Prioritizing Sleep as a Working Mother: Debunking the Self-Sacrificing Mother Myth

Disclaimer: To moms with newborn infants, this article is not for you. I would be remiss to pretend that it’s just as easy for a mother with a baby waking her up every three to four hours as it is for mothers with older children to prioritize sleep. The reality is: this is the stage of life you are in with young children. Trust it will get better. Your baby will eventually sleep through the night, and you can get back to prioritizing your sleep.

For the rest of us with older children, sleep is the key to being the most productive. In my journey as a single working mother, I believed in a number of fallacies that countered prioritizing sleep.

1. I can sleep less and do more.

We have all proved we can survive off a couple hours of sleep when our children were young. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Now, that your children are older, it’s okay to sleep more.

Often, sleep deprivation has gotten in the way of writing good code. I end up having to refactor, which takes up more time than if I went to sleep at a reasonable time and woke up refreshed.

2. I don’t deserve to sleep more.

When my daughter was born, I was broke and living with my mother. I was wholly unprepared for single motherhood. I didn’t prioritize taking care of myself: including sleep. When she was a baby, it was easy to punish myself because she woke me up every three hours to feed. Even when she grew out of this stage, I held on to not getting enough sleep.

I believed: I can sleep when I raise myself up out of financial instability. Until then, I cannot rest!

Note: I did get myself out of financial insecurity to six figures, but not sleeping didn’t help. It made it harder.

3. Sacrifice is a sign of being a good mother

I once found myself in a competition with another mom about how little sleep we were getting. I was getting five hours. She was getting four. She won! But… What did she win? What did we win engaging in a comparison of rest to gauge how well we were mothering?

Being tired can be viewed a badge of honor for mothers.

Look at how tired I am! I must be doing everything I can for my children.

You might be working two jobs (I do.) and in graduate school (I am.) where it’s easy to skip sleep to get everything done. I found when I do that:

Everything suffers.

1. I am grumpy to my child.
2. I can’t think clearly to do my data engineering work.
3. I waste time re-reading my schoolwork because I’m too tired to absorb information.
4. My health deteriorates.

Cortisol increases when you lack sleep. More cortisol increases a stress response in your body. If you didn’t think you were stressed out before, skip sleeping and see how much worse you feel afterwards.

Whenever I have the urge to stay up to get more work done, I remember how much harder it is to homeschool, write code, study, write, and be the primary caregiver for my daughter. Caffeine used to be my crutch, but chugging coffee never truly breaks through that fuzzy fatigue hanging over me. Nothing makes me more efficient than a good night’s sleep.