Protected Sleep

Stepping into the role of parenthood changes your sleep quite rapidly and intensely.  It may not be possible to get more sleep when you have a newborn that needs to wake every two hours for connection and nourishment, but it is possible to get more rested sleep during those early weeks or whenever you are feeling depleted. Restful sleep restores your body and mind. 

If you are feeling out of touch and exhausted, protected sleep is a way for you to get a couple hours of deeper sleep. New mothers are often told, “sleep when the baby sleeps.”  There may be a variety of reasons you can’t sleep when the baby sleeps, like...you need to eat, go to the bathroom, call your doctor or health insurance.  Another HUGE reason that sleeping while baby sleeps may not yield any deep sleep is that new moms are notorious for sleeping with one eye and ear open to be attentive to baby. 

So what is protected sleep?

Protected sleep is when someone trusted watches baby in another room so you can rest deeply.  This may be good for an hour or two in the evening after the witching hour or whenever you have a trusted friend, family, or parent available to help.

So how can you try to get deeper, protected sleep?

• Have someone you trust hold your baby and take care of baby for an hour or hour and a half.  Do you have a baby carrier?  That can help baby sleep longer with dad or another caretaker, especially going on walks.

• Mom, you go into your comfy bed or where you sleep best, wear an eye mask (if you have one), and put in headphones with music.  

• Let the person watching baby know when or under what circumstances it would be good to have baby brought to you (for example...baby fed at X pm, so come in if baby is crying 2 hours later, or if baby is inconsolable for X minutes then come get me etc.)