Do Any Parents Actually Sleep Eight Hours Per Night?

Read a business book and you're bound to encounter the Myth of the Eight-Hour Night. Julie and I laugh about this one all of the time.

The story goes something like this: To be at your best, it's essential to get at least eight hours of sleep at night. Shut off your laptops and smartphones. Bury yourself beneath the covers of your bed. Cover your windows with blackout curtains. (Preferably before you lie down.) Sleep without interruption until daybreak.

Please. By the time Julie and I get the kids down at night, it's 8:30 or 9. We generally go our separate ways and put in another 90 minutes to two hours. Julie is wrapping up her Ph.D. this fall. I'm working on that project I promised I'd tell you more about soon.

Did I mention we like to spend at least a couple of minutes together at night, just the two of us? It's hard to stay married if you never see each other. It's not the same when the children are awake. They're always so ... needy. Most of the time, we snack and watch a little TV and begin to fall asleep in the love seat, and then we go to bed. There's nothing particularly extraordinary about it. But it's our time, and we guard it, all 30 or 40 minutes' worth.

By then, 11:30 has come and gone. It's light's out at midnight. And depending on the day, we're up and at 'em anywhere between 4 and 6. If we hit 6:30, it's a cause for celebration. Past 7 and something is terribly amiss, but also wonderful.

This will probably come back to bite us one day when our bodies decay from the inside out and we become a hollow shell of our former existence. But for now, this is life, and I'm not sure you can do much about it.

I'm curious: Do you get eight hours of sleep each night? If so, what's your secret? If not, do you care?

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