Spring Break!

This week is Spring Break for UC Davis. We'll be back next week with new posts.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We hope you are all enjoying the day with your families!

Parenting effects on sleep duration

A recently published study showed some interesting statistics about how parenthood affects sleep.

The study, conducted in Wisconsin USA, focused on how working parents sleep at different stages in their children’s lives. It’s no surprise that parents of young children (under age 2) lost the most sleep. What may be a bit surprising is the amount of sleep these parents lost, only an average of 13 minutes per day for each child under the age 2! Parents lost on average 9 minutes of sleep per day for each child aged 2-5 years.  Keep in mind that this is an average! Parents may lose an hour of sleep one night and lose no sleep for the next 3 nights. Based on the results of this study, the researchers report that raising a child from birth through age 18 results in a loss of about 645 hours of sleep.

Other outcomes noted were daytime sleepiness and dozing off during daytime activities. Both of these were more common in parents of children over age 2.

While this study may not seem to describe the very real sleep deprivation you may be feeling as a new parent, it does show how research and reality can differ at times! The limitation in this particular study is that the sleep duration was self-reported by the parents. The authors admit that sleep is often over estimated in these cases, so the amount of sleep lost per child may be under estimated in this study.

What do you think about the results of this study?

 

Reference

Hagen EW, Mirer AG, Palta M, Peppard PE. The Sleep-Time Cost of Parenting: Sleep Duration and Sleepiness Among Employed Parents in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. Am J Epidemiol 2013 Feb 1.

Babies' Firsts: Standing

It's been quite a while since we've done a Babies' Firsts post (click here to see previous posts in this series). In these 2-part posts, we start by asking or readers to share their experiences watching their babies achieve various milestones. Then, 1 to 2 weeks later, we share what the research shows about the milestone and explain how it may effect a baby's behavior.

Today, we want to hear how your baby learned to stand! To share your experience with us, post a comment with your answers to the following questions:

• How old was your baby when he or she first tried to pull up to stand?
• What did you baby use to pull up on (for example, furniture, toys, etc)
• How long did it take for him or her to stand alone, without holding onto something?

We look forward to seeing your comments and will be back next week with the follow-up post!