Blog Posts 1–5, based on the United States of America Department of the Army Field Manual: Holistic Healing and Fitness, describe what really matters for your child’s sleep. If sleep is an important enough topic for national defense than surely sleep should be considered a serious topic for parenting!
A 2023 paper, ‘Indirect associations between infant sleep, parent sleep and sexual well-being in new parent couples’, studied infant sleep quality, parental sleep, sexual frequency, and sexual desire at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months postpartum. “We hypothesized that poorer infant sleep would have an indirect effect on couples’ lower sexual frequency and on mothers’ and partners’ lower desire by way of their own poorer sleep (that is, people would engage in sex less frequently and report lower sexual desire due to poor sleep). We also examined an indirect effect by way of a partner’s poor sleep (that is, people would report lower sexual desire due to their partner’s poor sleep).”
They concluded that “poorer infant sleep is associated with lower sexual desire and less frequent sex to the extent that it is linked to poorer parental sleep (emphasis added). Specifically, when infants had poorer sleep, their parents also reported poorer sleep, which was in turn associated with couples’ lower sexual frequency and desire.”
For more information on parents:
Blog Post 17: Fathers & Mothers
Blog Post 18: Teamwork, Co-Parenting and Parental Response to Crying
Blog Posts 116 & 117: Save Your Marriage
Blog Post 138: Mother’s Sleep and Mother’s Overall Quality of Life and Infant Sleep
Blog Post 175: Overprotective Fathers
