n.
Extreme fatigue and disorientation due to the sleep deprivation associated with parenting a baby. Also: baby lag, babylag.
Example Citations:
Meantime, Angelina Jolie just can't help giving interviews when she's tired. She has many children now (six, and rarin' for seven), so she probably is always tired....Was Jolie suffering from jet-lag? Baby-lag?
—John Timpane, " SideShow: http://articles.philly.com/2008-10-21/news/25263558_1_sarah-palin-gop-vice-presidential-nominee-alaska-governor-and-gop," The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 21, 2008
New parents who mistakenly put milk in a washing machine and socks in a fridge are not going crazy...they are suffering from 'babylag'.
—Katy Winter, "Did you put milk in the washing machine and socks in the fridge this morning? You might be suffering from Babylag www.dailymail.co.uk: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2203256/Did-milk-washing-machine-socks-fridge-morning-You-suffering-Babylag.html," The Daily Mail, September 14, 2012
Earliest Citation:
Of course, our daughter had slept. It was her parents who were paralytic with fatigue. We slept in shifts. Mother and daughter sat on the balcony overlooking a pool, a busy four-lane thoroughfare and off in the distance, the beach, while father recovered from 'baby lag.'
—Jane French, "Travelling with baby," The Globe and Mail, March 6, 1993
Notes:
This phrase is a play on jet lag, the fatigue and disorientation that results from a long flight across multiple time zones, which dates to 1965. The OED's earliest citation is a beauty:
Jet lag strikes suddenly. The victim disembarks from the...plane feeling gay as a sprite, dashes through customs, checks into home or a hotel,...greets friends and in the course of the next few hours falls into a light coma.
—New York Herald Tribune, February 23, 1965
Related Words:
Categories:
New words. 2013.