So, anyone with kids is probably going to have dementia?
Kids weren't as disruptive to sleep as I expected after reading horror stories online. The way the internet talks about child raising sometimes makes it feel like martyrdom, but the internet tends to focus on worst-case stories and people venting about uniquely bad situations. It's almost taboo to share positive stories when other parents are sharing their struggles, so most conversations veer toward discussions from parents who are struggling the most while other parents keep quiet. I've found it helpful to identify parents who are doing well and specifically ask them what they're doing, because most parents are too polite to tell others how to raise their kids.
There are always edge cases and every child is different, so of course we should all be considerate of other parents and cut them slack and/or provide assistance when they are struggling.
However, I and most of my friends have had good results with combinations of sleep training and adjusting our own sleep schedules for additional buffer. The key for me was to go to bed an hour earlier than normal. If I get interrupted in the middle of the night, I use that extra hour to sleep in. If I don't get interrupted (most common case) I simply wake up an hour earlier than normal. It doesn't cover every night and every situation, but it fits most nights.
Bingo. Also don't insist on both being awake for every nighttime wake period and use a shift system, plus offset your go-to-bed times, and then, unless you're very unlucky or your newborn has some kind of illness, you're looking at 6ish hours of sleep a night with at least one night a week of 8+ hours (when you can each give the other a "sleep make-up night" to sleep in basically indefinitely, probably on a weekend).
Sleep train right, and you're gonna be doing this for 3 months, tops. They should be down to one feeding a night around IIRC 1 month, so it gets way better then.
3 for 3 on having our kids sleeping through the night (as in, we only have to wake up and do something if there's an unusual situation, and aren't woken up at all at least 6 weeks a night) by no later than 10 weeks. I believe some people do get unlucky and their kids just won't sleep through the night that early, but it's quite rare (again, unless your kid's sick, that changes everything).
Everyone we see having trouble with it is one or more of:
1) keeping their kid in the same room or same bed (no judgement on co-sleeping for other reasons, but continuing it past the first couple weeks seems, anecdotally, strongly correlated with kids who still won't sleep through the night at 6 months and beyond, and have trouble going to sleep in the first place),
2) pouncing on their baby the second they make a sound at night, even past the first couple weeks, at which point you should stop that and gradually increase your response times to waking/crying unless you want to train your kid to wake up a lot (by rewarding waking with attention, and not letting them learn how to transition between sleep cycles),
3) unable to handle "cry it out" for the 2-3 nights it'll probably take to finish the process, if you've followed the steps you should have to correctly reduce how often they wake by ~8 weeks or so (if you haven't, it might take a lot longer, but... just don't do that)
Some things I did off the top of my head:
- 15 min cry buffer. More than that and check diaper, or give a bottle/feeding. Never turn on the lights during these check-in times... always use a dim (soft colored light) night light that's already on to keep things "dark". Changing diapers with little light gets easier the more you do it.
- Burping a newborn/baby is an essential technique. Don't leave the feeding until you get a good burp out of them. More often than not if the diaper is clean and they're fed, and they keep crying, it's trapped air that needs to be burped out.
- I use a sound machine with white noise which drowns out almost all external noises.
- No soothers. I let me kids figure out where their thumbs are and they use that. Too many times with my first kid I was going in to pick up the soother that dropped out of their mouth which made them cry.
- Keep their room "cool". Nobody likes sweating in their sleep.
A newborn will be waking up every 2-3 hours likely, but so far for me, by 3-5 months, the kids get to 12 hours.
Side note, I'm the father of the kids. Breastfeeding was not done by me, so I'd bottle feed from pumped milk.
Good luck!
1. breast pumping provided us appreciated flexibility. After a crappy one, we got a good breast pump that did both at once. Wife appreciated being untethered from child for her relief. I appreciated being able to feed child.
2. We weren't too worried when we switched to formula exclusively after a while. Sooo many people get hung up on "breast is best" dialogue. Best comment I heard was a Maternal Child Health nurse pointing at a school yard of kids saying "Can you tell me which was breast fed and which was formula?"
Ultimately though, you do you.
No qualms at all about using formula within the first 4-6 months.
I think we have the Spectra S2 still in the cupboard for a possible next kid.
The difference between this and a cheapo one we got because we didn't know better:
- two at a time, concurrency FTW! 10 mins instead of 20 was appreciated, especially in the middle of the night! once going, milk production waits for no one.
- much quieter
- separately adjustable timing and force(pressure). Cheapo just had a single dial for "more" or "less".
- handy nightlight built in. Not a biggy but there.
Possible negative for breast pumps in general. Wife mentioned feeling like a cow in a milking shed. But would do it again.
And OT but relevant for every new parent, sorry for giving unsolicited advice. But always remember, whenever it gets tough: "They're not giving you a hard time, they're having a hard time!". That helped me better understand that it's our job to help them through whatever crazy thing they're going through at any given time.
This perspective is useful. We have a cat that sometimes does stuff we wish he wouldn’t and now when unexpected stuff happens I’ve come to realize it means something is bothering him, rather than be frustrated by him.
Hopefully that translates.
Best of luck!
Also they are at 30% higher risk of something that is already kinda unlikely for most of the population if you follow a healthy lifestyle. Most of the research points towards vascular disease being the most important indicator of heightened dementia risk on an otherwise healthy population, and this study only controlled for severe vascular disease like having had a stroke or infarction.
Out of 1000 people who live to be over 70 and sleep properly, ~65 of them get dementia.
Out of another 1000 people who live to be over 70 and sleep improperly, ~80 of them get dementia.
So an extra 15 people out of 1000 get dementia in the "sleep improperly" group.
Someone please check my application of natural frequencies!
Pre-6 months, we’re talking about a zombie lifestyle where there is no “sleeping at night,” just sleeping between feedings.
I acknowledge there are definitely both cultural and hereditary elements to this, but your comment is so starkly different from my experience and the experience of my friends.
But it turns out toddlers will get up in the night and ask you to tuck them back in, they will get up because they had a scary dream, because they can't find their stuffed animal, and don't get me started on night terrors.
The point is I don't think this tracks.
I don't think I've had a solid week of uninterrupted sleep since our first came home.
My experience/understanding: Very bright kids get night terrors when you make sure they are physically tired enough to sleep but fail to make sure they are mentally tired enough to sleep. You need both to sleep deeply and bright kids who can't yet read have trouble reaching a state of being adequately mentally tired.
I suggest you join some parenting lists for people suffering from having made the mistake if giving birth to bright kids. Tagfam.org is probably still a good place to begin trying to find support resources and reliable info.
Edit: Bright kids are known to be prone to a variety of sleep issues. I spent twelve years arranging every minute of every day to make sleep feasible for one of my kids.
YMMV but kids have their hangups and it's often not possible to negotiate rationally. They also regress (this past year has been terrible, with no school for extended periods, staying at grandma's every couple of weeks so parents can get work done...), and you're back to square one.
Ours are 2 and 5, and I haven't slept in on a Saturday morning since 2015.
If you want to have both parents working, stay late at the office, have both parents involved with kids for every activity, and also work on side projects late at night, you're going to struggle until the kids are more self sufficient.
Even without kids, waking up at 6AM, hustling through morning routines and to the office, working to 6PM and then getting home at 6:30PM (assuming commute) leaves about 3.5 hours of free time and 8 hours for sleep. If you're trying to shoe-horn involved hobbies and side projects into those weekdays, something has to give regardless of whether or not you have kids.
The standard parent learning curve usually involves: Becoming more efficient with your routines, becoming more efficient with time management at the office, learning to say no to unnecessary requests, pushing back on jobs that demand long hours (or changing jobs to a more reasonable 8-hour workday company), becoming more efficient with meals and grocery shopping, doing more tradeoff load sharing with partner instead of both people being involved in everything, and letting kids have more independent play time as they age.
That said, you simply won't have as much alone time with kids in the equation. If you're trying to do too much, you have to sacrifice somewhere. It's better to do a few things well than to try to do everything at 75% commitment or being 75% awake.