Before I became a dad, some people just wanted to talk to me about how badly sleep deprived I would be when my baby arrived.
It became honestly a little bit annoying after a time. When a guy comes up to you to congratulate you on expecting a kid, and he says,
“Congratulations Tony! That’s awesome! You will never sleep again!”
That’s not very encouraging! I mean, come on!
After my Victoria was born, I found that for the first week sleep was intermittent and tough to come by, but very quickly thereafter my wife and I developed strategies to get the sleep we need.
Before the end of the first week of Victoria’s life, we got fed up with having zero plan for how we both could get enough sleep, so we constructed a sleep rota.
It went something like this:
- I wake up around 6:00am and check on the family. If all’s well I then hit the gym before work and get some writing done.
- I leave for work around 7:45am with my wife still asleep. When the baby is hungry she will wake up to breastfeed.
- During the day, my wife usually gets a couple of naps that total 2-3 hours of sleep.
- I get home around 5:30 and my wife and we both get something to eat.
- After dinner, I take over with the baby so that my wife can take a shower, do any self-care that she needs to do.
- My wife goes to sleep around 9:00pm. I feed the baby with bottled breast milk, change diapers, and give her some education by reading to her and working on her visual focusing.
- I stay up until about 12:00am making sure the baby is well-fed, changed, and drowsy. She usually sleeps for another hour when my wife wakes up and takes over.
- Throughout the night I sleep a solid 6 hours while my wife gets another 3 hours in between feedings.
So I would get a solid uninterrupted 6 hours of sleep and my wife would get sometimes as much as 9 hours of sleep, although her sleep is unavoidably interrupted.
After about two months of this, Victoria gradually slept more and more at night until she was sleeping almost entirely through the night. Then we got to relax the sleep rota.
It is super, super critical for both you and your wife to get enough sleep no matter what phase of the baby’s life you are going through.
Build a sleep rota into your routine. Make it a priority.
It does not help the family cause to crash the car on the way to work due to lack of sleep. It does not help the baby if you drop her because you pulled an all-nighter.
Practice good scheduling and a commitment to getting enough sleep for you and your partner. It will make you a much happier new dad.
Dad and Victoria, making a commitment to getting enough sleep.
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If you enjoyed this post, check out my latest book, A Dad’s Guide to Great Sleep. You will learn: why Great Sleep is so important to your family’s well-being, Seven Sleep Habits that drastically improve your sleep hygiene with little added effort, and how to construct time-efficient Sleep Rotas for your whole family.
‘Till next time,
-Anthony
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If you enjoyed this post, check out my latest book, A Dad’s Guide to Great Sleep. You will learn: why Great Sleep is so important to your family’s well-being, Seven Sleep Habits that drastically improve your sleep hygiene with little added effort, and how to construct time-efficient Sleep Rotas for your whole family.
Thanks for your comments and tips!