Your partner's sleep is affected too, by less, and for just as long
In a German panel of 2,541 women and 2,118 men, the low point was 62 minutes of lost sleep for women and 13 minutes for men. Six years later neither had returned to normal.
Most couples expect the same thing: her sleep is destroyed, his is more or less intact. Neither half of that is quite right, and it is worth both of you seeing the numbers.
A German national panel followed 2,541 women and 2,118 men who had a first, second or third child between 2008 and 2015, with their own sleep before the pregnancy as the comparison. This is a population-representative sample, not a clinic sample.
| Change from before the pregnancy, at the low point of 0 to 3 months after birth | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep satisfaction, on a 0 to 10 scale | down 1.81 points | down 0.37 points |
| Sleep duration | down 62 minutes | down 13 minutes |
That is the gap, and it is a large one. Breastfeeding was associated with a further drop for mothers of 0.72 points of satisfaction and 14 minutes of sleep. Household income, parents' ages, and whether there were one or two parents in the home made little or no difference to how much sleep improved.
Then comes the sentence that most couples have never heard, written by the study's authors:
Following the sharp decline in sleep satisfaction and duration in the first months postpartum, neither mothers' nor fathers' sleep fully recovers to prepregnancy levels up to 6 years after the birth of their first child.
Six years. For both of them.
Three other studies fill in the shape. A cohort of 232 couples in Israel wore wrist monitors at four points from pregnancy to twelve months. Mothers had worse sleep quality than fathers at every single assessment, and fathers had shorter sleep. On a standard insomnia scale, about 70% of mothers and about 50% of fathers reached at least a below-clinical threshold for insomnia across the assessments. Both parents got worse from pregnancy to four months and then improved from four to twelve months, with some measures dipping again around eight months.
In the Canadian couples study, fathers reported more night sleep than mothers: about 20 minutes more at four months and about 27 minutes more at six months. Those are small differences and they are self-reported.
And then the finding that surprises everyone. A US study monitored 72 couples in late pregnancy and in the first month after birth, across the full 24 hours rather than only at night. Mothers had less night sleep and more daytime sleep after the birth. Fathers' 24-hour pattern barely changed. Measured across the whole day, fathers ended up with less total sleep than mothers, because mothers claw back some sleep in daylight and fathers do not. And when both were asked how tired they felt, there was no difference between them.
"When did you last get an unbroken night, and what would it take to give you one?"
And to a clinician: "My partner is not sleeping either. Is that something you ask about?"