Coping with Sleep Deprivation

Let’s just get the bad news out of the way first: sleep will forever change once you have a baby. Managing infant sleep is important to getting a good night’s sleep ourselves, but it is often a bit of trial and error. According to the La Leche League, infant sleep is different from the way we sleep as adults and is a developmental process that changes over time.

 So it is completely normal that most newborns will sleep a lot but in shorter two to three hour bursts both day and night.  And while they start to normalize their circadian rhythm (the way we differentiate between day and night) it can make nighttime sleep seem elusive.  It makes sense considering the fact that most babies in utero sleep during the day – when mothers are moving around rocking their babies to sleep – and tend to be awake at night when we lay down – think about all the little kicks a mother gets when they’re trying to sleep!

Not only that, but while we are pregnant our baby is completely taken care of in terms of nutrients by way of the umbilical cord.  Once that connection is taken away they are reliant on their parents to give them food.  So it’s no wonder that it can take some time before what we consider to be normal sleep begins to take shape.  During those long exhausting nights of a waking baby there are some good ways to help cope. It’s not perfect, but gaining a bit of perspective and realizing that it won’t last forever can help get through those nights of broken sleep.