Sleep for New Parents: Surviving the First Year
Newborn sleep is famously chaotic, and the first three months are the hardest for parents because feedings every 2-3 hours fragment your sleep into pieces too small to cycle properly through deep and REM. You can't fix the schedule, but you can stack the deck so the sleep you do get goes further.
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Sleep when the baby sleeps is real advice, but the better version is 'sleep when your baby sleeps for the longest stretch of the night.' Identify that window (often 8 PM-midnight or 4-7 AM) and protect it ruthlessly.
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Trade off the night with a partner in 4-hour blocks rather than wake together for every feed. One full sleep cycle every 90 minutes is wildly more restorative than 8 hours of fragmented dozing.
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Cap caffeine at one cup, before noon. Sleep-deprived parents lean on caffeine, but at this stage it shortens already-short sleep windows and you'll feel worse, not better.
If this doesn't quite fit
Different alarm? Check our full sleep calculator below, or try the chronotype quiz to figure out which schedule fits your biology.