As a physician, I had spent a decade of my life working overnights, 30+ hour on-call shifts and nights of sleep broken by the cringe-worthy beeping of my pager. I knew how my brain and I worked on the other side of no sleep. We were a ball of stress, on edge and slow to process information; we had delayed reflexes, we craved the unhealthiest foods possible and we felt like everything was a mountain.
And yet, nothing prepared me for the unique sleep deprivation of parenthood. Becoming a new parent meant, unlike those stretches of on-calls and overnight shifts in training, there were no periods afterward to just crash and catch up on rest. Until my kiddo slept well, I wouldn’t be sleeping well.
Turns out, it wasn’t. According to a new study, disrupted sleep in parents and disrupted sleep in their children are each correlated with increased stress in the parents. In fact, it didn’t matter whether the parent had a sleep disorder or the child did. Both equally affected the parent’s stress levels.
To any sleep-deprived parent or caregiver, these results aren’t a surprise. But as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I strongly believe that seemingly never-ending patterns are breakable and conditions are treatable.
If you and your family are stuck in the “no sleep” trap, the first thing you can do is invest in sleep as a family. Because no matter who isn’t sleeping well, if you’re under the same roof, the chances are it’s going to affect everyone.
