Knowing when to catch up on sleep

Before our baby was born, I read somewhere that parents on average lose about 2 months sleep during the baby's first year. I knew that sleep deprevation was always going to be a challenge. I'm sure that like you, I love it when I've had a good deep, 8 hours worth of sleep. I'm ready for any challenge.

However, when your sleep is constantly broken many time each night over a few days, you soon realise that you're not as easy to deal with and the little things tend to become big issues.

I found the answer to this, was to try and get some sleep at the weekends. I always thought that if i could give my wife a break from the baby, this was a good thing. So on Saturdays, I would tell her to go out and enjoy herself, and I would then have 4-6 hours with our new baby.

If I could get her to sleep even for a couple of hours, then I went to sleep too, in order to catch up on the sleep I had missed. I found by doing this, it really helped. Usually it worked. I slept very close to her, so if she woke, it woke me too. But 2 hours more sleep was a great help.

So my advice is always get any additional sleep you can.

I wrote a book about my first year's experiences as a new Dad. It helped me understand what I went thru. It's called 'My First Year as a Dad'

You can find it at : http://www.1stbaby.inf0

You can download it and enjoy.