As a younger guy who doesn’t have kids (yet) it’s crazy to me that parents can thrive on 2-3 hours of sleep.
How do you do it?
Does it feel like you adapted? Or are you aware of a cognitive decline?
Like, what’s the experience like?
How do you do it?
Does it feel like you adapted? Or are you aware of a cognitive decline?
Like, what’s the experience like?
Oh, we didn't thrive. It sucked. There was absolutely a cognitive decline, and physical exhaustion to boot. We adapted in the sense that we weren't falling asleep on the subway after awhile, but I flat out told work not to expect my best work for the next six months.
But it also wasn't 2-3 hours of sleep a night. Unless you get really unlucky, babies do sleep for hours at a stretch; and you're very incentivized to sleep when the baby sleeps.
There are adaptive strategies! If you're supplementing with formula (or even if you're not, to a lesser degree) you can take shifts. I would go to bed at ~9pm, and my wife would be "on call" until ~3am. After that, when the baby woke up, I would be on call, and would wake up and take care of her until ~9am, when I had to leave for work. This guaranteed a six-hour period where even though we'd get woken up, we could at least not have to get up and take care of the kid. Granted, it's still interrupted sleep.
But in general, the experience is: you're happy but also low-key miserable, and you feel like your head is full of cotton.
The low-level stress also impacts your immune system, so you get sick more, and when your kid goes to daycare, you get sick a lot more.
I think many 20 and 30 somethings (without kids) who, if they were to get under 6 or so hours of sleep for a couple nights, would automatically pass out on the train/subway/bus/etc, in public.
So how are (seemingly most) parents getting 4 hours of sleep for extended periods of time yet aren't falling asleep on public transit on their way to work?
Most parents are getting more than 4 hours of sleep, but it's broken up. If your kid is on a 3 hour feed/sleep cycle, and it takes 1 hour for feeding and getting back to sleep (which is in the difficult part of the spectrum), that leave s you 2 hours to sleep before another wake up.
If both parents are needed, or if it's a single parent, chances are you're going to bed early, because you're exhausted; you'll probably go to bed when the evening feeding is done, say at 9pm, sleep for two hours, wake up for 1 hour, go back to sleep at midnight for two more hours, wake up at 2 am to feed, sleep again until 5 am, feed until 6 am and then get ready for the day.
You've ended up with 6 hours of sleep -- this is okish. If you have two parents taking shifts, one parent slept from 9-11, and then from 12-5, for a total of 7 hours; the other slept from 9-2, and from 3-5, also a total of 7 hours.
Of course, some nights don't go well, or the evening feeding is over at 8 and you don't really want to go to bed then, and that pushes everything back. But, if feeding only takes 30 minutes, that helps a bit. And some times the feeding cycles clash with sleep cycles -- it was awful for the (thankfully short) period where baby was consistently waking us up during REM sleep.
Also --- micronaps :D
If this is happening and you're not a single parent and your kid's not got chronic health issues, you're doing something wrong. And actually unless both those things are true you should still be able to manage 6-9hrs (though with one or two interruptions, admittedly). Most parents do not manage to screw themselves this badly for very long before figuring out what's up, I'm sure, because the solutions aren't exactly rocket science (take shifts to ensure 5-6hrs uninterrupted plus more with interruptions for both partners; go to bed earlier)
Can't speak for everyone, but I did. How do you tell an exhausted parent taking a snooze on the train from an exhausted non-parent taking a snooze on the train?
A watch is around 4 or 6 hours on deck, and then 4 or 6 hours to eat and sleep a bit before going on deck again. This can last for a few days or a few weeks.
I am always amazed at how quickly my body starts to treat each on/off cycle as a biological day. It takes around a day to get used to it, and a day to go back to normal when the race is over.
But I feel like I could continue in that pattern forever, when doing it.
Apparently long distance solo yachtsmen will sleep 10 or 15 mins out of each hour, sometimes for months, with little ill effects.
Humans may need a certain amount of REM sleep per day, but my experience is that is doesn't necessarily have to contiguous.
My sleep has not recovered, and I don’t expect it will for a few years. On the other hand, I’m not going out drinking anymore, or staying out late, so all those hangovers mornings I used to have don’t happen anymore, and I think that just cancels out the sleep deprivation.
And yeah - I significantly cut down on my drinking for awhile, because while waking up with a hangover is never fun, waking up with a hangover and having to take care of a small child is awful.
It was really bad early on with the overnight feeding --- this was a two person endeavor for several months until we gave up on milk coming in and just did formula. As the kid got older, the cycle lengthened. Initially we got about 2 hours of sleep after feeding before he woke us up, this was actually better than when it got to three hours, and we'd wake up in the middle of a rem cycle every time. Once it got to 4 hours sleep every time, it was fine enough. I have a much harder time remembering things from this period of my life than before or after; I suspect as a consequence of persistent sleep deprivation. I also accidentally found out what happens when I stay up for 24 hours straight, I don't care for that.
I still don't get as much sleep as pre-kid, 8 years later, but I've adapted. One nice thing is I would say I may have trouble falling asleep once or twice a year now, instead of once or twice a month. I'm looking forward to 5th grade when his school district pushes back the start time, so I can wake up later.
Mostly we found it fair to divide the night into half for her, and half for me; if he woke up between bedtime and 1AM my wife would deal with him. If he woke between 1AM and morning I would deal with him.
Having two hours of sleep total? That would kill me. But waking up for a few minutes, then going back to bed a couple of times in one night? Not as bad as you'd think. I know I zombie-walked a few mornings, but it didn't seem to cause too many actual problems. Of course when we were in this phase we'd often try to go to bed ourselves as early as possible.