Sort of like a lot of lessons in life that no one can or usually will teach you, here are a string of thoughts and facts that no one ever told me.  I learned it in real time.  The hard way.

It is scientifically proven that interrupted and lack of sleep will cause clinical depression.  It is also, IMHO probably one of the most effective torture methods.  Forget waterboarding.  That’s just a total waste of water.  It’s too much drama too.  Don’t let your victim sleep at all.  Interrupted sleep.  No sleep.  Off-cycle sleep.  Do it all.  It’s cheap and extremely effective.  And you can do a lot of it without having to touch your victim.

When you have a new baby in your family, and if you are a caregiver to the child, you will not be given a chance to sleep normally for a few years.  Maybe several years if you have more than one child.  If the child has health issues, then you are much more likely not to get good sleep.  You will be clinically depressed.  Until you can reliably sleep soundly at night on a regular basis, you will be depressed.  There is no way around it.  Add the day-to-day grown-up stresses of life like keeping your job, paying your bills, keeping your spousal relationship happy, keeping your business up and running, saving for retirement, and living life with your extended family and in-laws; and you’ve got a very, very full plate. Those issues alone can keep a grown-up up at night, unable to sleep due to the stress of it all.

I’m in the middle of it right now.  I don’t know when we’ll get out of it.  As a new first-time grandpa dad at 45 I keep thinking of that joke about video games:

You play modern day video games until you finish them.  In old school video games, you just kept going again and again and again on the same boards and challenges over and over and it got harder and harder and harder.  Until all your men died and it was GAME OVER.  Just like life.