New parents miss out on 880 hours sleep in their baby's first year

by My Kent Family reporter

mykentfamily@thekmgroup.co.uk

Exhausted new parents will miss out on the equivalent of more than three months sleep during their baby’s first year, a study has found.

The incredible extent to which new-borns disrupt sleep patterns of their mums, dads or both was revealed in a study carried out among 2,000 parents.

It also emerged half of couples have had a row in the middle of the night about who should be the one to get up.

And alarmingly around seven out of 10 admitted pretending to be asleep when their baby cries, in the hope their other half will get up and settle them back down again.

The study also found women get more sleep than men, although that could be down to men claiming baby regularly wakes them up when they actually slept through.

And interestingly, both men and women claimed their partner ‘gets more sleep than I do’ – which can’t possibly be true.

Kuba Wieczorek of Eve Sleep, which commissioned the research on the back of the launch of their new Eve baby mattress, said: “New parents say that the lack of sleep is the hardest part of the first year of parenting."

“While it may sound like this is a well-known fact, interestingly, more than half of respondents said they were surprised by how little sleep they got during the first year of their child’s life.

“We were also surprised to see that overall, men get less sleep than women during the first year of their children’s lives, so perhaps the image of men snoozing while women are up feeding is out-dated.”

The study found parents miss out on out on 880 hours sleep in the first year, or around 111 night’s kip before their baby turns one.

It also emerged a large percentage of parents find themselves falling asleep during the day as they try and catch up with lost sleep. Around 15% said they’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, and a third have dropped off while in the car as a passenger. And more than one in 10 have nodded off at their desk at work.

Shattered parents said they’d be willing to pay more than £480 in cash for a solid night of uninterrupted sleep.

Kuba Wieczorek added: “It turns out that almost six in 10 people also believe that a better mattress means you really do sleep better.’’