I was in Los Angeles, reporting for a movie release. The hotel where I was staying was immediately evacuated. Everyone ended up on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. A few hours later, before the rounds of interviews with the actors and director, the journalists spoke only of that.
It was only then that I learned that there had been an earthquake. Despite the earthquakes, despite the calls to evacuate the hotel, I had not woken up.
I sleep “hard”, you say? My sleep is anything but light. He is imperturbable. And it’s not because I wear earplugs at night so as not to be disturbed, as a comedian father of a young child told me this week.
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“Fathers sleep better than mothers,” reveals a McGill University study, the results of which were unveiled in mid-January in the Journal of Sleep Research », Writes our columnist Marc Cassivi.
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Fathers sleep better than mothers, reveals a McGill University study, the results of which were released in mid-January in the Journal of Sleep Research . « No shit Sherlock ”, as the young parents who have graduated from McGill say (young parents who have graduated from the Sorbonne rather say:“ You surprise me! ”).
The McGill study, conducted by doctoral student Samantha Kenny under the supervision of Professor Marie-Hélène Pennestri, concludes that it is the mothers of young children, and not the dads, who “sleep like babies”. This does not mean that they sleep soundly, but although like their newborns, they have fragmented sleep. Mothers wake up several times a night and their sleep is more fragmented when they have more than one child.
Fathers, on the other hand, still according to the same study, have a stable quality of sleep, regardless of the size of their children, the abundance of their offspring or the magnitude of the earthquake created by the night-time crying of their children …
“Didn’t you hear the baby cry last night!” ? How many times have I heard this phrase in my early thirties?
The youngest “slept through the night” at 7 months. But he continued to visit us every night until he was 5 years old. Often, I didn’t even realize it. He was kindly ordered to return to his bed without losing a minute of sleep. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning with his feet under my nose. He had done full rotations overnight in my bed, without my knowledge. Yes, I know, kids who have separate rooms sleep better, too, according to other studies. As all parents know, we choose our fights.
I never had to choose sleep. It was sleep that chose me. Even today, it’s not me who, at 2 a.m., notices by an almost supernatural intuition that Son is glued to a screen rather than to his pillow. The toll of all this time spent in front of screens during the pandemic will be fraught with consequences. This will be the subject of a completely different column.
I admit it: it’s not that long ago that I really understood the meaning of the expression “mental load”. Fortunately, my children were able to count on something other than my fatherly instinct – and on someone more acutely – to ensure their subsistence at an early age …
A total of 111 parents (54 couples and 3 single mothers) took part in the McGill University study on their sleep habits for two weeks. At the end of the assessment, mothers of one baby reported more uninterrupted sleep, and better quality sleep, than mothers of more than one. No notable difference, I repeat, was noticed in the fathers.
Professor Pennestri warns against the temptation to conclude that the number of children is necessarily a determining factor, directly linked to the quality of parents’ sleep. “It is a factor that can hardly be measured,” she explained to my colleague from The Canadian Press Jean-Benoit Legault. Moms can have a hard time sleeping for a number of reasons, but of course one of the assumptions is that there are several children out there who might need to be serviced. This should be specified in future studies. ”
Another warning from researchers: we should not take advantage of the results of their study to “reinforce outdated stereotypes according to which the mother is the one who gets up at night to take care of the children while the father snores”, specifies the text from The Canadian Press.
I wouldn’t want to reduce my anecdotal experience as a father to a stereotype, but… as the cliché suggests, there is often a grain of truth in clichés. In my defense, if I was snoring at the time, it was because I had a fairly severe form of sleep apnea, which miraculously resolved after a tonsillectomy.
When my oldest son was born, I quickly convinced myself that a dad who wakes up to accompany a mom every time she breastfeeds a baby at night is a less alert dad for the rest of the day. Moral support, while appreciated, can be counterproductive. After a few weeks of parenthood, I campaigned for a more efficient (and less equitable) sharing of nighttime tasks. By arguing that I am never more efficient than when I have had a good night’s sleep.
Just kidding, but it has been shown – by yet other studies – that poor quality sleep has detrimental effects on new parents, who are more likely to show symptoms of depression.
Parents of course have their own way of doing things. There is no manual. Among my friends who are newborn dads, there is one who wakes up every night, but not when his girlfriend is breastfeeding, and another who alternates with her boyfriend every night to take care of their two children downstairs. age.
“When you’re a parent, you sleep, but you’re on call,” Professor Pennestri told The Canadian Press, comparing parents to healthcare workers. It adds stress that can affect the perception of quality [du sommeil]. We sleep, but we don’t know for how long. ”
Except when sleeping a sleep that even an earthquake cannot disturb.
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