New mothers survive on an average of three and a half hours’ sleep a night for the first four months after their babies are born, half as much as their own mothers had.

Most mothers’ lives do not get much better until their babies reach 18 months old, with five hours’ sleep the norm for the first year and a half, new research has found.

The study, which included a poll of 3,000 parents, suggests that the gadgets and monitors installed in the home of almost every new parent are largely to blame for the sleep deficit.

The surfeit of two-way baby alarms, breathing sensors and even video monitors means most mothers wake up at the slightest stirring of their child.

However, it also suggests that new mothers should listen to the advice of their own mothers, who were generally happy to let their babies cry for a while before going to investigate.

The research was commissioned by Mother and Baby magazine. Elena Dalrymple, the editor, said that whereas a lot of the advice offered by the older generation was outdated some of it could still be useful.

“Half of grandparents believed that a baby should just be put in his cot and cry himself to sleep. While leaving a tiny baby to scream is definitely not recommended nowadays, a mum should still aim to put baby to bed awake and let him settle himself to sleep,” she said.

“If a baby is always fed or rocked to sleep, it’s frightening for them when they wake up in the night and realise they are not in your arms. So on this one, maybe Granny did know best.”

She was also critical of fathers who, according to the research, are still getting a full night’s sleep in the early months. More than half the fathers questioned said they “hardly ever or never” got up during the night (55 per cent) and their average night’s sleep was seven hours in the first four months. Fewer than a quarter (23 per cent) even wake up at all during the night when their baby cries.

“It is primarily mums who do the nighttime baby duty yet many are also back at work full-time by the time baby is six months old. Dads need to get out of bed in the early hours and pull their weight,” Dalrymple said.

The research found that grandparents were happy to dish out advice to their daughters about how to get more sleep in the early months.

The survey found that almost half mothers have been told by their parents to “leave the baby to cry” to get more sleep and that a third have been advised to give up breast-feeding, despite all the medical advice to continue for six months.

Other solutions offered by grandparents to the problem of lack of sleep include putting cereal into baby milk and giving the baby a dummy. The research discovered that paranoid parents are also investing heavily in electronic equipment to make sure that they hear every cry.

Three quarters have two-way alarms, one fifth have breathing sensors that emit a warning if the baby’s breathing is irregular, slows or stops for more than 20 seconds. Twelve per cent have video monitors.

Many mothers admitted that they could not relax enough to go to sleep even when their baby had dozed off.

Three quarters said that they were so concerned about cot death that they checked their sleeping baby during the night, and one third said their baby’s grunts and groans over the monitor woke them up.

The survey also found that their desperation to get their children off to sleep has led them to spend considerable sums on nighttime gadgets. Two thirds have cot mobiles, half have lullaby lights and one third have rocking cradles. One in ten parents has down-load music that replicates the sound of being in the womb to try to lull the baby to sleep.

]Sound sleep

Dr Tanya Byron, the childcare expert recently appointed an adviser to Gordon Brown, is not surprised that new mothers are getting so little sleep. She believes that they are in danger of denying their instincts. She lays down no hard rules about a baby’s sleep, but says that new parents need to consider their own sleep needs.

— Relax. Sleep is a learnt behaviour that must be nurtured. An anxious approach will increase the potential of problem behaviour

— Avoid rigid routines. They can reduce a more instinctive management of the sleep pattern

— Understand how babies sleep. They sleep in cycles like adults but will go through cycles at different times. That means parents are often woken in the middle of their deep sleep stage, so suffer profound sleep deprivation. Checking can wake the baby so a night-waking problem can develop

— Trust your instincts. Do not become overwhelmed and confused by conflicting advice

Dr Tanya Byron is author of Your Child, Your Way

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