5 ms·

"There is a secret known only to parents of twins, medical residents, and Alexey Guzey: the human body does not actually need sleep. After 31 hours awake, you g

"There is a secret known only to parents of twins, medical residents, and Alexey Guzey: the human body does not actually need sleep. After 31 hours awake, you get an integer overflow in God’s database and go back to being well-rested again. Also you gain the ability to see angels." LOL. Amaze. On that note, I've heard some amazing things about the Snoo. It was banned from our house because of Luddit-ian reasons, but I still maintain you're not bonding with your baby at 3 am and parents should get that extra sleep and let a robot handle the near-robotic motions required to put a (< 6month old) baby back to sleep.

jefftk 3y ago
The Snoo worked very well for us with baby #3 (#1 and #2 were before it was released). I'm optimistic that we will continue to make progress in this area and find something that works for a larger fraction of babies!
the_af 3y ago
> LOL. Amaze. Don't be too amazed though. What he states isn't the scientific consensus. Persistent sleep deprivation is harmful to human beings, and you don't "reset and go back to well-rested again". Some sleep deprivation can be endured though, as any parent will tell you -- I know I wasn't "well rested" afterwards. I mostly was grumpy and very slow to think.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  The writing was “tongue in cheek.” He doesn’t actually mean it.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Oops. I misunderstood the tone. Maybe I need more sleep? ;)
danenania 3y ago
"I still maintain you're not bonding with your baby at 3 am" I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot happening beneath the surface both biologically and psychologically (on both sides) when a parent soothes a baby at 3am.
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  Well, the key differentiator is at 3am. I haven't seen any evidence that the bonding at those times is somehow special. I am assuming you are bonding with the baby at other times during the day.
  - kqr 3y ago
    I agree. I'd much rather sleep at night and bond both consciously and get whatever happens "beneath the surface", well-rested during the day. The alternative is that I'm cranky both night and day and only get that thing that happens "beneath the surface" without the awsome beautiful conscious bit that I personally really care about. But not all people get cranky from a lack of sleep, so this will vary between families!
scruple 3y ago
My employer got us a Snoo (rental) for each child. With our twins, they worked pretty well until 4 months or so. Our singleton wouldn't go for it at all. I agree that there's no genuinely useful bonding happening in the dead of the night when you're so sleep deprived that you might be hallucinating. It's just base survival after a certain point. I used to run dual feedings overnight with bottled milk so my wife could keep resting as much as possible. I used to time myself and optimize the hell out of it so that I could get back to bed. I would set alarms to wake myself up, get the milk from the fridge, warm the bottles, get the twins out of the Snoo and into their tandem Boppy, soothe them, feed them, change diapers, re-swaddle, and then get them back to bed, clean bottles, make sure the next round of bottles is prepped. I could run all of that, when everything went right, in just under 30 minutes. If the twins were fussy, the dogs woke up and wanted to go out, etc., it could creep up to an hour. I remember my hands being so dry from washing bottles that my skin was cracked and bleeding. We eventually got rid of all of the fancy bullshit and opted for bottles, etc., that had the least number of parts. That entire first year with twins is still mostly a blur today, 4 years later. I went through basic military training and spent some time overseas in war zones. I've gone through sleep deprivation training and the real thing overseas. With kids, though, you've got a physical, mental, and emotional component to it that nothing can really simulate. It's draining in ways that are hard to describe, even to other parents who are in the trenches around you. You learn a lot about yourself, and your partner, and friends and family, but I don't remember much bonding going on during those late night sessions. Just a lot of wishing and praying that everything goes right. But maybe that's just the holes in my memory.
- 542458 3y ago
  Thanks for writing this. The second part makes me feel a bit better about my own life - my experiences are the same as yours. Having children exposes flaws in your life skills, mental health, and relationships that were previously invisible. It can be quite distressing, or at least it was for me.
dustincoates 3y ago
Our second baby didn't really like the Snoo (however, he's nearly a year and a half old, and he still doesn't sleep well), but for our first kid, we got the Snoo after going crazy from a month and a half of colicky baby screams. And—I'm not making it up—she slept through the night from nearly the first night. It wasn't consistent from there until she was older, but I'll never cease to praise the machine.

jefftk 3y ago

The Snoo worked very well for us with baby #3 (#1 and #2 were before it was released). I'm optimistic that we will continue to make progress in this area and find something that works for a larger fraction of babies!

the_af 3y ago

> LOL. Amaze. Don't be too amazed though. What he states isn't the scientific consensus. Persistent sleep deprivation is harmful to human beings, and you don't "reset and go back to well-rested again". Some sleep deprivation can be endured though, as any parent will tell you -- I know I wasn't "well rested" afterwards. I mostly was grumpy and very slow to think.

reducesuffering 3y ago
The writing was “tongue in cheek.” He doesn’t actually mean it.
- the_af 3y ago
  Oops. I misunderstood the tone. Maybe I need more sleep? ;)

danenania 3y ago

"I still maintain you're not bonding with your baby at 3 am" I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot happening beneath the surface both biologically and psychologically (on both sides) when a parent soothes a baby at 3am.

pj_mukh 3y ago
Well, the key differentiator is at 3am. I haven't seen any evidence that the bonding at those times is somehow special. I am assuming you are bonding with the baby at other times during the day.
- kqr 3y ago
  I agree. I'd much rather sleep at night and bond both consciously and get whatever happens "beneath the surface", well-rested during the day. The alternative is that I'm cranky both night and day and only get that thing that happens "beneath the surface" without the awsome beautiful conscious bit that I personally really care about. But not all people get cranky from a lack of sleep, so this will vary between families!

scruple 3y ago

My employer got us a Snoo (rental) for each child. With our twins, they worked pretty well until 4 months or so. Our singleton wouldn't go for it at all. I agree that there's no genuinely useful bonding happening in the dead of the night when you're so sleep deprived that you might be hallucinating. It's just base survival after a certain point. I used to run dual feedings overnight with bottled milk so my wife could keep resting as much as possible. I used to time myself and optimize the hell out of it so that I could get back to bed. I would set alarms to wake myself up, get the milk from the fridge, warm the bottles, get the twins out of the Snoo and into their tandem Boppy, soothe them, feed them, change diapers, re-swaddle, and then get them back to bed, clean bottles, make sure the next round of bottles is prepped. I could run all of that, when everything went right, in just under 30 minutes. If the twins were fussy, the dogs woke up and wanted to go out, etc., it could creep up to an hour. I remember my hands being so dry from washing bottles that my skin was cracked and bleeding. We eventually got rid of all of the fancy bullshit and opted for bottles, etc., that had the least number of parts. That entire first year with twins is still mostly a blur today, 4 years later. I went through basic military training and spent some time overseas in war zones. I've gone through sleep deprivation training and the real thing overseas. With kids, though, you've got a physical, mental, and emotional component to it that nothing can really simulate. It's draining in ways that are hard to describe, even to other parents who are in the trenches around you. You learn a lot about yourself, and your partner, and friends and family, but I don't remember much bonding going on during those late night sessions. Just a lot of wishing and praying that everything goes right. But maybe that's just the holes in my memory.

542458 3y ago
Thanks for writing this. The second part makes me feel a bit better about my own life - my experiences are the same as yours. Having children exposes flaws in your life skills, mental health, and relationships that were previously invisible. It can be quite distressing, or at least it was for me.

dustincoates 3y ago

Our second baby didn't really like the Snoo (however, he's nearly a year and a half old, and he still doesn't sleep well), but for our first kid, we got the Snoo after going crazy from a month and a half of colicky baby screams. And—I'm not making it up—she slept through the night from nearly the first night. It wasn't consistent from there until she was older, but I'll never cease to praise the machine.