Study: New parents face up to six years of sleep deprivation

Strikingly, the team found the impact of the first child lingered for both parents. Even once the impact of subsequent children was taken into account, women were still relatively sleep deprived, both in terms of quality and quantity, four to six years after their first child’s birth. Overall sleep satisfaction was rated just over one point lower on average, while sleep duration was about 25 minutes less.

By contrast, after the birth of a second child mothers’ sleep recovered to levels of before that pregnancy, and almost bounced back for the third child – findings Lemola put down to sleep duration and quality being worse to start with due to the impact of the first child. “Your baseline is lower,” he said.