I've recently been on a five week streak of 100% sleep scores on my Whoop (couple days of 98%) by "volume" sleeping at consistent times. The five week streak started on the day we came home with our second child and we changed our sleep routine.

Me, my wife, my 2.5 yo, and newborn all get into bed (or bassinet) at 8 PM. From 8 - 9 PM we're juggling feeding newborn, reading to toddler, and signing toddler to sleep in whatever order is necessary for that night. Then we sleep around 9 PM till 7 AM with multiple wake ups for diaper changes in the night.

As the newborns gotten longer stretches of sleep, so have I and I can tell my sleep quality is better. I do see significantly higher REM/SWS times on a night where I do one diaper change versus 4 like the first week.

Subjectively, my sleep quality is bad - I feel tired but way less tired than with my first when I didn't try and "volume sleep". But my Whoop is happy to hand out 100% score because I've gamed the system with an insane amount of hours.

Given the circumstances, I'm sleeping as well as anyone could hope. And there might be some value in just "being in bed" longer if you can't guarantee sleep quality. I know I'm way less tired than I was with my first.

That's very impressive for a new father! Congratulations!

How's your wife's sleep going? Mothers get considerably less sleep than fathers, even with school aged kids.

The subjective feeling is the result of broken sleep and likely the resulting lack of slow-wave power. Your wife may have this worse than you, as it is theorized that there is an evolutionary throwback where mothers have increased cortisol due to needing to be aware to take care of the baby. I haven't seen research in this, but many mothers have said they just felt "on edge" for the first few years.

There is some value probably to "being in bed" longer, Huberman talks about this a bit with reference to his "non-sleep deep rest".

However, our focus is on ensuring the sleep you get is as restorative as possible, even for new parents.