People who are about to become parents are often warned that their little bundle of joy will result in a lot of sleepless nights - and now science has quantified exactly how much sleep new parents lose on average in those first few years raising a child. Researchers say the first three months of having a baby are particularly grueling with the effect observed to be strongest in women.
According to a new study by researchers from the University of Warwick, parents experience the birth of their first child can look forward to up to six years of sleepless nights. The paper, titled 'Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers,' examined the sleep patterns of more than 2,500 women and 2,200 men who reported having a child between 2008 and 2015.
Parents were asked to rate their sleep satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10 and noted how many hours of sleep they got on a normal weekday or weekend during yearly interviews with university researchers. The study found that birth mothers slept on average 1 hour less than they did before getting pregnant, while a father's sleep duration decreased by around 15 minutes.
"Women tend to experience more sleep disruption than men after the birth of a child reflecting that mothers are still more often in the role of the primary caregiver than fathers," said Dr. Sakari Lemola, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick.
By the time children get to be 4-6 years old, sleep duration was still about 20 minutes shorter for mothers and 15 minutes shorter for fathers as compared to their sleep duration before pregnancy. Sleep deprivation was more pronounced in first-time parents as compared with parents who were having their second or third child.
“We didn’t expect to find that, but we believe that there are certainly many changes in the responsibilities you have,” said Dr Sakari Lemola, co-author of the research from the University of Warwick.
It didn't matter how much money the parents made or whether it was a single-parent household - everyone lost sleep following the birth of their first child.
"While having children is a major source of joy for most parents it is possible that increased demands and responsibilities associated with the role as a parent lead to shorter sleep and decreased sleep quality even up to 6 years after birth of the first child," Dr. Lemola said.