I don’t much like this article by Lucy Cavendish on why mothers of infants today supposedly get less sleep than their own mothers did back when we were infants. Magazine surveys as “research”, puh, are we even comparing apples with oranges here? Who knows, so I’m not going to read much into that. I’m a bit tired of magazine research, wake me up when we’ve got some proper data to talk about otherwise we might as well stick to anecdotes.
You’ll probably like this article if you’re a bit of a scheduler-mother, it’ll have some kind of common sense appeal (and if your system means you’re getting some good sleep then good for you). I do appreciate Cavendish’s overall tone that mothers should go easy on themselves, and babies won’t fall apart just because we take care of ourselves for a change. Well, actually babies will generally fall apart, they’re very unreasonable, it’s their job. As Nora Ephron once said – children would rather have a suicidal mother in the next room than a happy mother in Hawaii. So basically don’t ask your baby’s opinion on whether you’re coming undone, ask yourself.
Cavendish has some ideas on how to get more sleep. But for me, parking my baby at the bottom of the garden so I couldn’t hear her screaming herself to sleep while I got some down time wouldn’t have worked. Thanks anyway Mother of Ms Cavendish. I would not have been relaxing! I don’t buy all that stuff about how you’ll spoil the baby if you respond to her cries so I didn’t much go for the pearls of wisdom from older women quoted in this article either. These ideas might work for some mothers and if it helps them through a rough patch, then I’m right behind them.
But I’m not sure that the answer to all things sleep-deprivation has to be a contest between the mother’s and the baby’s needs. The article seems to make the argument that we should try anything, giving up breastfeeding for instance, but just don’t talk about equality. What about the elephant in the room? The one getting plenty of sleep. Oi dozy – wake up!
The other interesting finding is that fathers are getting plenty of shut-eye in those early months of baby’s life – an average of seven hours, in fact. Of those surveyed, 55% said that they “hardly ever or never” got up to attend to the baby in the night, while 23% said that their baby’s cries didn’t rouse them.
This is a factor I’ll bet hasn’t changed much over the generations and yet still mothers’ magazines aren’t really talking about the idea that fathers could be the answer to mothers getting better than 3 hours sleep a night. We can look at dummies and crying it out and wondering if today’s mothers are just plain neurotic but we can’t possibly change the division of night-time parenting, what’s with that? I found a great reluctance among mothers during that first year to consider sharing night-parenting with their partners. They were on the brink of insanity with sleep deprivation but they could still manage to find all the reasons under the sun why their partners couldn’t have a broken night’s sleep. Even Cavendish thinks fathers are programmed differently.
In our house I did all the breastfeeding during the night (because I have a specially designed chest for feeding babies) and my partner did most of the nappy changes during the night (because he has specially designed fingers for cleaning poo). It worked pretty well but not perfectly. Lots of people said to me – but that way both of you are getting interrupted sleep. That’s right, and that’s what it is to be the parents of a baby, I told them.
Anyway I’m off to bed. I’ll be less grumpy in the morning, sorry Ms Cavendish.
‘Night.
In the first few weeks I fed the boy, the man changed him. Then he became insane with sleep deprivation, and I wasn’t, not completely, because I had more practice drinking and gambling til all hours in my youth. He also returned to paid work. I figured I was going to be tired anyway, and the two minute nappy change didn’t make any difference. The bloke may as well have some sleep and make sensible decisions, ride his motorbike safely, and cook the dinner, do the housework and generally look after me while I looked after the kid. So I did one job, and he did all the others.
Then the kid started sleeping better, and it wasn’t a big deal for me to get up once a night, and the bloke was sleeping through. A couple of times the kid slept through. Some nights the kid got a bottle from his Dad while I slept through with earplugs.
Then the kid got a series of viruses, and he started waking again every couple of hours. Suffice to say, I’m not taking him to visit anymore plague rat toddlers. He has me once, and his Dad once, and we both go to work tired.
I had just been thinking about sleeping babies because I went to see my neighbor’s newborn last night and he’s doing three hour stretches right now, which feel like heaven to his parents.
My sleep problems were very fortunately solved, at least mostly, when I started co-sleeping. The night-nursing and diaper changes both became much easier for me in those circumstances and I felt like a new person. I didn’t need my husband in the night but a few times, and he would certainly do whatever he could. But that darn breastfeeding thing did trip him up.
I am also perplexed about that “elephant in the room . . . getting plenty of sleep.” (lol) For instance, when I see a couple who bottle-feeds and who both leave the house in the morning for a job, so there aren’t even any opportunities for naps during the day when the baby sleeps (although that always sounds much easier than it is)–why is the mother walking around like a zombie and the father is not? I don’t buy that women are programmed to do it better and that’s the end of the story. I happen to be able to go on very little sleep much better than my husband, but it’s not because of my gender. (Could it possibly be genetic? I’m just like my father in that way…but I digress.)
Johna goes and gets El out of bed when she wakes up and brings her into our bed to nurse. If she falls back asleep, great, she stays. If not, I put her back in bed. Now that she only gets up once a night, it’s not too bad.
Your critiques of the article are spot-on. God forbid we question the gender roles.
I do all the night stuff because my hubby has to get up super early for work. He does night help on the weekends but I gotta wake him up for it, he sleeps through anything…bastard.
Thank you! I can’t tell you how many times women (of all ages) chided me for “making” my husband get up to help with the baby in those early months. I frequently heard, “But you’re up already. It doesn’t make sense for him to be up, too.” He was fine staying up late to have sex or waking up in the middle of the night for a little fun. Trust me, he’ll be fine staying/getting up to help with the product of all that fun, too. I particularly hated the, “But you stay home, so you can nap all day if you wanted.” Clearly, all of those people have live-in maids, chefs and errand boys. Lastly, the best comment of all came from a woman I know with two children, who has had a live-in nanny since her first one was born. She said, “I don’t know why everyone complains about being a SAHM. I’ve never found it to be that difficult.” Her nanny and I raised our eyebrows at each other across the table.
Thanks for letting me know I’m not the only one that believes in sharing the night duties.
I agree with Deb – it’s as hard to get through the day caring for a baby as it is doing paid work. My paid work has never required me to cut things with sharp knives, precariously balance babies and hold in my temper on no sleep. I think those arguments reflect the devaluing of domestic work. Having said that, I wouldn’t expect Al to get up to change the baby if I was feeding her because I was ‘up already’.
But now that I don’t feed through the night it’s a different ball game. I ‘sleep’ through Nell’s night wakings and Al does not. But I don’t really sleep, I wake up just like Al does, and then lie perfectly still until he gets up , and then I go back to sleep. I suspect when men say ‘I sleep through’ they are actually saying ‘I pretend to sleep through because I know she’ll crack first’.
Kris – the bloke and I both sleep through when it’s not our turn. We manage to remain oblivious on a conscious level to the other getting up, feeding, changing, dosing with panadol, stripping sheets off the bed and so on.
And it was me who slept through the stripping of the sheets. I don’t think many mothers would. Apparently the kid screamed through the whole ordeal. I learned to sleep through when it was the bloke’s turn, because He Is The Boy’s Parent And He Is Also A Responsible Adult Who Can Deal With This Without My Help/Interference.
As for people who give up breastfeeding to get more sleep, really, on what planet is it easier to listen to the screaming baby while you heat a bottle? [There are plenty of reasons for giving up breastfeeding, I just don’t see the logic in this one] If you look at breastfeeding rates, compared with the rate of men who get up in the night, it’s women doing most of the bottle heating too.
Hmmm…I’m looking back at all these great comments and then at mine, and I can’t help but write in to make it clear that I wasn’t meaning to advocate that a mom staying home is in an easier circumstance than a mom going to work because she may be able to nap when the baby sleeps. I was unclear. That’s just how I got through some mornings after sleepless nights, and I remember thinking that our set-up would not be working out if I had to go to my job in the morning. The chance that one parent may or may not be able to nap doesn’t excuse the other from doing some inconvenient parenting.
It actually really annoys me when people say to “just sleep when the baby sleeps” as if it’s that easy, and as if that is the magical solution to a mother’s sleep deprivation problem.
I know lots of women who do the night feedings b//c their partners are back at work, but in my house, my partner and I alternated and when things were uneven, we had them be uneven in MY favor, because we both figured caring for a newborn all day required more patience and concentration than going to the office! And we were right — if I do say so myself.
Three cheers to you for pointing out the irritating gap in the parenting mags — fathers can make a big difference. Single mothers, excepted. Much love to the women who miraculously do this alone.
I think it’s an assumption to suggest that all night-time parenting decisions can be attributed to gender roles. In the early days of parenting I needed to be supported (for the most part of 24 hours) by an alert and relaxed, non sleep deprived partner. We had very little support from others outside of our very small family unit and I knew if we were BOTH sleep deprived we’d eventually kill each other. I mean we would have gone completely psychotic. That’s not to say that my partner wasn’t willing to do the regular night shift but I couldn’t see the point. You may think I’m in denial about this but I really think it had little to do with traditional roles.
what a great post. Many of my friends are now first time mothers and they are going through exactly the kind of stuff you’ve described here. Some of them give the exact excuses you’ve outlined here but at the same time when I’ve pressed them about those excuses I find out that there IS a lot of resentment there about the inequality involved in parenting. One mother has recently gone back to work – funny she STILL does the night time parenting even though SHE has to get up the next day and go to work. ‘He’s not used to getting up’ she reasons. sigh.
Ya that whole sleep when the baby sleep thing goes out the window when you have your second kid anyway.
kate – I have a friend who refers to toddlers as weapons of mass destruction for their sickness-spreading capacities. And you are a super-sleeper – sleeping through sheet-changing. Wow!
Marjorie – I didn’t think your original comment read badly and I too have come across working ‘outside the home’ couples with bottle-fed infants and the mothers seem to be doing the bulk of the night parenting.
radicalmama – it is very interesting hearing how couples differently approach fairness with night parenting, your approach sounds very effective and it is how my own parents did it. Something they both hold with pride to this day for its progressiveness at the time.
pluckymama – how have you gone doing all the night parenting, has it worked out for you? I guess like all of us you must look forward to the weekends. And you brought up a good point with the second child thing – I imagine night parenting might be a bit different too with 2 kids; it might have to be more shared when 2 children might require settling at different times of the night?
Deb & Kris – I agree with you that there is a very stubborn mindset around who should be doing the night parenting and it comes down to our intrinsic values around work inside the home and the work outside the home. No-one likes getting up in the night, sleep deprivation is a form of torture, no-one performs particularly well with it – no-one is really designed all that well for coping with it though some people do cope better than others. My partner had some exposure to shift work so he was better at falling asleep quickly no matter what time it was whereas I felt quite out of alignment. The work of looking after a baby suffers from the effects of broken sleep just as much as the work in the office does (as put well by ‘mom’).
Kris – I liked your observation about what “sleeping through the baby crying” really means for both parents. I too have pretended so that he’ll have to take up his turn.
mom- thanks for reminding me about single parents, I was totally remiss in not considering their experiences of night parenting in this discussion. Like you said so beautifully, my heart also goes out to them, how do they do it?
steph – I take your point. Swings and roundabouts, what goes around comes around in relationships and for sure in some relationships the work of night parenting is repaid equally by the other parent in other elements of household work.. and you’re right that not all decisions reflect gender roles BUT there is definitely something going on with gender when the vast majority of night parenting is done by women rather than being shared with men. Night parenting is exhausting, for it to be a fair trade-off the other parent would want to be doing a LOT. I know if you’re breast-feeding that this can quickly establish the mother as the one doing the night parenting, but do you think you and your partner would have considered ever doing it the other way around – he doing all the night parenting and you the other household stuff and being the relaxed/alert one if it had been possible (either with expressed milk or bottle feeding) for him to do that part of the night work?
m – I think you’re right, there is such a lack of questioning around night parenting responsibilities that most mothers think their divisions of responsibilities are reasonable because everyone thinks it is but deep down are very resentful because you can’t get up night after night and do it all alone without knowing that this is completely unfair.
Thanks for all the fascinating comments. I’ve logged on away from my computer so I’m signing in under a different name – blue milk.
Ya, Brent needs to help out a bit more when there’s two. He usually takes care of Silas if I’m nursing (when co-sleeping I do that a lot at night). We tried to get my husband to do night feedings on weekends with my first one, I’d pump and have it all ready but I’d just lie there awake because I can’t sleep with crying happening, plus I didn’t know if he’d do everything right and i was worried. It ended up being easier if I just did it all. If my husband ever happens to wake up to screaming then he’s on his feet in like three seconds. He usually wont wake up though. I thought I came up with the whole “I do the night stuff because hubby has to work” thing on my own. No one told me that’s what I should do. I always end up getting more sleep than he does anyway.
I did the night stuff with first baby because I couldn’t relinquish it. I couldn’t let go enough to trust him… or maybe his ambivalence to her (and his criticism of me) made me defensive and wary.
Second baby was prem and almost died. Once I got him home, I couldn’t put him down. By then father was almost out the door anyway.
with baby three, partner left early on. He never did any night caring, even when I had terrible mastitis. He took a job that meant he was away all week and only saw her on weekends.
We co-slept. And sometimes, in the night, if a breastfeed didnt calm her,I just let her lay beside me and cry while I patted her, because I was too damn exhausted to do anything else.
Yet baby three was the easiest because there was no exhausted negotiating or hurt feelings or resentment, or comments about who was supposed to do what. Just me.
I’m fricking exhausted. But I’m with you, I cannot sleep with my child losing it next to me, in the next room or anywhere on this planet. No judgment against those who do, I’m simply unwilling.
[…] an hour the second time around when I had a break-through – fuck this, I am back at work, and this night-parenting stuff is long overdue for sharing. My partner had had a late night getting things ready for the week, but […]
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