Modern Mothers Battles With Sleep Deprivation

Modern mothers have so much trouble rocking their babies to sleep that they get just three and a half hours of sleep, which is just half the sleep their mothers had, a new survey has revealed.

Fifty percent of adult women say that sleep deprivation has put strain on their relationship and about 10 pct have split from their partners.

The survey of 3,000 mothers, conducted for Mother and Baby magazine, found that due to lack of sleep, working mother with young children are ‘shattered’.

Elena Dalrymple, the editor of the magazine, said that sleep-deprived mums most often vent their frustration on their partners.

"If you're only getting three and a half hours sleep night after night and sometimes less, you'll most likely take your frustration and anger out on your partner,” the telegraph quoted Dalrymple, as saying.

Grannies reveal that they managed to have six hours of sleep after they had children and that they also had several tactics to settle their kids to sleep.

The tactics included leaving them to cry for longer (45 per cent), giving them a dummy (40 per cent), setting up a better system (26 per cent) and stop breastfeeding (33 per cent).

On the contrary, modern mums are on their knees and sleep for three-and-a-half hours' four months after childbirth, and just five hours a night when the baby is year and a half old.

This is after using all sorts of devices like musical cot mobiles (69 pct) to rocking cradles (39 pct).

One in ten mums download ‘womb’ or dolphin’ music from the net.

Parents also buy high-tech sleeping toys and "two-way baby alarms" (74 per cent), and "breathing sensors" (19 per cent) to "video monitors of their baby in the cot" (12 per cent).

Lisa Walklin, 35, a marketing manager from Putney, south-west London, who has a three-week-old daughter, Poppy, with her partner Phillip Edwards, an accountant, said that it has been quite a shock to be up at unearthly hours.

"I am the sort of person who needs a minimum eight hours and it has been quite a shock. Poppy was feeding every three hours - 10pm, 1am, 4am and 7am,’ Walklin said.

Affluent parents go for maternity nurses who put babies on a routine.

Liz Hunter and her husband Andrew decided to go for a maternity nurse. Since they were expecting twins.

“Even though Andrew does get up in the night, we knew that in the first few weeks we would be desperately short on sleep and need the extra help," Hunter said.

Source-ANI
SRM/J