For New Parents, Dad May Be The One Missing The Most Sleep

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from the book The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years.

If you haven't experienced it, no simple description will capture the feeling of deep, dizzying fatigue that can accompany the first few weeks with a newborn.

By the third child, Emily was wishing for an infant boarding school that could keep her son for those first few weeks of constant night waking and return him in a semiregulated state at about eight weeks. Well, not really, but the thought might have crossed her admittedly addled brain at 3 a.m. on several successive nights.

You might think that mothers, being the ones with the breast milk, have it the worst. But science seems to indicate otherwise.

For example, one 2013 study of 21 mother-father pairs enjoying their first infant experience found that fathers actually got less sleep than the mothers and experienced more confirmed sleepiness, as measured using wrist trackers. The study authors also found that even though the mothers got more sleep, their sleep was disturbed more often, which makes sense given their role in feeding.

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