking after a single child. On the other hand, if you have two children, they can play with eachother once they get to a certain age. Ours go and wake eachother up in the morning now rather than waking us up which is nice!
You will lose most of your free time the first few years if you have kids though. Not all of it, but life becomes much extremely interrupt-driven and is still that way even now ours are school age.
The most difficult time is right after the second child is born: you have two children who are incompatible in their needs, abilities, sleep schedules...
But think long-term: if you have only one child, then anytime it needs human interaction, it will turn to you. Two children, they can play together for a while... while you are doing something else (within hearing distance).
Here is a trick we used for a 6 months old child:
Make the child room accident-proof. Trivial things, such as the child stupidly crawling against the wall and hitting it by head, that's not a problem. Just make sure that the child cannot reach anything dangerous (sharp, breakable, poisonous, small enough to swallow), that there are no plastic bags, that the power outlets are filled with small plastic pieces, and that there is nowhere to fall from. To achieve the last one, instead of bed we simply have a mattress on the floor, surrounded by soft carpets, so the child can crawl from/to the "bed" anytime. Have a box full of safe toys in the room.
Now, when the child wakes up, as long as it is not crying, feel free to sleep. If the child is crying, breastfeed, change the diapers, then return to the room and continue to sleep. Choose five or seven random toys from the box, and put them on random places on the floor, about one step far from each other (the time your child spends crawling between the toys is also the time you spend sleeping). During the day, as long as your child is okay playing in the room, feel free to take a nap there; just remember to close the door.
You will not get long uninterrupted sleep this way, but you can get a long interrupted sleep and a few naps. Anyway, with breastfeeding, long uninterrupted sleep is impossible for a mother with little baby; but it gradually gets longer: a newborn will wake up several times during the night, but the 2 years old child can sleep the whole night.
And here is a trick we used for a 3 years old child:
She can play with tablet: there is Tux Paint and Scratch (where she only edits scenes) installed. In the morning she gets an apple and the tablet, and we get an extra hour of sleep. (Yeah, yeah, some people disapprove of little kids using computers, but I can't hear their opinions while I am sleeping.)
If you insist on long uninterrupted sleep, I imagine the following strategy could work: one partner goes to sleep N hours before the child, and the other handles the evening routine alone; then the second partner wakes N hours after the child, and the first one handles the morning routine alone (adjust N depending on how long the child sleeps and how long you want to sleep).