A Healthy Child Needs a Healthy Brain, A Healthy Brain Needs Healthy Sleep

Here is a report from a sleep researcher/mother (Blog Post 61):

“The sleep patterns of our daughter definitely changed and/or shaped our marriage relationships. Since the beginning, my husband and I decided to share full and shared responsibilities for taking care of our daughter, and especially during nighttime. Me, as a researcher in sleep and mental health, I was quite concerned that the lack of sleep that I would be experiencing specially during the first months, would also affect my mental health; therefore, my husband and I took care of these potential impact on our mental health since the beginning and agreed that by sharing the rough nights, this would help to keep stronger and more rested. One of the first things that we noticed that affected our marriage was the rearrangement of the schedules. Before our daughter was born, my husband and I used to spend the evenings walking and watching movies together until our bedtime, which was usually around 10pm.However, when our daughter was born, and in order to establish early bedtimes, we had to rearrange our schedules and consequently we initially spent less quality time together. However, now that we have managed to establish an early bedtime with our daughter around 7pm, we now manage to spend more quality time together and at least we have come back to our routine to watch movies together. Another aspect in which our marriage got affected, and especially in the beginning, was that overall we were more tired due the interruptions during our sleep, and consequently we were more irritably and more prone to argue with each other. However, we understood that this was product of our tiredness, which helped. Further, I think that a key aspect that helped us to be kind to each other despite the fact that we were tired during the day was the fact that each of us shared responsibilities during nights, so we both understood what we were experiencing.”