The bad news: Truly peaceful sleep becomes a thing of the past once you’re a parent. Even after you’ve survived the miserable infant stage you will still find yourself getting up at all hours to fetch glasses of water, find missing lovies, calm night terrors, and escort little people to the bathroom. Later, when your kids are in high school or college, you will lie awake worrying about them at parties. This is just the new normal when you love someone so fiercely.

The good news: The idea of getting only a few scattered hours of sleep is pretty scary before you have kids, and rightly so — it’s miserable. But every parent you know has gotten through it, and the really bad period doesn’t last forever. Babies start to sleep for much longer stretches after only 4-6 months, which means that you will start to get some sleep too. Besides, your body gets used to operating on less sleep, and eventually missing a few Zs doesn’t seem like such a big deal.