New parents want sleep more than sex

There’s a new study out from BabyCenter and Dr. Harvey Karp (the author of Happiest Baby on the Block). The study is, in turn, summarized on Scary Mommy. It’s all about new parents and their attitudes on the early days of parenting.

The big takeaway:

62 percent claim the biggest challenge they have is lack of sleep
48 percent say it’s lack of time
34 percent say it’s concerns over money
26 percent say it’s lack of sex

Think on that for a second. The ratio of “sleep means more” to “where did sex go?” is over 2 to 1.

Makes sense, though: 78 percent of new parents in this study reported being “exhausted” within the past week, and observations of their daily lives showed they average about 5.7 hours/night (often lower).

And now, why this matters:

“Exhaustion is a serious problem,” Karp says. “It leads to the same mental impairment as being drunk! In some families it can trigger marital stress, postpartum depression, breastfeeding failure, obesity, and even infant deaths from falling asleep with the baby in an unsafe location.”

No bueno.

This whole situation is why we created our overnight care program, which you can check out rates for here.

Get some sleep — or let us help you get it.

Happy early July 4th. We’ll be back next week with a new study and some advice from Blake Lively (!) on motherhood.