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When Notoya Green glanced at the clock in the nursery, saw it was 5:30 a.m. and realized she’d had exactly zero minutes of sleep that night, something had to give.
The TriBeCa mother of 3-month-old triplets didn’t care how much money it would cost — for the sake of her sanity, she HAD to get some shut-eye.
“Going without sleep is a dangerous place to be,” recalls Green, a lawyer who is now a stay-at-home mom.
“There was no way my husband, Frederick, or I could function without it.”
Enter Alicia Wilson, 36, an experienced baby nurse, who took over the Greens’ night shift — at least for six nights of the week — and restored at least some semblance of normalcy to their regular sleep patterns.
Wilson charged $300 per night and, since she stayed with the family for 12 weeks, the total cost amounted to more than $20,000.
But Notoya Green has no regrets.
“Alicia was worth every single penny,” says the 37-year-old, who now blogs at tripletsintribeca.com.
Whether they’re shelling out thousands for night nurses, high-end mattresses or soundproofing, lately it seems that sleep-starved New Yorkers will do — and spend — just about anything in the pursuit of better shut-eye. Hiring an overnight baby nurse is fast becoming the norm for wealthy parents in New York, where rest is the most precious commodity for new moms and dads.
“They need their sleep and they can definitely afford it,” says Upper West Side entrepreneur Melissa Lutzke, 33, founder of ratemybabynurse.com, which has seen a 25% increase in traffic this year.
Eric Redlinger might not be a new parent, but when his unpredictable upstairs neighbors came home at various times, causing him to lose up to four hours of sleep a night, he was going crazy.
“I was in a bad mood, creating bad energy — it was really crucial to my relationship with my wife,” says Redlinger, 41, who lives in a duplex condo in Williamsburg.
He tried sleeping in different parts of the apartment and even went so far as to pay his neighbors to install thousands of dollars worth of plush carpeting in their home, but nothing stuck. (The costly carpeting didn’t work for his neighbor — their dog took an aversion to it.)
Eventually, after several months of lying awake in bed, Redlinger, a musical performer, invested in 600 square feet of new soundproofed ceiling for $10,000.
“It was really expensive for us and not something we took lightly, but it was totally life-changing; it made it possible to stay,” he says.
Devin O’Brien, an architect who started Brooklyn Insulation Company seven years ago, says soundproofing requests have gone through the roof in the past several years, with business doubling each year.
“It’s the culture and density of NYC that lends itself to a need for soundproofing,” says O’Brien. “Sometimes I feel like the mediator and therapist between clients and their neighbors.”
While his costs are admittedly steep — his jobs typically range anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 — people accept the sky-high bills, according to O’Brien.
“People aren’t prepared for the cost,” he says, “but they’re hanging on by a thread.”
Since the economy tanked five years ago, Maha Ahmad, a doctor at the Sleep Disorder Institute in New York, has seen a spike in patients reporting sleep problems.
“New Yorkers sleep less based on how much they work — with longer hours and more stress than people in other cities,” says Ahmad. “Plus, [there are] the environmental issues: small apartments with neighbors and city noise.”
Nationwide sales of sleeping medications like Ambien and Lunesta have increased 10 percent in the past five years, according to IMS Health, a health-care technology and information company. And 58 percent of the US population reported having symptoms of insomnia or a sleep disorder in a 2008 study by market research publisher, Marketdata.
For Steve Koch, 43, it was the thunderous pitter-patter of the upstairs toddlers’ footsteps that did him in.
The Long Island City resident, who works in audio post-production, soundproofed his condo in two phases — first the master bedroom and living room, then his daughter’s room — to the tune of $16,000. (That’s not including the $30,000 he spent on a redesigned boudoir.)
“Tearing down ceilings and replacing them is daunting,” admits Koch, “but I had to make a change. I’m in a better mood now. That deep thudding noise was so jarring, my heart would race.”
Others are spending big bucks on luxe mattresses to lull themselves to sleep.
Katty Guerrero, an eight-year sales consultant veteran at upscale ABC Carpet & Home, has sold about 30 handmade Vi-Spring mattresses for $26,000 apiece since January. Made with only natural fibers — including horsehair and wool — you can count sheep while also sleeping on them.
That’s a relative bargain compared to Hastens, the top-of-the-line 150-year-old Swedish mattress company with its Flatiron storefront, whose handmade, classic checkerboard patterned beds top out at $99,000 for the whole kit and caboodle, including mattress, bed frame and box spring, which takes six months to produce.
“Our customers have sleep problems — they’re allergic to the chemicals and sensitive to their current mattress,” says sales manager Alicia Hylton, who would only note “significant sales” and the fact that Will Ferrell is a satisfied customer.
There’s even a Flatiron-based company, Hypoxico, shilling hypoxic chambers — which provide low-oxygen, high-altitude environments supposedly conducive to deep sleep — that start at $3,500 for the standard model.
Meanwhile, a new store called Sleep Studio, capitalizing on the city’s sleep-deprived population, is slated to open in SoHo in June and touts a “holistic approach to sleep” — one that apparently includes $675 goose-down pillows and $120 wake-up lights.
For those not looking to plunk down quite so much on fancy duvets, the Benjamin Hotel on the East Side offers a “sleep concierge” service, which, for upward of $1,500 a night, includes a choice of 12 pillows, double-paned soundproof windows and a butler whose sole job is to attend to guests’ nocturnal needs. (Hey, those pillows don’t fluff themselves.)
Nina, a 38-year-old mother of four who asked that her real name not be used for professional reasons, has used the service once a year for the past five years and calls it “hands down, the best birthday present ever” from her husband.
“It’s completely glorious,” says Nina, a doctor who estimates that she normally gets a maximum of five hours of sleep per night, as she often finds herself up till 2 a.m., catching up on paperwork and answering e-mails from patients.
“A critical part of the gift was that it was to be completely by myself — not with my husband — so it could be total and complete sleep focus. I look forward to it all year.”
Others have found more affordable ways to catch some Z’s.
Every Wednesday afternoon from 12:30 to 1, Dawn Glover-
Nicholson knows exactly where she’ll be — in a napping pod at Yelo Spa high above a swanky stretch of 57th Street, snoozing on a $7,000 zero-gravity bed, tucked under a $700 cashmere blanket professionally wrapped around her feet. Not bad for $30.
“At first I thought, ‘Really? I’m going to pay in NYC to sleep — when I have to pay a mortgage and everything else?’ ” says the 38-year-old senior fashion designer. The Bronx mom, who has a 3-year-old daughter named Winter, calls this her “guilty pleasure.”
And then there’s Ben Kallos, a 32-year-old lawyer who estimates that he has spent “thousands of dollars” over the past decade combating his chronic sleep problems. He’s seen sleep specialists, bought special beds and taken medication.
So what finally worked?
“Buying 300 earplugs online for 30 bucks,” he says. “The best thing I’ve ever done.”