Why I Tell Everyone I Know to Try a ‘Sleep Divorce’ Postpartum

For What to Expect’s “What I Wish I’d Known” series, moms and dads share the wisdom they’ve gained since first becoming parents. 

After a month of broken sleep caring for our newborn, my husband and I were at our wits’ end. We were running on fumes after waking up every couple of hours every. single. night. for weeks. As a last resort, we tried something I didn’t think we’d ever do in our marriage: sleep in separate rooms.

Getting a “sleep divorce” saved my sanity in the newborn period, but it’s something I’d never heard of before as a new mom. Here’s what I wish I’d known from the start that would have saved me a whole lot of stress and sleepless nights. 

Sleep deprivation is a new parent’s worst enemy

If you’ve already had a baby or are about to welcome your first, you probably know how exhausting the newborn stage can be. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends feeding your infant on demand, and most newborns get hungry every two to three hours (depending on whether they’re fed breast milk or formula), day and night.

Even as these feedings (slowlyyy) begin to space out, room-sharing with your baby (which the AAP recommends doing for at least the first six months) can still sap your sleep as snoozing newborns are weirdly loud. As a new mom, I found myself tossing and turning as I analyzed each grunt, snort, and sigh coming from the crib. 

Those long nights were hurting me as a partner and a parent; each day, I undoubtedly felt cranky with my husband and less playful with my baby. 

“When you’re frequently waking up at night to take care of a baby, your body doesn’t have the opportunity to progress through the full sequence of sleep stages that restore your brain and body,” explains Andrea Matsumura, M.D., a board-certified sleep medicine physician. “As a result, you wake feeling less refreshed, less alert, and more easily fatigued during the day. This interrupted pattern can also make it harder to regulate your attention, reaction time, and even hunger cues.”

As time went on, I also noticed a really strong link between the amount of sleep I got and my mental health: “Broken sleep has a strong impact on emotional regulation,” Dr. Matsumura adds. “Sleep, especially REM sleep, plays a critical role in how our brain processes emotions and stress. When you don’t sustain or even reach those deeper, restorative stages, the amygdala — the part of the brain involved in emotion and threat response — becomes more reactive. This can make you more irritable, prone to mood swings, or even anxious. Over time, chronic sleep fragmentation increases the risk for postpartum mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.”

I didn’t really see a way to avoid the frequent wake-ups, however, until my husband suggested something genius: a sleep divorce.

Getting a sleep divorce can help you get way more sleep with a newborn … here’s how

A sleep divorce is when two parents (who still love each other very much!) decide to sleep in different rooms for one reason or another.

In our case, my husband and I decided that there was no need for us to both suffer the entire night. Instead, we’d adopt a shift system where one of us would take baby duty while the other person slept peacefully in another room. 

After trying it, both my husband and I immediately started sleeping much better. And once I was getting more rest, I felt less anxious during the day, more present with my son, and more supportive of my husband.  

That makes sense because uninterrupted sleep “translates to better mood regulation, lower risk of postpartum depression and anxiety, better hormone balance, and [it] preserves the relationship,” Dr. Matsumura explains. “The baby also benefits when its caregivers are better rested; responding more calmly to the baby’s needs strengthens the attachment and emotional regulation of your infant.”

Want to give a sleep divorce a try? Here’s how we did it.

Set up two sleeping spaces 

My husband would go to sleep in our bedroom with our son in the mini crib. When the baby woke up about halfway through the night, my husband would feed him, change him, and then put him down in a portable bassinet in the other bedroom where I’d be sleeping. I’d then handle whatever the next wakeup was and any subsequent ones until the morning. 

(We found it easier to move our son over in the night than switch beds ourselves; I usually slept through the “drop-off,” extending my block of rest.) 

This worked well in our two-bedroom condo, but if you live in a smaller space, you can do something similar by having one person sleep on the couch. 

No matter what, you’ll need a safe sleep surface(s) for your baby — a crib, bassinet, or pack ‘n’ play — to use all night long.

Divide up the night

Regardless of when our newborn fell asleep (which varied a lot as he figured out the whole day-night thing), I’d go to bed at 10 p.m. I’d then get 10 p.m. to 3 a.m to snooze solidly.

Meanwhile, my husband would usually go to bed at the same time, but handle any wake-ups during that period. Then I’d take over from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. and respond to any cries, catching whatever extra sleep I could.

“Even though five hours isn’t a full night’s sleep, it is uninterrupted sleep, which allows both parents to hit restorative deep sleep and REM cycles,” Dr. Matsumura says. “Deep sleep is when your body repairs tissues, supports immune function, and consolidates physical recovery. REM sleep — where we experience dreaming — is essential for memory consolidation and emotional balance. Without uninterrupted sleep, you may miss out on REM entirely or get only brief bursts of it, which limits the restorative benefits.”

Figure out feeding

If you’re formula-feeding, a sleep divorce won’t change anything in this department. If you’re breastfeeding, however, you’ve got a couple of options. You can try passive milk collection or pumping once or twice during the day in order to have a bottle for your off-shift. (That’s what I did.) 

You can also supplement with formula. (Nothing wrong with that — just ask your pediatrician for tips on how to do it!) If you’d rather stick to nursing, your partner can bring the baby to you for the feeding, but then burp, change, and settle the baby for you so you can get back to sleep as fast as possible.  

Set yourself up for success

Over the following weeks, my husband and I perfected our system. Here’s what we found made it go even more smoothly: 

• Have a second changing station. Since we had the changing table in the primary bedroom, I found it helpful to grab an extra couple of diapers and a portable pad to put in the other room. That way I could do a morning diaper change without waking my husband. 
• Play some white noise. I have zero proof, but I suspect that having similar sounds in each bedroom helped my baby sleep. It definitely helped me sleep because I was less likely to hear any noise during my off-shift. (You don’t need to buy a white noise machine either; simply queue up some relaxing sounds on YouTube or Spotify.)
• Prep as much as possible. If you’re using frozen milk, move it to the fridge before you go to bed. Have a microwavable bowl filled with water (or a bottle warmer) ready to go if your baby is picky about the temperature. And if you’re going to pump at any point, assemble all of the parts ahead of time.  
• Resist the urge to use your phone, if possible. “Keep nighttime caregiving calm and quiet — avoid bright lights or stimulating screens,” Dr. Matsumura advises. In my experience, I found that when I stopped checking the time and logging wake-ups, I had an easier time falling back asleep.

Remember that it’s not forever

While five hours of sleep is undoubtedly imperfect, it’s also a phase that will end. “New parents should give themselves grace as perfect sleep isn’t realistic,” Dr. Matsumura says. “Remember, this phase is temporary. As your baby’s sleep consolidates, your own sleep quality will begin to rebound.”

Eventually, it came time to convert the second bedroom into a nursery and to move our baby into his own room. Our “divorce” officially ended, and my husband and I got back to our regular sleeping arrangement. Even better news: Everyone started sleeping longer periods at night, baby included.

Looking back, I wish more parents knew that while it may sound unconventional, getting a sleep divorce could be one of the best things you can do to help your relationship (and yourself) in the postpartum period. 

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