Nobody tells you before the baby arrives just how long the nights are. Twelve hours of darkness with a newborn who wakes every 2 to 3 hours means you are getting up 4 to 6 times in a single night. Even at 6 months, when things improve, you may still be doing 2 to 3 night wakings. Nighttime parenting is one of the hardest parts of early parenthood and one of the least discussed.
Understanding Night Waking
All humans — adults included — cycle through lighter and deeper sleep stages throughout the night. During lighter sleep stages, we partially rouse and then fall back asleep. Babies do this too, but they have not yet developed the skill of falling back asleep independently during these light sleep phases. They signal for help — usually in the form of a cry — and need a parent to help them return to sleep.
For the first 3 to 4 months, this is entirely developmental and there is limited you can do to change it. After 4 months, the sleep architecture changes in a way that makes independent resettling more developmentally possible — but it does not happen automatically. It requires gradually teaching the baby to settle without the external prop (feeding, rocking) they have come to rely on.
Splitting the Night Fairly
One of the most important changes Indian families can make is sharing the night responsibility. In families where the mother does all night wakings while the father sleeps, the mother's sleep debt becomes extreme. Chronic sleep deprivation impairs judgment, emotional regulation, immune function, and mental health in ways that compound across months.
If the mother is breastfeeding, she must do the feeding wakings but the father can take all other wakings — nappy changes, resettling a baby who has woken after feeding and is not hungry. Even one 4-hour protected sleep block per night makes an enormous difference to maternal wellbeing and functioning.
The Indian Joint Family Night Reality
In Indian joint families, grandparents often want to help with the nights and sometimes insist on it. This can be genuinely helpful — a grandmother who settles the baby between feeds so parents can sleep longer stretches is invaluable. It can also complicate sleep, particularly if grandparents respond immediately to every sound before the baby has a chance to self-settle, or if their approach to settling conflicts with what parents are trying to establish.
Protecting Your Own Sleep
The advice to sleep when the baby sleeps is good but not always practical. The more useful framework is: prioritise sleep over everything else that can wait. The dishes can wait. The WhatsApp messages can wait. If you have 45 minutes during a nap and you have been awake since 3am, sleep wins over cleaning. Accept every genuine offer of help for daytime care so you can rest. Let the household standards drop to whatever is safe and manageable. This phase is temporary.