Postpartum sleep is meant to be fragmented

All humans have built-in circadian polyphasic sleep options; new moms NEED to know how to activate them

My polyphasic sleep work is influenced by Navy research, where they teach sleep as a combat advantage. It translates to other fields quite well and we’ve had a lot of success basing protocols off the Navy frameworks.

Lamenting the inability to sleep 8 hours straight in the mothering season of life is like wishing you could get all the nutrition you need for breastfeeding from just one meal.

Instead of running pumps and bottles so that other people can feed mom’s baby, hiring night doulas (I used to be one), and seeking new sleep training methods, mom culture could just lean in to this:

all humans have built-in circadian polyphasic sleep options

Once forgotten, but now rediscovered by scientists who study mood and sleep architecture, we can deliberately flip the cues so that sleep naturally arranges itself around the clock.

Then, instead of trying to put 8 hours of gas in a 2 hour tank, moms can sleep lightly around their babies’ schedules, waking rested every time whether it was 20 minutes…