What does months of broken sleep do to parents?

The question we asked about ourselves

What happens when you're awake for days and then finally sleep — does it take long to drop off, and how do you feel when you wake up?

It's a small question and it was really about whether any of this was recoverable.

Broken is worse than short

This is the part that surprised us. Six hours broken into four pieces is considerably worse than four hours in one go.

Sleep does its repair work in cycles, and being interrupted partway through means you keep restarting rather than completing. Which is why you can be in bed for eight hours and feel like you haven't slept at all.

That is why one unbroken stretch can feel so much better. It is not only the number of hours. It is getting them without being woken.

What it actually does

Reaction time and judgement can slip before you notice. That is why driving when you are this tired can be dangerous, not just unpleasant.

Mood flattens. Patience shortens. Small things become enormous. Arguments at three in the morning are not real arguments and shouldn't be treated as if they were.

One good night may not fix months of broken sleep. Your body may need several better nights before you feel more like yourself. It happened to Papa, mama took over one full night because Papa was also working. He slept 8 hours straight and woke up even more exhausted. He was given a gift and he felt he had wasted it, since he was going to do that night all night. We learnt later, splitting the night vs one night mama one night papa was a much better solution.

Shifts helped most. One person covered until about 4am, then the other took over until morning. The person off duty slept in another room and was truly off duty. Even the living room sofa was better than bedroom if it’s a one bedroom flat.

Four unbroken hours each beats seven broken ones between you, comfortably.

Separate rooms for a stretch doesn’t mean anything is wrong. Accepting when people ask if they can help isn’t weakness either or that you are doing something wrong. We turned a lot of those down early on out of some idea that we ought to be managing, which achieved nothing except making us worse at managing.

And if the low mood doesn't lift once the sleep improves, it isn’t immediate, it takes a little bit of time but if it doesn’t improve at all — that's worth a conversation with a doctor rather than waiting it out.