New parents: You need your sleep too!

As you must already know, sleep is the number 1 casualty for new parents. The thought of sleeping for a full 7 to 8 hours every night seems like a distant dream when you have a newborn at home. But with proper planning and coordination with your partner, it may just be possible to turn the dream into reality.

For a mother, sleeping when the baby is sleeping is the best thing to do. If your baby is taking a day time nap, you take it as well! Forget all your chores and household activities that need to be done; you need to take care of yourself too!

Your bedroom is your sanctuary. While it may be perfectly possible that you may not want to let your baby go out of your sight at any point of time, keeping its crib or bassinet just outside your door at night will keep you and your partner away from hearing every hiccup and coo it makes. Get sleep!

If you are using a baby monitor, turn down its volume. You want to hear it crying, not breathing!

Work out your nighttime schedule with your partner so that both of you can catch up on sleep, even if not at the same time.

Hire a babysitter whenever you can to sleep or just have some fun time with your partner. This is important.

If sleep doesn’t come, don’t think too much about it. Instead, listen to some relaxing music or read a book.