Never thought it would be this shit

[Mississippilessly]

I'm currently standing on my own driveway. DH is inside watching The Chase. I am rocking our very over tired baby who has gone to sleep after a walk but keeps coming to - I know if I go inside where there is warmth and light he will really wake up.im standing here so I can use my wifi.
His night sleep is broken to say the least. 3 wake ups is great. We often wake every hr. He is 15 weeks old. I am so so tired. I am so tired of trying to figure it out. So tired of research. So tired of spending my life trying to get him to sleep. So tired of making so many decisions every day - do I try to keep him awake longer/ do I try crib or sling/do I try to carry on doing things or just give in and live for his naps.
I never imagined it would be this hard or this absurd.

Push chair with a blanket over to block light.

It will get better in the new year. It will be less dark and your baby will make (non-linear) gradual progress towards letting you have more sleep/sanity. You are at the hardest point; your post-birth adrenaline and excitement is all worn out and all that remains is an exhausted shell of a human in almost perpetual darkness.

My autumn born was so much harder than my winter born. Just keep reminding yourself how lovely it will be with your 6 month old in the spring time. You will remember this time with a weirdly perverse fondness/dread and you will be transported straight back every so often by threads such as this one.

Good luck

lights he naps in the pram.but only lasts about 30 mins.

With my first I found it so hard to believe ‘this too shall pass’. It feels like everything will be this exhausting forever. With my second I knew it would end and it’s so much easier (she’s also a better sleeper).

Indiana
'Exhausted shell of a human in almost perpetual darkness' has made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

It gets easier, you just have to get through it for now. Both of mine have been shit sleepers, my eldest didn't sleep for more than 1.5 hours until he was 18 months old, and until he was 1 it was more like every 40 minutes. When I look back I don't know how I didn't lose my mind!

Just keep going, at some point it honestly gets easier. Or none of us would ever have more than one child!

As everyone else has said, it does get easier but I feel your pain!

Reading Gina Ford's Contented Little Baby Book and loosely following her routines was great for me with both of mine but I know many MNers hate her passionately.

The lifesaver for me when they were that tiny was getting into our bed with them at lunchtime when they were tired, closing the curtains etc, BFing to sleep and just lying with them for as long as they slept. Mostly, I'd sleep too but sometimes I'd read. As soon as I tried to get up they'd wake so I went with it!

What about bottle feeding op? Your husband and you can them do shifts and often bottle fed babies can drink more, stay fuller for longer and as such then sleep longer.

Worked for me.

It ended for us after 18 months of nothing working. Good luck OP. Sometimes babies just aren't meant to sleep.

I know it is not in any way recommended but my 4 were all tummy sleepers. As soon as they could roll, and that’s how 3/4 still sleep now (youngest is 5). It was desperation one night that led me to roll no.2 over and she slept for four hours... some babies just need to feel more cocooned, more pressure on their tummy, less startle reflexy.

If you’re not sure, let him nap like that with DH watching while you get some sleep in the earlier part of the night. I did end up going to bed at 8pm ish to get a chunk in before they kicked off and went two-hourly again.

We aren’t smokers, they always slept in the same room as me, exclusively breastfed, I figured I had reduced all other possible risk factors.

This is so so so super hard. I'm sorry for your troubles. As everyone has said, it will get better. But I remember that being of little help when I was where you are - I just wanted to know when it was going to get better, I could literally feel the ebd of a tether at times. My advice is - I was happiest when I just submitted to it. I know this soubds weird, but I was most unhappy when I thought there was smt I could do and I just wasn't doing it right. When I just gave up that idea, realised I had a sh*t sleeper, and there wasn't anything I could do about it, I felt relieved. Then I just waited it out, with lots of coffee (recommend contigo mugs if bfing), cake, sleeping whenever possible and letting my house and person slide into choas.

Just to send you some solidarity. It's very hard. Against all my instincts I ended up letting DS cry for a couple of mins in the sleepyhead thing - I kept talking to him, and gradually he seemed to realise he wasn't being abandoned in the woods. I know you are EBF, but also just to pop a little positive note in about mix feeding - I wanted to BF my DS, I struggled with it for so long, it never seemed to work, he was losing weight and miserable etc. I thought mix feeding would kill BF completely but actually it was a bloody revelation, and I managed to sustain BF through feeding and pumping until he was weaning. Which I was happy with all in all. There's definitely no 'one way' to cope you just do whatever reduces the crying, enables you to eat and drink and hopefully catch a little sleep. My DH used to take DS from 8pm til midnight, giving him expressed milk, I would sleep in the spare room for those 4 hours, which we tried to keep a 'baby free zone', and omg that basically saved my sanity. And even when DH was working the next day it wasn't too bad for him to go to bed at midnight and get up for work, and it made me feel 'ready' for those long dark nights.

I’ve been there, OP. It really does get better. I ended up in a very dark and very anxious place and even ended up sobbing hysterically into a mattress at times. I had fantasies about needing a quiet hospital stay too.

It got a lot worse before it got better, but it did get better! I got so anxious I couldn’t even sleep when DC1 was sleeping - I just waited for her to wake up.

I won’t tell you how old DC1 was before sleeping through for the first time, but DC2 was a much better sleeper, loves naps, could be left awake to fall asleep in bed years before the age DC1 achieved that!

I did all the obsessive researching and reading. I tried everything, including sleep training methods that made me hate myself. The only thing that worked was putting DC1 in a bed rather than a cot, which we did at a much later stage.

And DH and I and our marriage is intact. You’ll get there. [Mumsnet-high-five]

We must have put an extra 5,000 miles on the car the first few months after ds was born with dh driving him about just to settle him. Or I'd sit by the side of the cot with my arm (painfully wedged) through the bars just so his tiny little hand could stroke my arm while he nodded off, if I moved away too quickly he'd be wide awake in a flash. 🙄

It will pass, quicker than you think.

You could always try my Grandma's approach. My Dad was a nightmare sleeper, so she told me she used to stick a couple of extra scoops of formula in his bottle, then push his pram to the cabbage field at the bottom of the farm and leave him there for four hours until the next feed.

Said he was no bother after that, other than the time she got there to find an empty pram. Ten minutes frantic panic, then she found him asleep under a cabbage.

Oh I remember those days. It was such a constant battle to get mine to sleep.
The one thing I would say is stop trying to second guess it. Nothing you are going to do will get you in a routine quickly - you just need to go with it. Enjoy the moments when they do sleep - whenever and wherever that is and try to get your sleep or down time then.

And this too will pass. Although I know it doesn't feel like it now. Big hugs!

Oh, darling girl :(

It is an utterly crap design that we are given the very most precious thing in the world to care for...and then denied any chance of feeling sufficiently conscious to care for it.

You WILL get through this. You WILL be knackered for about 250 years. You WILL lie on the sofa saying ‘just show me what the Duplo people do, I am just closing my eyes to imagine it’. You WILL claim that watching afternoon TV to get DC to chill is valid parenting.

You have all of us standing with you...and most of us SO relieved to have got past it.

Good job tiny babies are so cute, isn’t it?

Sort out how to feed lying down. It's an absolute game changer, and has got me through breastfeeding five children. Make sure you are not on the sofa and check the guidelines on safe co sleeping. Good luck. You're not alone!

You have lots of lovely advice and support here. Does your LO have reflux or colic? They can make a big difference to sleep!

I know it’s not helpful at the moment but
My youngest daughter only ever slept for 2 hours max when she was a baby.
As a teenager she slept for a minimum of 10 hours each night
I can’t explain how much pleasure I used to get waking her up at 6.30 on a school day
Revenge is definitely a dish best served cold!
4 tips I received which got me through

1. They won’t want to be doing that when they are 18. (Very true)
2. Always buy your children comfortable beds (you will be sleeping in them far more than they will)
3. Relaxed parents have relaxed children (a relaxed attitude to housework is essential)
4. Enjoy her (I have every single day)

Oh OP it’s so hard to get through the day when you are dead on your feet.
DD was always very hard to get into her cot as she has a very strong startle reflex, so tbh a lot of day time naps I would feed her to sleep then let her sleep on me while I had some quality Netflix time.
As for the research, the best advice I’ve read is to have a consistent bedtime routine, and to keep to the same bedtime (within 30 minutes either side). But I don’t think I even thought about a routine til DD was about 6 months.

Hoover. Seriously. I used to carry a fully charged DustBuster around in the changing bag. I feel your pain - hang in there x

Your support means so much. Currently feeding with tears pouring down my face, more out of relief than anything else.

So much sympathy OP mine was just the same.

DD never napped for longer than 20 minutes until she was almost a year. Fed 3-6 times a night and this was formula! I was alive but dead. I fantasized about a prison spell. A small car accident to get me into hospital overnight.

Thankfully I was FF so at the weekends DH could take over. I once slept for 15 hours without moving..DH checked on me repeatedly as he thought I was dead.

Is there anyone at all who could help or take over for a few hours?