Let’s face it, it’s probably more than six.
It’s a running joke that mums are always tired and that we can’t remember the last time we weren’t tired but in reality it’s funny because it’s true.
Waking up refreshed is a rare occurrence, mostly because even if I do go to bed early one or both of my children will decide to get up in the middle of the night.
Broken sleep has just become the norm for me which is why I wasn’t one bit surprised when I read that children deprive their mums of sleep for up to six years.
Yes not only did a study find that mums lose their beauty sleep for the first six years of their child’s life but it also found that on average mums lose three times more sleep than dads.
Now that’s just not fair.
Researchers from Germany conducted their study after collecting sleep data from thousands of parents and concluded that mums are really getting the short end of the stick when it comes to losing out on a good night’s sleep.
The researchers also found that having more than one child does not affect how much sleep you get and that sleep deprivation doesn’t get worse if you have additional children.
Now before you get too excited this is just because our sleep deprivation is at an all time high.
I often wonder when I read stuff like this, if part of the reason mums get less sleep is because of our mammy ‘spidey senses’. I don’t know how many times I’ve woken up during the night moments before one of my kids started crying just off of mum intuition.
Although other times it’s like when you hear phantom crying in the shower and there’s no child crying, my body just woke me up in a panic for no reason.
Whatever the reason behind it all the research speaks for itself. To be honest though I don’t see myself sleeping any better when they’re teenagers or college students going on nights out. Guess I’ll sleep when I’m a pensioner, maybe.
