Returning to work on broken sleep
You go back in two weeks and nobody is sleeping. There is a useful amount you can do in a fortnight, and a great deal you should deliberately not attempt.
3 min read
Two weeks is not long enough to fix night waking. It is long enough to change the shape of the night so that you get one reliable unbroken block, which is the thing that determines whether you can function at work.
So the target is not fewer wakes. It is a protected stretch of your own sleep, and a household where you are not the only person who can settle the baby.
The fortnight before
Hand over settling to the other parent. Start immediately, with naps and bedtime, and move to night wakes in week two. If you are the only person who can settle them, you have no cover once work starts.
Set up a rota and trial it. Better to discover it does not work now than in week one of the new job.
Shift your own bedtime earlier. By fifteen minutes every few days. It is the most reliable gain available in two weeks.
Practise the morning. Run the actual weekday timings a few times - getting a baby out of the house takes far longer than anyone estimates.
Start nursery or childcare before you start work, if you can. A week of overlap absorbs the settling-in period without a job on top of it.
What to leave until after
Night weaning. Settling programmes. Room moves. Cot to bed. Every one of these produces several bad nights, and the fortnight before returning to work is the worst possible time to spend them.
Give it six to eight weeks after starting, once the new routine has settled and everybody has adjusted.
You are not aiming for fewer wakes in two weeks. You are aiming for one block of your own sleep that somebody else protects.
What to abandon
The standard you were holding at home. The house, the cooking, the idea that you will be at full capacity at work in the first month. Batch-cook, lower the bar, accept help specifically with the household rather than with the baby.
It is also worth knowing that the first month back is commonly harder than expected for reasons that are not about sleep - and that this settles too.
The first fortnight back
Expect it to be harder than you have planned for, and not principally because of sleep. New logistics, a child adjusting to childcare, the first nursery cold, and the discovery that the morning takes twice as long as you allowed. Most people describe the first two weeks as the worst of the whole transition.
Front-load what you can: batch cooking, clothes out the night before, bags packed in the evening, and nothing social in the diary for a fortnight. And if you have any flexibility at all, start on a Wednesday or Thursday. A two-day first week is a substantially gentler introduction than a five-day one.
What to say at work
More than you might expect is worth saying, particularly if your job involves driving, machinery or clinical decisions. Sleep deprivation is a safety issue, not a personal failing, and most employers would rather know than find out.
It is also worth asking about the things that exist and are rarely offered: a phased return, temporarily adjusted hours, or flexible start times. In the UK you have a statutory right to request flexible working. Asking in the first month, before you are visibly struggling, tends to go better than asking in the third.
When to stop troubleshooting
Talk to your GP if you are falling asleep unintentionally, feel unsafe driving or operating machinery, or if low mood or anxiety has persisted for more than a fortnight. If sleep deprivation is making work genuinely unsafe, that is a conversation worth having with your employer as well.
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