Tag: uninterrupted sleep

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Brain Fog

https://www.studyfinds.org/parents-4000-hours-brain-fog/

Yeah, the sleep deprivation as a parent is impressive. Before parenthood, I assumed it would end after the late night feedings. I saw the stuff about it lasting years. I didn’t grasp that it remained as strong for years and then maybe taper off.

But, yeah, Mondays are like walking into a wall.

My approaches are:

  • Coffee doesn’t help so much as mask the tiredness. I use it anyway.
  • Sleep when I can. (For me, I fall out hard early in the night which matches the kid’s usual pattern.)
  • Leverage the external brain (calendar, reminders)

My wife does similar, but her sleep cycle wants the hardest sleep starting after 4 am, so the kid waking up around then hits her harder than it does me. I try my best to get the kid quiet in another part of the house. But, still, the brain fog is hindering her more.

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Compressed sleep

As long as I can remember, going to sleep an hour or two later means waking up earlier than normal so I get 5-6 hours of sleep. I didn’t realize there was a pattern until almost 40. And even since it still boggles that it exists. It seems logical that going to sleep later should result in waking later. Maybe at the same time with aid of an alarm. But, for me, it means waking up before the alarm.

Going to sleep too early also means 5-6 hours of sleep. So, if I go to sleep at say 9pm, then I wake up between 2-3am. I probably am fully awake but tired for a few hours. I will crash hard and need another few hours of sleep to feel rested.

Let’s hope this is not genetic.

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Sleeping through the night

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The hairy baby sleeping

A 2018 Pediatrics study found sleeping through the night overrated. Though, to be honest, I have skepticism about the potential for its validity due to:

  1. it was based on self-reporting by the mothers
  2. it only measured development through age 3.

RESULTS: Using a definition of either 6 or 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, we found that 27.9% to 57.0% of 6- and 12-month-old infants did not sleep through the night. Linear regressions revealed no significant associations between sleeping through the night and concurrent or later mental development, psychomotor development, or maternal mood (P > .05). However, sleeping through the night was associated with a much lower rate of breastfeeding (P < .0001).
—  2018 Dec;142(6). pii: e20174330. doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-4330. Epub 2018 Nov 12.