How much sleep does one really need? Average amount of sleep a night is 7 to 9 hours. A child requires about 10 hours. A man requires about 15 hours. But how much does a MOM require? We deal with our babies waking up every 2 to 4 hours for bottle feedings, our kids waking up in the middle of night with nightmares and then staying awake with them until they calm down and fall back asleep, the general sleepless nights of worrying if you made the right choices for the day or if something you did has scarred them for the rest of their lives…. I have went on 2 hours sleep for the whole night as well as waking up every 3 hours for bottle feedings and then as soon as my children fell back asleep and my body decided it was exhausted another child woke up. And this went on for weeks! How I functioned every day on continuous disturbed sleep I will never know. Someone once said that a mom survives this routine on lots of coffee and lots of love for their kids. Is that really all a mother requires…. coffee and love?!