Sleep deprived

What would be ideal is for my new daughter to sleep through the night. But at the moment that is a bit too much to ask. Eia is barely a month old and still settling in. But her sleeping pattern is impacting on us, her parents, negatively.

For the past few weeks my wife and I have been sleep deprived. We are getting a lot less than what’s considered “healthy”. Coincidentally, the results of the study linking the common cold and sleep deprivation came out today (Sleep the Key to Cold Prevention). According to the study 8-hour sleepers are less likely to get sick than those who slept less.

Yesterday, I did not get to bed till 5.30 in the morning. I had to reset my alarm clock to 7.30 to allow me at least two hours of sleep. I still did not get my two hours. And I was also late for work!

My wife is in no better position. Being the mother, she probably slept less (and worked more).

The last thing we want is to get sick! What are we to do?!

I’ve devised a plan that we are trying out for the first time in our career as parents. We’ll be taking shifts in looking after our little angel. The plan is for Cherry to go to bed by 9pm leaving me to look after Eia till about 2am. That’ll give her about 5 hours of rest time. She would then takeover from 2am onwards with the possibility of catching some Z’s during the day. I said possibly because having 3 other children to look after does not normally allow for this.

5 hours is nowhere near ideal but it is still better than 4, or 3, or 2, or 1, or no sleep at all.

To keep me company during these nights I’ve got a line up of DVDs to watch and a laptop for blogging. I am actually writing this while I’m on my first shift.