New mums lose a month’s sleep in the first year

If you are feeling a little haggard by the time your baby reaches their first birthday, it could be because you have lost a month’s sleep in the last year.

More than 1,000 mums surveyed by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, with children aged 1-2 years of age, took part in a study to find out how babies affected their sleep patterns.

An unsuprisingly high 98 per cent said they had experienced broken sleep during the first year.

The average baby to these mothers woke 3.9 times per night, taking an average of 31.6 minutes of feeding and settling time.

The average mother was found to have slept for 7.8 hours each night before having children.

When baby interrupted time was calculated, around 2.05 hours sleep was lost, adding up to a total of 3.18 days over 12 months.

Mark Pearson of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, said: “When starting to conduct this study, I was confident that the amount of hours sleep that was lost by parents would have been high, but to see that a whole month of sleep is lost per year by mothers really puts it in perspective. Having a baby can be a big shock to parents, not only due to lack of sleep but the cost and the shift of priorities. No matter how hard parents prepare and how much they research, no one can ever really predict how a baby will behave until it’s with you- particularly how much the baby will want to sleep.”