parental sleep deprivation 2025-09-16T17:55:16Z

Cold tile floors bit into my bare feet as I paced the darkened nursery, my daughter's shrieks shredding what remained of my sanity. For the seventeenth consecutive night, sleep had become a mythical creature - glimpsed in foggy memories of pre-parenthood, now vaporized by colicky wails echoing off ultrasound scans still taped to the wall. Milk crusted my shirt collar where she'd headbutted me during the last failed feeding attempt, and the digital clock's crimson glare mocked me: 3:47 AM. In tha

Rain lashed against the window as I jiggled my screaming daughter against my shoulder, the digital clock burning 3:17 AM into my retinas. That acid reflux smell – half-curdled milk, half-stomach bile – clung to my pajamas while my free hand spider-walked across the nightstand searching for my phone. My brain felt like waterlogged cotton. Was this her second or third wake-up? Had it been two hours since the last feed or three? When sleep deprivation turns minutes into elastic bands that snap with