What is it about you having a lousy night’s sleep that makes everyone else so unbearable? You know the feeling. One night of broken sleep and suddenly the whole world is driving badly, dithering in the coffee queue, and asking you the same question at work for the sixth time. The universe is not actually conspiring against you. Your lack of sleep is simply making it very hard for you to respond rationally to ordinary frustration.
What the research shows
A study by Kahn-Greene and colleagues, published in 2006, looked at people deprived of sleep over a 55-hour period and found they showed an increased tendency to blame others for problems, reduced willingness to defuse conflict by accepting blame, increased aggression, and less willingness to behave in ways that smooth social interaction.
Separately, research by Amie Gordon and Serena Chen at UC Berkeley found that couples who sleep poorly show less gratitude towards each other and are significantly more likely to feel unappreciated. Neither finding is earth-shattering on its own. Put them in a house with a newborn, though, and they explain a great deal.
Now add a baby
A new baby is a blessing and also a mammoth logistical undertaking that requires roughly a zillion decisions a day. What time is bedtime? What do we do when he cries? How are we feeding? Every one of those decisions needs two tired people to agree, and every one is an opportunity for disagreement. You may have settled plenty of them before the baby arrived, but as any parent knows, every decision comes up for renegotiation the moment things go off the rails.
Two people making the most important decisions of their lives, primed by exhaustion to blame each other and struggle to say sorry. It is nobody’s fault, and it is everybody’s problem.
And then there is intimacy. Sleep deprivation flattens libido, and many parents I work with tell me the physical side of their relationship has quietly disappeared altogether. One of them is on the couch, one is beside the cot, and in the rare window where they could reconnect, they are both simply too tired.
The hopeful part
Plenty of couples come through this season with their partnership entirely intact, and a wakeful baby does not doom a relationship. But it certainly does not help one. So before you book the couples counselling, before someone moves permanently to the spare room, before one more simmering argument about whose turn it is, consider a different first move. Commit, together, to sorting out your little one’s sleep, and see how the two of you feel about each other after a week of proper rest.
Your baby deserves a household where their parents are happy, united, and in love. And if there is one gift children never stop appreciating, it is exactly that. In my experience, the difference a rested week makes to a relationship is nothing short of amazing.
Sources: Kahn-Greene, E. T., et al. (2006). Sleep deprivation adversely affects interpersonal responses to frustration. Personality and Individual Differences, 41(8). Gordon, A. M., & Chen, S. (2014). The role of sleep in interpersonal conflict. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(2).