Experiential Learning Activity

Congratulations you are the proud parent of a newborn baby! Youre thrilled and at home now, so it is just you and your partner/spouse to care for your baby. One aspect that many new parents dont realize will be difficult to adjust to is the change in your sleeping patterns and lack of sleep that comes with being the parent of an infant. Newborns wake frequently during the night to eat since their tummies are tiny, and for diaper changes. They also sometimes wake up for other reasons, perhaps just because they are lonely and need to be held. Later in infancy some parents might decide to not attend to crying immediately, but all experts agree that newborns require feeding every few hours for optimal growth. For this discussion board you are going to participate in an experiential learning activity. You will be experiencing what typical nighttime waking would be like as a new parent. For this activity you will not be able to delegate the night-time duties to another person, you alone will be responsible for them.
*To earn credit for this, you must do this experiential learning activity between now and Monday Feb 23 night to be prepared for our Tuesday Feb 24 in-class discussion...You cannot substitute times when you had difficulty sleeping or discuss memories of weeks/months/years ago when your child was younger. Email me if you have a question about this.
-Set an alarm to wake up at least 3 times during your usual sleep schedule, approximately 3 hours apart, (Newborns typically need to eat every 2 to 4 hours so we are taking the average.) A typical waking schedule might be 11pm, 1am, 4am, 7am, and 10am (if youd still be asleep at 10am). To get the real experience, you should plan to stay up the rest of the day rather than allowing yourself to go back to bed after you finish this.
-Consider downloading a free ringtone for your smart phone of a baby crying to use as your alarm to help increase the reality of the experience and/or looking at a picture of a baby (your own or one you find online) while you are awake.
-Get out of bed and stay up for at least 15 minutes each time the alarm goes off. In reality, parents would often be awake for longer periods with only rare occasions being shorter than this. You are welcome to select any activity you'd like to do during this 15 minutes.
Questions to answer
The next day, answer all of the following questions. You'll turn in your typed, printed responses to these questions.
1. What was your experience during the night while waking up? Be specific. Was the experience the same or different each time you awoke?
2. What was your experience the next day? Did you notice any physical effects (e.g., tiredness) or emotional effects (e.g., moodiness) the next day?
3. How do you think this would affect you if you had to do this night after night for months?
4. Would this make you more likely to want to share nighttime duties with a partner? Do you think your partner would be willing to share this duty?