How to Sleep When Your Baby Sleeps

If we could only clean up after our kiddo and sleep at the same time! Exhaustion is no joke.

My husband and I still take naps most weekends when our 18 month old is napping, or if one of us is home with him while he’s sick, on vacation etc. We find it a way to feel rejuvenated for all the awake time, and during my maternity leave I found that I could do all the laundry/dishwashing/etc. while the baby was awake but I definitely couldn’t sleep while the baby was awake. I took showers with the baby in the bouncy seat in the bathroom, wrote thank you notes with the baby in the pack and play etc. I’m glad to see so many others feel seen or heard by this comic, but I truly think that many people (myself included, in the early months) underestimate how much you can do while the newborn is awake! No one is saying to nap EVERY SINGLE TIME the baby sleeps, but in general, naps are awesome, and we should all take more of them :)

95% unrelated, but will you be doing your Motherhood Around the World series again this summer?

Nice set of tips Joanna! I’ve been following your blog for quite some while and this is the first time I commented. I really love the way you share your experiences. I’m also a mother and I can understand how difficult it is to manage your day when have kids, tough job though. I wish you all the best and happy life ahead. keep sharing!

8 days postpartum and this made me actually LOL – thanks, I needed to read this! Seems like society’s message to new moms is something like “wake up your baby to feed every 2 hours never wake a sleeping baby breast feed on a schedule on demand never co-sleep keep your baby physically attached to you make sure they self soothe don’t let them use a pacifier or suck their hands. Oh, and don’t forget about your self care.”

When my second daughter was born, I was so tired that one day I realized that it was Saturday morning and I had my last shower on Tuesday.

I’ve had five children and with the first four I felt this way. Like yeah right lady, how about you come over and fold all of the socks! Then magically when I had my fifth I found that if I didn’t sleep when the baby slept, I just wouldn’t sleep. So the laundry suffered, the house was a mess, but I was sane! Life went on and somehow everyone mostly smelled of fresh laundry. I think this advice comes from a very good place, honestly. If there are ten things on your to-do list when baby comes, eight of them should be feed the baby and the other two should be take a couple naps. I have a six month old so I’m still in the thick of it.

My baby only slept when I was driving him around in the car or pushing him in the stroller. So I slept…never. He’s now 7 — we survived and he’s the best! — but the “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice still makes me bitter AF.

Thank you for this!!!

I was one of those moms that actually slept when the baby slept :-). In my country we get fully paid pregnancy leave (and you can take it from day one or you can work throughout the whole pregnancy, it’s up to you) and then we get 1 year fully paid maternity leave after the baby is born, so I really had time to immerse myself in motherhood with both of my kids. With my first, I slept when he slept but not every time, but with my second I literally religiously slept when she slept during the day. She was on a schedule and slept twice a day and always at the same time so the moment she would fall asleep I would drop everything and jump straight into bed. I enjoyed those sleeps so, so much and would be so relaxed once my older would get back from the kindergarten. Once I got back to work, it took me a month to get over those sleeps as I would literally fall asleep while my colleagues were mid sentence :-)

My sis always gives a birthday card that has a picture of a woman on the front pouring coffee into her mouth. The inside says, “Sleep when you’re dead.” Maybe that’s what I’ll tell the next person who tells me this “helpful advice”! If I am fortunate enough to have another child! As for me, I chose to do laundry and take a hotter-than-heck bath instead. So. Much. Laundry. And hemorrhoids.

best one yet!

This is SO FUCKING TRUE AND HILARIOUS, I‘m screaming! I love her for it! Exactly like some others said before, this stupid advice is so enraging because it makes you feel like you‘re failing for not managing to do this thing which sounds like the easiest thing in the world! But yes, it‘s so hard to squeeze in a nap exactly at the time your baby is sleeping while you got a) shit to do, like, organize your life, b) no idea for how long baby will sleep c) or a baby who only sleeps in your arms and you‘re afraid you‘ll let it drop if you fall asleep yourself or she‘ll suffocate in your arms, etc etc. And no matter how exhausted I was, I could not switch to sleep mode at 10 am after just having done some dishes and taken the older one to daycare… I‘m so glad these days are over!

Oh my god, this hits home!!

I don’t think I can recall I single piece of useful advice anyone gave me when I had babies, but I do remember a lot of little unexpected kindnesses. Once I was in a parking lot trying to keep my lawless 2 year old from running into traffic while not suffocating the screaming 2 week old I was carrying, holding the grocery cart with my foot so it would’t roll away while loading bags into the car, when a 20-something guy asked if he could take my cart. He seemed so young and businesslike that I assumed he was headed into the store, but I watched him return the cart to the stand, walk back to his car and drive off. It still makes me cry a little to think about it…even now that I consistently sleep more than 4 hours at a time.

Anyway, I say kindness beats advice any day!

I have never felt so seen in my life. I have given this rant many times. Can I get this on a t-shirt please, or maybe blown up on the hood of my car would have more impact.

Even when I am tired I can’t just like, fall asleep on command in the bright morning sunshine of 10am for a 10 minute chunk. You can thank this thing called your circadian rhythm for that.

I have always cringed hearing people give this advise (which is all the time…like why?)

I am having a baby on Thursday so this is SO perfectly timed. :)
Everyone at work keeps asking why I am not taking off time to “rest before the baby comes” and I have to explain to them that no amount of rest before the baby comes makes the sleepless nights with an infant better!! I would just rather work up until the last day and have every single day of my maternity leave.

I used to fantasize about self-driving cars with my colicky firstborn…I imagined curling up in one with her, falling asleep, and waking up in California. I literally thought about that all the time.

I love this cartoon! So, so good! Also, I truly think the advice should be rephrased as “Don’t feel guilty if you fall asleep while the baby is napping.” If it happens that you doze off while the baby is sleeping, and the dishwasher doesn’t get unloaded or the laundry doesn’t get done, do not beat yourself up. Just say “YAY NAP!” and keep going.

In the same vein: I try to vacuum whenever my baby vacuums.

I remember someone giving me this advice when I was pregnant with my twins. I wanted to simultaneously whisper “Oh sweetie…you have no idea” and also punch her in the face because she had no idea. We did eventually get the twins on the same sleeping schedule but that took months of work. One baby was pretty much awake the entire newborn phase. Oofda.

When I was a brand new mom, I told my husband it should be permissible by law to throat-punch anyone who told me to sleep when the baby sleeps.

Just sayin’.

My baby likes to take all her naps in our arms (and while I was on maternity leave, I took all the cuddles I could get). But they also tell you not to sleep while holding the baby, so I watched a LOT of Netflix. That should be the new advice–or the new “Netflix and chill.”

And of course – let me sleep while I push the stroller!