Sleep When the Baby Sleeps

Sleep is something that everyone needs, but all too often we don’t get enough of. When we’re young, we often stay out too late and then have to get up earlier than we want the next day. When we’re old, we go to bed early and wake up early. Somewhere in between, we have kids and sleep even less than when we didn’t have them. For whatever reason, we like to get less sleep than we should.

Getting enough sleep at night is one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy and happy. When you don’t sleep enough, you’ll be grumpy and you’ll often eat more than you should. You won’t have a lot of energy to complete the things that you need to in a day. You’ll find it much easier to just sit on the couch and do nothing rather than fulfilling your responsibilities - sleep is important to make you productive.

Once you have a baby, you can forget sleeping through the night for a while. While you may get really lucky and only have a couple of months of not being able to sleep through the night, you should plan on many months of not getting a full night’s sleep. It’s extremely frustrating. You might be surprised that you survive it, but it’s one of those experiences that we tend to block out when we want more than one kid.

Common advice is to sleep when the baby is sleeping. You may only get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep, but if you’re home all day with just the baby, then you can sleep when they do their naps as well. 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is best, but if you can’t make that happen, then 8 hours of interrupted sleep is better than less sleep. Take advantage of it if you need to - you won’t regret it.

Ultimately though, this advice doesn’t mean you have to sleep all the time that the baby does. What this advice really means is that you should take the time when the baby is sleeping for yourself. For many people, that means sleep. However, you may prefer to use that time to workout or catch up on your favorite hobby. When the baby sleeps, it’s your time to do what you want to do.

You can clean the house while the baby is awake. You can do the dishes or the laundry while the baby is awake. Once the baby is asleep, you should take the time to do what you want. Your baby is going to be taking a few naps throughout the day, so you can sleep during one of those naps if you want, and then do something else during another nap. Do what makes the most sense for you.

Of course, this advice only works with your first child. If you choose to have a second child then you’re not going to be able to sleep when the baby sleeps unless the older child is at daycare or already in school. You’ll have to find a way to power through the day as you’ll be responsible to take care of them as well. This is one area where having two kids is much harder than having one child - way less downtime.

Do what you want when the baby is sleeping. If that means sleeping, then great. If not, then do what will give you the energy for the rest of the day.