New Study Says If You Have Kids, Prepare To Be Tired For YEARS!

I love when scientists spend time, money and resources to pinpoint something we already know...like if you have kids, you're gonna be tired.

Duh.

What we do learn from a recent study published by the University of Warwick, in the Journal of Sleep, is that it could take parents up to six years to recover from the subtraction of slumber babies bring to the equation. And that moms lose more sleep than dads. (Again, Duh.) The study was conducted on a few thousand German parents, and it followed them for a little less than a decade. The researchers remarked that the worst of the deprivation took place with baby #1, in the first 3 months. With each subsequent bundle of joy that entered the picture, since the baseline of sleep was already at a deficit, it didn't seem to have as dramatic an impact on the parent's ability to snooze, as the birth of the first one had.

The study also mentions that despite babies outgrowing the "crying stage" and finally sleeping through the night, there were other factors that robbed moms and dads of their ability to catch some Z's--such as a child that got up several times during the night because of nightmares or illness. (That would be 2 of my 4 on a nightly basis. Check.) Also, surprise surprise, parents seem to stress and worry about their kids at night, which keeps them tossing and turning. (Really? We needed a study to tell us this?)

Either way, anyone with kids will confess that none of us really expect to sleep ever again, even after our children are grown and gone. Parenting is something that never ends. Neither is worrying about your kid. And sleep is something you'll never get to experience the same way, once you've had a baby.

Embrace the suck, as they say.

And people wonder why yoga-pants and coffee are so popular. If you have kids, you sleep when you can. And when you can't, there's Caffeine! And yoga-pants help you stay comfy when you're catching a cat-nap in the  van...or so I'm told.