We have also reviewed subjective measures of sleep-ratings scales and
self-report indices—that attempt to delve into the experience of tiredness and fa-
tigue, though for specific groups of subjects. Many of these scales are inappro-
priately applied to the population of new parents, having been designed to diagnose
frank pathologies of sleep. As anthropologists, we are interested in building from
the narratives of participants. The proto-instrument we have presented here (Box1)
has been constructed based on themes that emerged through multiple focus groups
and could be used with other postpartum parents in the UK to assess the degree and
consequences of tiredness and fatigue experienced by parents in thefirst postpartum
year.
Clearly the experience of Baby-Lag is an area where‘measurement’is itself at
an early stage of development. How parents’subjective experiences of tiredness
and fatigue relate to actual sleep loss and disturbance has barely been researched,
and given individual differences in ability to cope with sleep disruption, it is dif-
ficult to know, as yet, which key parameters (e.g., total sleep duration, frequency of
sleep disturbance, proportion of sleep achieved in particular sleep stages, and dis-
ruption to circadian functioning) might have most influence over parental experi-
ences of Baby-Lag. However, as sleep disruption looms large in the lives of new
parents, development of tools to effectively research and understand this phe-
nomenon in ecologically valid settings are vital for understanding this qualitatively
prominent yet quantitatively invisible aspect of human life.
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