We all know that having a child is going to disrupt your sleep.
Long gone will be the days of eight hours of blissful sleep free form baby monitors, crying, feeding, toddlers climbing into yur bed...the list goes on.
So it isn't a surprise that a study has found that parents to new babies have a poor quality of sleep, but it found how long that goes on for. .
Six years, is the answer.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK studied sleep in 4,659 parents who had a child between 2008 and 2015.
So, in the first three months after giving birth, mothers slept on average one hour less than before pregnancy while the dads sleep duration decreased by roughly 15 minutes.
The study revealed that it took up to six years after birth mothers and fathers sleep duration and satisfaction do not fully recover to the levels before pregnancy.
Sakari Lemola, from the University of Warwick said, ''Women tend to experience more sleep disruption than men after the birth of a child reflecting that mothers are still more often in the role of the primary caregiver than fathers.''
Things didn't change much as the children got older, it appeared.
When the children were 4-6 years old sleep duration was still about 20 minutes shorter in mothers and 15 minutes shorter in fathers compared to their sleep duration before pregnancy.
When it comes to factors like dual vs single parenting, changes in sleep after childbirth didn't seem to change that much.
Sakari said, ''While having children is a major source of joy for most parents it is possible that increased demands and responsibilities associated with the role as a parent lead to shorter sleep and decreased sleep quality even up to six years after the birth of the first child.''
Sorry for the bad news parents but look on the bright side - things will start to look up after six years...and it's all worth it, right?
