Comment by pedalpete
9 days ago
That's very impressive for a new father! Congratulations!
How's your wife's sleep going? Mothers get considerably less sleep than fathers, even with school aged kids.
The subjective feeling is the result of broken sleep and likely the resulting lack of slow-wave power. Your wife may have this worse than you, as it is theorized that there is an evolutionary throwback where mothers have increased cortisol due to needing to be aware to take care of the baby. I haven't seen research in this, but many mothers have said they just felt "on edge" for the first few years.
There is some value probably to "being in bed" longer, Huberman talks about this a bit with reference to his "non-sleep deep rest".
However, our focus is on ensuring the sleep you get is as restorative as possible, even for new parents.
Her sleep is terrible since she's breastfeeding, so even when she does get some sleep, it'll be while dozing off in some unexpected and ergonomically diabolical position.
For our first baby, I had that on-edge feeling, I woke at every hint of a cry but this time I can just sleep through it and rely on my wife letting me know if I'm needed. It's not fair but it means at least one of us has the emotional resilience to deal with our toddler during the day :)