Q&A: "Sleep while you can"

Blythe writes:

"I am 26 weeks pregnant and looking forward to delivering in January. Friends and relatives give me plenty of advice all the time, and the most frequent refrain seems to be "sleep now!/stock up on your sleep!" I realize (assume?) this is a 'hilarious' way of saying I'm never going to get a good night's sleep ever again.  It does, however, lead me to wonder if there's a way to prepare myself for the postpartum sleep deprivation to come.  My bladder is cooperating with my baby to wake me at least once each night, but that's not quite the same thing.  What's your advice?  Try to begin some kind of adjustment period now?  Or bask in blissful dreamland while I can?"

Your body is going to prep you all by itself. An awful lot of us experience more frequent waking as the pregnancy progresses. First it's the peeing. Then it's the strange dreams. Then it's the heartburn/reflux. Then it's the backaches. Then it's the restless legs. Then it's attempting to roll over in your sleep but waking up because your belly won't come along with your shoulders.

By the end of each of my pregnancies I was sleeping for about 45 minutes at a time. Those first couple of weeks of the baby waking every three hours to nurse felt like a rest cure to me.

But there are other women who sleep fine until the end of the pregnancy. And there are some babies who wake up all the time at the beginning, and some who sleep a lot from the get-go. There's no way to know which kind you'll get (although I'll tell you to take Omega 3 supplements during your pregnancy to stack the odds of a sleeping baby in your favor). So I wouldn't borrow any trouble. Why go into a sleep-deprivation situation with a deficit?

Sleep as much as you want to and can now. Also, go out to dinner any time you want to, go to the movies, knit complicated patterns, eat hot meals with two hands, and have sex in the middle of the day as much as you can now. All these things are about to disappear from your life temporarily.

I think people say these things to pregnant women because they don't know what to say and they want to say something, even if it's inane, to acknowledge your impending motherhood. Or because they still feel resentful of the sleep deprivation, and want to pass it off onto you. But I also think some women say it because it's safer than saying "Things are going to change and it won't be easy. You will be tested. You will be broken down. Remember that we all did it and you can, too." There's no way to describe what it's like to be a new parent. It's horrible and wonderful at the same time. It shakes you to your core. But we don't talk about it with pregnant women because the language we have is inadequate to express what we mean to someone who hasn't been there yet.

Whatever the motivation is behind statements like the sleeping thing (and my personal favorite, "It's a lot easier to take care of the baby now than it will be once it's out," which I never found to be true for a lot of reasons), there's no real way to respond in a thoughtful manner. You can be breezy: "Ha ha! I'm really in for it now!" Or flippant: "Oh, no. I'm going to make my partner do all the night wake-ups."Or smart-ass: "I thought babies slept through the night at around 3 weeks. You mean they don't?" Or you can just nod and smirk and then go home and take a nap.

Comments

[Stephanie]

That comment always made me nuts! I never could get extra sleep by simply deciding "Well, I should be having more sleep!" and going to bed. It almost seemed as if it was designed to make me feel like if I didn't get the sleep while pregnant, I had no room to complain about lack of sleep after the baby was born!

My son is 19 months, and I do truly wish for better sleep, like most moms of little ones. But I would say a better way to look at this is, getting lots of rest is one of the many things that are good for you to do while pregnant. So if you have the opportunity, do get some more rest. Your body is working hard! But even if you are sucessful, you aren't going to build up some kind of bank of rest that you can tap into later. Life should be so simple!

[Num Num]

Agree with Moxie. But also add: You can't store up on sleep, but after your baby is born, getting as much sleep as possible is second only to taking care of your baby. Ime, sleep deprivation can lead to serious consequences. Yet it's difficult to get that through to new parents who have gotten along on stress and less sleep than they need for years. It just doesn't seem as important as it really is. Also, it's not so easy to plop down and sleep. Tension gets in the way. So I guess if you really understand that sleep is more important than almost everything else, you can at least try to get it. You'll handle everything much better, if you do.

[Kelly]

I especially hated it when, afte I commented about getting up so often at night to pee, someone would tell me that my body was preparing for night-wake-ups. Like heck it was! Getting up for 2 minutes to pee is nowhere near the same as getting up for 20-60 mins to feed a baby!

Sleep when you can now. Get in the habit of napping and do that once the baby is born (every chance you get!). Sleep is *so* important and I so didn't understand that at first.

[Beth]

Oh please, every baby is different and every postpartum situation will be different. I agree with Moxie, people just want to say something and sometimes they don't want you to have an easier time of it than they did! Rest up now and rest as much as you can when the baby comes. You are going to get through-- even I am getting through. Also, people don't tell you that you get used to the night wakings, if that is what you have to put up with for a while.

[Jenn]

No one ever tells you just how bad sleep deprivation is. And sleep when they sleep? HA! I have twins. They rarely sleep at the same time.

My only suggestions are to stock up on food and drinks that are easy to grab on the go and line up some help for household stuff that needs to get done so you can concentrate on the baby and sleeping.

[amy]

I think Stephanie verbalized an important point: what you are doing is hard work. When I was pregnant and my husband would come home from work and ask me, "What'd you do today, honey?" I'd reply, "Gestate a baby. What did *you* do?" I might have done anything that day, include work, but the biggest job was make a baby.

To the people who told me to stock up on sleep, I usually responded with something like: "Then all that sleep I got during high school should carry me through." To the people who told me my shrinking bladder was preparing me for nightwakings, I usually responded: "I just have to pee. It's not like I'm dieting to prepare for a famine over here."

Good luck. Take care of yourself and you will be taking care of your baby.

[Kelly]

People just need to yap sometimes. It's well-intentioned, but annoying just the same. The sleep stuff was every bit as irritating to me as the women who'd insist I was crazy when I said I was going to a free-standing birth center run by midwives. You'll see, they said, with their knowing grins and raised brows. It got so that I lied, since I was dead tired of hearing how much I'd be begging for drugs.

Anyway, you do not know what kind of sleeper you'll have. Yeah, deprivation is pretty much the norm for a while, but you could be blessed with a babe who gives you 3-4 hour stretches. It does happen. And you do get used to the feeling of exhaustion (not very comforting, I know). When they get older and heartier, you can always address sleep issues, too, so it's not as if you'll never sleep again.

And using Moxie's examples, I'm a fan of the smart-ass response...

[Kate]

My OB and midwife told me specifically NOT to take Omega-3 from fish oil because it can contain high levels of mercury.

So I didn't take it. And I haven't had a full night's sleep in over two years (my son is 22 months). Hmmmm... connection?

[Blythe]

I'm the pregnant person who asked the question. Thanks, Moxie, for answering, and thanks to all for your advice (or your encouragement to ignore the advice of others and do my own thing). I just got up from a 90-minute nap, so I think I'm headed in the right direction.

[Moxie]

OK, no wonder we all have depression. If we can't take flax seed oil and we can't take fish oil, what's left?

[Jen (yup, another one)]

Damn! I missed the update on flaxseed oil. Well, it works really well for us. I'll have to read more and see what I think about the estrogen thing. What a bummer.

Anyway, I'm here to comment about a related annoying suggestion: "Sleep when the baby sleeps." It's actually a good idea, and I tried really hard, but what I hadn't been warned about was that for the first couple of days/weeks after birth, you can be all hopped up on hormones and adrenaline making it REALLY HARD TO SLEEP. No matter how much you want to. So I lay there time after time thinking, "I'm supposed to be sleeping now. I'm supposed to be sleeping now! I'm Supposed to be Sleeping NOW!" and working myself into a tizzy. Not particularly useful to anyone.

So sleep when you can and cut yourself some slack!

[AmyinMotown]

By the time I was in my ninth month, I was ready to DECK the next person who said "Sleep when you can" or"The baby is so much easier to take care of inside." Here's the difference: when she was born, if I worried about her, I could go check on her.

Everyone else has said such great things. Here's what knocked me for a loop: The complete lack of freedom. I was nursing, never got okay with nursing in public, and when she was new she ate constantly. I ended up giving her a bottle of pumped milk the absolute earliest any breastfeeding book said I could, at three weeks, and it was fine, she never had a nipple confusion problem. (Playtex Natural Latch nipples, the ones that look a little like a breast, was what we used and I can highly endorse them). The sleep deprivation? Eh, not so much, you do get used to it and won't realize how exhausted you are until you actually do get a good bit of sleep at a time.

Friends told me the following, and it proved to be true. The first three months are hard. Of those, the first six weeks are the hardest, and of THOSE, the first three weeks are the hardest. Complicating it, at least for me, was that in one moment your emotional landscape has totally changed. I mean, I love my husband, but that was a process: I didn't go from just meeting him to him being the center of my life in like a day. With my daughter, everything changed immediately.

But you know what? It's all worth it, it really is. That's the best part. My daughter has brought me joy every day of her life, even on the worst days. SO worth every minuate!

[hedra]

According to Consumer Reports, they haven't found ANY brands of fish oil that are contaminated with heavy metals (mercury, etc.). 42 brands tested, NO detectable levels of mercury or PCBs, and only two failures (one for wrong value of O-3s in the capsules, one for spoilage).

Heavy metals bind to protiens, not lipids. If you're worried about mercury and other contaminants, fish oil is NOT an issue. Even the Walmart brand and other 'cheap' brands were not found to be contaminated.

So yes, take fish oil. Even a search of mercury-exposure sites didn't turn up any panic over fish oil and mercury... the only places I found big 'ack-attacks' over purity and contamination were ads for specific brands of fish oil, where they very carefully never said that other fish oil brands WERE contaminated, only that their methods ensured theirs were NOT contaminated. Um. Yeah.

So take your fish oil, and tell others not to believe the marketing for the ultra-pure type brands. Scare tactics to make you buy theirs only make people buy NONE (because the ultra pure brands are usually pricey).

[luolin]

What's wrong with flax seed?

Thanks hedra, I missed that in Consumer Reports. Glad to hear it, since my husband takes large doses of fish oil, and we just switched to Costco's brand.

The omega 3/dha capsules that came with the sample pack of prenatals my obgyn just gave me supposedly come from algae (!?)

[Jan]

FWIW, I'm one who found sleep deprivation before the babies came much more unpleasant than after. I mean, before, I was waking up to pee, then having insomnia and trying desperately to get back to sleep for an hour, anywhere from 2-3 times a night. After, I was waking as often, and for as long, sure, but I got to be holding and feeding my adorable baby! How much more fun is that than watching Informercials and counting how many hours left before you have to get up in the morning.

Plus I don't know about you, but before the baby came, I was working ... er, at least going to the office during the day most days and I didn't have the luxury of napping during the day like I did when I was off on leave.

All in all, I felt MUCH more exhausted during the last 6-8 weeks of my pregnancies than after my babies came.

There is something to be said for, I don't know, mind over matter? I went into it knowing that yeah, I wasn't going to get enough sleep for awhile (really, truly, it's such a short period in the grand scheme of things), but it was just the price I had to pay for getting to be a mom. Hell, I used to pull all-nighters in college and that was for boring physics homework, ya know?

Congratulations on your soon-to-be new baby, Blythe. :)

[Josie]

I second Jan about "mind over matter" and that it is for a short period of time in the grand scheme of things. I too had the worst insomnia during my last few months of pregnancy. (When I couldn't sleep, I think I read all of Moxie's archives!) What helps me the most when I get up to nurse my daughter during the night is realizing that this will only last for a short time. While I'm not always a positive person, I am trying very hard to treasure the time we have during the night. It's just the two of us, sharing something so special and it will be gone sooner than I wish. So, while it is exhausting, try to enjoy those special times as much as possible. Also, if you have a partner, make sure he/she brings the baby to you at night if you don't cosleep. That also helps!

[casey]

Ah, sleep. My little one just turned 3 months, and about a month ago (THANK GOD) he started sleeping longer hours.

Part of me thinks that whoever says to sleep when your baby sleeps is a big ol' fat liar. I tried, I tried so hard to do that, but it was nearly impossible. I always made sure to nap at least once a day, but when it came down to it, the other thing that made me feel like a human was to do things I wanted to do instead of making my life 100% baby. I got online. I took the baby out for a walk. I watched TV. I napped. I talked on the phone.

Now, I'm back at work, and my little boy is sleeping seven or so hours in a row, and I'm still not sleeping through the night - there's always an early AM pumping to do, babywrangling to handle before passing the baby off to his dad, getting ready for work, packing breastpump paraphernalia, eating breakfast, and showering. Napping? Sha.

So my advice would be to sleep when you can't stand it anymore, and do a little something for yourself every day. Your soul needs resting from the baby as well as your body.

[Zinemama]

Oh, God, the sleep deprivation! It was sheer hell. And no, pregnancy did not prepare me for it. Not in the slightest. I was so tired, so constantly, I thought I might die of fatigue.

While I was pregnant, I always rolled my eyes when people told me to enjoy my sleep while I could. But after I had a baby, I turned into one of those people who say it! I see a woman pregnant for the first time, and I know the horrid hell of zombie-like tiredness she is about to descend into. I feel like I have to say something. I know, I know: you can't store up sleep for later, or enjoy it more now. But I just feel compelled to say it, anyway.

On a more positive note, when I had my second baby, it was as if my body had already been primed. "Waking 10x per night? Oh yeah, we remember this..." That second time, I just felt slightly tired. Big relief.

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