4 ms·

Nb to observers considering having kids but worried about this, unless you’re badly space-constrained it’s pretty easy to keep sleep for both adults north of 6.

Nb to observers considering having kids but worried about this, unless you’re badly space-constrained it’s pretty easy to keep sleep for both adults north of 6.5hrs a night, and to have catch-up nights for both on the weekend (9+ hours). Plus the period in which night feedings are necessary, rather than habit, is only 2.5-3 months anyway. It’s mostly a fairly simple scheduling problem, plus having one adult sleeping somewhere they can’t hear the baby during each “shift” (loud fans help). Not having to jump instantly on the crying baby also lets you slooowwwly stretch your response times longer, which is a nice smooth way work toward the glorious 1-feeding-per-night and finally no-night-feedings period (babies wake up and cry even when not hungry—past the earliest weeks, immediate feeding may not be necessary, and if you can wait a minute they may go back to sleep, because they weren’t hungry, they’d just woken up and briefly freaked out—if you keep pouncing every time as soon as they make a noise, it trains them to stay awake rather than going back to sleep, and you’ll have a bad time for, potentially, much longer) All bets off if you have a kid who’s ill, but for most babies, it’s entirely achievable.

csdvrx 3y ago
> It’s mostly a fairly simple scheduling problem, plus having one adult sleeping somewhere they can’t hear the baby during each “shift” (loud fans help). Wouldn't it be easier to have a soundproofed room for either the parents or the baby? Your key assumption is "not badly space-constrained" is plausible, but no time/scheduling constraints for adults seems unlikely. > if you can wait a minute they may go back to sleep, because they weren’t hungry, they’d just woken up and briefly freaked out—if you keep pouncing every time as soon as they make a noise, it trains them to stay awake rather than going back to sleep, and you’ll have a bad time for, potentially, much longer Your observations would be in favor of soundproofing where delaying intervention would be a feature, not a bug.
- wharvle 3y ago
  What’s with the soundproofing thing? I don’t follow what you’re getting at. Yes you could solve the problem with soundproofing, but that’s really expensive. Some distance and a loud fan is something more people already have than soundproofed rooms. If you’d rather soundproof, sure, go nuts, I’m not providing an exhaustive list of solutions. > but no time/scheduling constraints for adults seems unlikely. For parents with 9-5 sorts of jobs, it works fine. You don’t even need “sleep-per-parent x2” amounts of contiguous time available, because there’ll be a gap of usually a hour or three between the last time the kid wakes up for first-parent and the first time they wake up for second-parent, and it’s not like you can’t get any sleep while “on duty”. We were managing 6ish uninterrupted hours per parent in the very worst weeks for each kid, and more than that for total sleep, with a sleep window (for us, the parents) of about 10 hours. Not sure what you mean. Yeah inconsistent shift work or something could mess it up, but that messes up everything.
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    > Not sure what you mean I'm basically non functional at less than 7h of uninterrupted sleep per night. > We were managing 6ish uninterrupted hours per parent It may not be enough > What’s with the soundproofing thing? Soundproof the room where either the parents or the baby are would be more reliable to control the noise level by preventing it from reaching out instead of adding more. It could also be converted later into a music room
    - wharvle 3y ago
      If “just soundproof the room” is an option, I’m guessing a night nanny’s in the budget, too. What we did was just one of us would sleep in another room with the monitor, and the other in our normal bedroom. Fan and door closed was all the soundproofing we needed in the normal bedroom. But that’s why having little space might make it a lot tougher—ours relied on having three rooms, two of which with sleeping-places for adults. And Ok we probably weren’t averaging 7 hours uninterrupted until about 6-8 weeks, but total sleep was consistently over 7, and uninterrupted of 6ish is a lot better than what many parents report (the ones where both get up for every feeding… I’ll never understand those folks) [edit] my overall point is that with just a little thought applied to the problem, and possibly some resources but likely not that much if you already live in a house instead of a small apartment, you’re not guaranteed impossibly-short sounding amounts of sleep just because you have an infant.
      - csdvrx 3y ago
        > my overall point is that with just a little thought applied to the problem, and possibly some resources but likely not that much if you already live in a house instead of a small apartment, you’re not guaranteed impossibly-short sounding amounts of sleep just because you have an infant. Oh I absolutely agree, I just wanted to understand the problem better and see if there was something I had missed!
123pie123 3y ago
I suspect the above worked for you? this is 100% nothing like my experience and it wasn't a "fairly simple scheduling problem" and "Not having to jump instantly on the crying baby" made things worse our experience was a not great to begin with, but the sleep deprivation only lasted around 6-10months per child and for the benefits it gave - I would definately do it again to all the potential parents out there, please do your own research and try not to fall in the trap of the victorian mindset - which on the whole (massively over simplifying it) seems to suggest actions to make your life easier at the expense of the baby.
- wharvle 3y ago
  Like a charm, three for three. No night feedings past 12 weeks for any of the three. Longest “cry it out” period of the three was three nights (because all were comfortably at a single feeding by then, and used to falling back asleep on their own after more-minor sleep interruptions) All slept great—and as long as medical professionals say they should, which is a thing we notice most other young kids in our circle not coming even close to doing—until old enough to start worrying about death and stuff like that, which—yeah, same here, kid. [edit] and actually the whole rest of this holds without capping it with that action, it just means you’ll need to keep up the shift thing for 6-12 months instead of 3, and—from what I’ve seen—deal with a couple nights a week of your kid waking up in the middle of the night the whole rest of their early childhood. The shift-sleeping strategy has no bearing on that, but does get you a couple REM cycles a night, even in the worst of it.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
To anyone else reading my post and reconsidering having kids: sleep is the tiniest sacrifice that I'm more than happy to make for my kid. The sheer job this little girl brings into my world can't be matched by anything, let alone something as simple as sleep :)
- wharvle 3y ago
  Oh, for sure. The biggest sacrifice isn’t sleep. It’s money. So very, very much money. And having to pare your hobbies down to one or two things to avoid going crazy. Both much worse than any sleep disruption. (But yes, worth it).

csdvrx 3y ago

> It’s mostly a fairly simple scheduling problem, plus having one adult sleeping somewhere they can’t hear the baby during each “shift” (loud fans help). Wouldn't it be easier to have a soundproofed room for either the parents or the baby? Your key assumption is "not badly space-constrained" is plausible, but no time/scheduling constraints for adults seems unlikely. > if you can wait a minute they may go back to sleep, because they weren’t hungry, they’d just woken up and briefly freaked out—if you keep pouncing every time as soon as they make a noise, it trains them to stay awake rather than going back to sleep, and you’ll have a bad time for, potentially, much longer Your observations would be in favor of soundproofing where delaying intervention would be a feature, not a bug.

wharvle 3y ago
What’s with the soundproofing thing? I don’t follow what you’re getting at. Yes you could solve the problem with soundproofing, but that’s really expensive. Some distance and a loud fan is something more people already have than soundproofed rooms. If you’d rather soundproof, sure, go nuts, I’m not providing an exhaustive list of solutions. > but no time/scheduling constraints for adults seems unlikely. For parents with 9-5 sorts of jobs, it works fine. You don’t even need “sleep-per-parent x2” amounts of contiguous time available, because there’ll be a gap of usually a hour or three between the last time the kid wakes up for first-parent and the first time they wake up for second-parent, and it’s not like you can’t get any sleep while “on duty”. We were managing 6ish uninterrupted hours per parent in the very worst weeks for each kid, and more than that for total sleep, with a sleep window (for us, the parents) of about 10 hours. Not sure what you mean. Yeah inconsistent shift work or something could mess it up, but that messes up everything.
- csdvrx 3y ago
  > Not sure what you mean I'm basically non functional at less than 7h of uninterrupted sleep per night. > We were managing 6ish uninterrupted hours per parent It may not be enough > What’s with the soundproofing thing? Soundproof the room where either the parents or the baby are would be more reliable to control the noise level by preventing it from reaching out instead of adding more. It could also be converted later into a music room
  - wharvle 3y ago
    If “just soundproof the room” is an option, I’m guessing a night nanny’s in the budget, too. What we did was just one of us would sleep in another room with the monitor, and the other in our normal bedroom. Fan and door closed was all the soundproofing we needed in the normal bedroom. But that’s why having little space might make it a lot tougher—ours relied on having three rooms, two of which with sleeping-places for adults. And Ok we probably weren’t averaging 7 hours uninterrupted until about 6-8 weeks, but total sleep was consistently over 7, and uninterrupted of 6ish is a lot better than what many parents report (the ones where both get up for every feeding… I’ll never understand those folks) [edit] my overall point is that with just a little thought applied to the problem, and possibly some resources but likely not that much if you already live in a house instead of a small apartment, you’re not guaranteed impossibly-short sounding amounts of sleep just because you have an infant.
    - csdvrx 3y ago
      > my overall point is that with just a little thought applied to the problem, and possibly some resources but likely not that much if you already live in a house instead of a small apartment, you’re not guaranteed impossibly-short sounding amounts of sleep just because you have an infant. Oh I absolutely agree, I just wanted to understand the problem better and see if there was something I had missed!

123pie123 3y ago

I suspect the above worked for you? this is 100% nothing like my experience and it wasn't a "fairly simple scheduling problem" and "Not having to jump instantly on the crying baby" made things worse our experience was a not great to begin with, but the sleep deprivation only lasted around 6-10months per child and for the benefits it gave - I would definately do it again to all the potential parents out there, please do your own research and try not to fall in the trap of the victorian mindset - which on the whole (massively over simplifying it) seems to suggest actions to make your life easier at the expense of the baby.

wharvle 3y ago
Like a charm, three for three. No night feedings past 12 weeks for any of the three. Longest “cry it out” period of the three was three nights (because all were comfortably at a single feeding by then, and used to falling back asleep on their own after more-minor sleep interruptions) All slept great—and as long as medical professionals say they should, which is a thing we notice most other young kids in our circle not coming even close to doing—until old enough to start worrying about death and stuff like that, which—yeah, same here, kid. [edit] and actually the whole rest of this holds without capping it with that action, it just means you’ll need to keep up the shift thing for 6-12 months instead of 3, and—from what I’ve seen—deal with a couple nights a week of your kid waking up in the middle of the night the whole rest of their early childhood. The shift-sleeping strategy has no bearing on that, but does get you a couple REM cycles a night, even in the worst of it.

spaceman_2020 3y ago

To anyone else reading my post and reconsidering having kids: sleep is the tiniest sacrifice that I'm more than happy to make for my kid. The sheer job this little girl brings into my world can't be matched by anything, let alone something as simple as sleep :)

wharvle 3y ago
Oh, for sure. The biggest sacrifice isn’t sleep. It’s money. So very, very much money. And having to pare your hobbies down to one or two things to avoid going crazy. Both much worse than any sleep disruption. (But yes, worth it).