Sleep is an issue most every parent struggles with. While sleep research makes some specific recommendations for getting babies to sleep well at night, it's uncommon to hear what it takes for parents to get enough sleep.
When babies need things in the middle of the night, and parents are the only people around to help, mom and dad's nighttime sleeping suffers. The solution is to live life around getting enough sleep for a while.
Tips for More Sleep
Sleep when the baby sleeps: Parents have been raised in Western culture, which means most believe that staying awake during the day is "normal" and staying up late at night is sophisticated. Not sleeping when tired and the opportunity presents itself is silly, but also self-denying in a dangerous way. Sleep deprivation causes impairment (in reaction time and judgement) similar to being drunk.
Never wake a sleeping baby: While there are some exceptions to this (failure-to-thrive babies sleep to conserve energy, and babies drugged in childbirth may not wake often enough to eat enough), it is a great guideline. Whatever may be important in a schedule, waking the baby before the nap has naturally ended interferes with chemical, hormonal and physical processes. This causes physical stress. Stress can interfere with sleep cycles, the duration of sleep and how easily people fall asleep. A sleep-deprived person will not sleep as well as a very-rested person, at any age.
Trust the baby: The baby's body knows what it needs. If the baby is still asleep (except in rare medical cases when the baby must be wakened to eat), the baby needs sleep. A clock doesn't know how much sleep this child's body needs today, whether because of a growth spurt, an immune response or a stressful day. The easiest way to tell when the baby has had sufficient sleep is that the baby wakes up.
Share sleep: The benefits of shared sleep are many, but the one particularly important is the synchronized sleep cycles. When mom is coming to nearly awake so will the baby, when they are within arm's reach of each other. This means baby doesn't have to wake mom from a deep sleep, so it's faster. Being able to wake mom (or dad) with just the small noises means the baby remains more relaxed, avoiding more stress hormones, and everyone can get back to sleep easily.
Sleep Early, Sleep Often
The changes may feel enormous, and parents are often impatient for the stage to end, but children's waking diminishes long before they grow up and move out. Napping during the day and going to bed early for a few years is better than a few years of sleep-deprivation, as any new parent will avow.
See Linda Clement's Getting Babies to Sleep and Getting Baby to Sleep More by Sleeping More for more information about infants and sleeping.
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