Babies Make You Tired

When I opened up today's email from the Harvard Business Review with the Daily Headslap  Stat, my first reaction was "DAD's with babies are tired? What about the moms who are up nursing, feeding, soothing, or otherwise responding to the cries and calls of their kids?" My next reaction was "Duh."  Of course parents with babies are tired.  It comes with the territory. A study was needed for this?"

From the HBR email:
"Because of interrupted sleep,75% of working fathers with 12-week-old babies report fatigue at least some of the time, substantially more than the general population, of which 22% to 48% reports fatigue."


Me: SOME of the time?
"Findings suggest that working fathers with babies experience fatigue during early fatherhood and are unable to recover due to interrupted and poor sleep patterns."

Boo hoo.  Poor dads.


The focus on Dads being tired just bugged me.  What about the moms?  Those that are at home full time and those that both manage the home and kids AND work a full or part time job outside of the home?  Moms are tired.  Oh, but I suppose the male authors of the study know that.  I hope they know that.

My boys are 5 and 3.  Rare is the night that I get to sleep uninterrupted.  If I'm lucky, I only get the call "MOMMY" once during the night.  Lately that call seems to be coming between 2:30 and 3 am.  When the call comes every hour on the hour, I pour an extra cup or 3 of coffee and do my best to make it through the day alert....or alert enough to fake it.

But, Dads are tired.  Boo hoo.