Parental sleep debt: how to limit the damage?

Do you wake up every morning feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck? Congratulations! Like nearly half of parents, you don’t get enough sleep.

Fatigue is the burden of all young darons, and the accumulation of waking hours ends up earning you one hell of a sleep debt. If science has not yet managed to find the antidote that would relieve all these weary parents, there are solutions to hold on and pay off (a minimum) this debt.

Fatigue, the daily plague of parents

Breaking news (no): the darons are always tired. Even when the baby stops waking up every hour, our nights are punctuated by nightmares, loss of pacifiers, illnesses and existential questions from our dear children.

Several studies in the early and mid-2010s found that parents lost about 44 days of sleep in their offspring’s first year of life and it took them about six years to get back to good sleep.

In 2022, the Sleep and Vigilance Institute released a survey of the sleep habits of French households. 80% of adults surveyed said they had gotten up at night in the past seven days, twice a night in question. Also according to this survey, Darons would sleep on average 6:34 a night, when adults need 7 to 9 hours a day.

Recover your sleep debt

Parents end up running up quite a sleep debt. Instead of reassuring them that they will survive on just 20 minutes of sleep a night for the next ten years, science cruelly reminds them that every hour lost should in theory be made up. Not to mention that the bigger the debt, the harder it is to pay it off.

Obviously there is no miracle solution to get up in shape in the morning. Instead some good habits, a little rigid, but very healthy, can help you limit breakages:

• Follow a strict routine: go to bed and get up at the same times every day and sleep as soon as you feel tired in the evening. For many of us, that means ending precious hours of nocturnal freedom and adopting the same pace as her kids, but it’s for a good cause.
• Forget about sleeping late: catching up on sleep in one go during a slumber or a giant nap is useless, if you don’t interrupt your usual rhythm. You have the right to be tempted, huh. You just have to know that, aside from the immense pleasure of being able to snore quietly, this moment of ecstasy won’t have a beneficial impact on your overall fitness.
• Get sleep minutes as soon as possible: we learn something new every day, but the snooze button on your alarm clock can save your life. According to experts, another 15 minutes is already a win without upsetting your circadian rhythm.
• Bet on micro naps: the same principle, if possible, we advise exhausted parents to take a daily micro nap (less than 20 minutes). This brief moment of unconsciousness recharges the batteries more effectively than its older sister, the timeline, from which one emerges in the late afternoon with the trace of a crusty pillow on the cheek.

Finally, the es-sleep experts insist on the importance of having a healthy lifestyle: physical exercise, healthy eating, walks in the open air, exposure to daylight, many good habits that could inject a little energy into our zombie bodies.

Image credit of one: Getty Images

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