to think we can parent differently to SIL and avoid sleep problems?

[GoingToRegretThis]

I have actually NC for this as not sure this thread is a wise idea, but want honest opinions.

We are just starting ttc number 1 after ages debating about it. One of DH big concerns is that the baby simply will not sleep, as this is what happens with SIL's children. They go to bed okay but are up and down all night, for example, waking up at 2 or 3am, getting into bed with their parents, refusing to sleep and wanting to play. SIL's children are 2 and 5.

DH is terrified of this as for financial reasons we will both have to WOH. He is prepared for a rough few months with a new baby but feels it will be a nightmare if we hit 2 years and are still surviving on < 4 hours/ night.

I think that SIL has naturally wakeful DC, but I also keep telling DH you can parent to minimise that. For ex, SIL will take the children into bed and not insist on them staying in their own beds. That is NOT a criticism, as she is a lovely mum and very child-centred. But I think we can be stricter, parent differently, and not encounter the same problems years down the line as she does.

Am I just a crazy optimist? Are there just some children who never sleep no matter what, and getting up with them is what you do? Or is it actually possible if you are a working parent to work out an okay routine with wakeful children?

[mercibucket]

we were like you too once. we even did really well the first year or so.

resign yourself to bring permanently knackered for years to come, and hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised

[Damash12]

Your dc will be unique, your parenting will be unique. They may sleep they may not but what they will do is be totally amazing so you'll suck it up and get on with it and hopefully love every minute. Like op said sleep is just one issue out of a thousand so don't stress.

[hopenglory]

I have 2. The eldest slept beautifully from an early age. The younger, parented in exactly the same way didn't sleep a full night until they started school, and still to this day doesn't need much sleep.

There are no guarantees and generally, babies haven't read the parenting manuals

[MummytoMog]

I personally think bad sleepers after two years old are the exception rather than the norm. My (special needs) three year old has the odd night now and then where she's up (and bringing her into bed does not help in the slightest) but basically sleeps from eight thirty to seven thirty or so and then plays in her room untl we get her up. My typical nearly two year old has a rough night once or twice a month, but otherwise gives us twelve hours unbroken. We cosleep until they were five months old and then put them in their own room if you're interested, but I don't think it makes much of a difference how you parent them.

[BlackDaisies]

Hmm - well you're probably overthinking it...... but then again, I remember reading "the baby Whisperer" who advocated the "EASY" method of life with a newborn baby (Eat, activity, slepp.... YOU time, on a 3 hour repeat). Well, that sounds lovely I thought, a bit tiring maybe, but lovely!

6 years, 2 children later and many many many nights of 2/3 hours broken sleep later, tons of co-sleeping (I'd never really heard of THAT before, and remembering thinking it was really weird when a friend mentioned she did it!!!!)

My dh (now ex!) also spoke about how he didn't want his life to change..... actually his life didn't change! He rarely got up (didn't stop him pontificating at length about how bad sleep deprivation was to anyone who'd listen!), slept in the spare room while I got up/ coslept/ looked after my kids (both quite poorly as babies)

I guess I agree that you don't know what lies around the corner. My own sleep deprivation days are nearly over really. Do I regret co-sleeping/ going to my children in the night/ putting up with night after night of virtually no sleep while holding down a near full time job/ leaving my awful ex..... not a bit

[Jinsei]

My personal view is that you can certainly avoid common sleep problems by "training" your children in certain ways. For example, if you leave them to cry it out often enough, they will soon learn that nobody comes and it isn't worth it. However, I suspect that people who choose to parent in this way are merely storing up different problems for themselves in the years to come.

As a FT working parent, I found that the easiest way of dealing with my own poor sleeper was to co-sleep. To recognise that she needed parenting in the night as well as in the day, and that it wasn't all about me any more. It wasn't what I'd planned, but it worked and we coped. Do I regret responding to her needs in those early years? No, not at all. So much of parenting is about following your instincts, and it felt right at the time.

You can't know how you're going to do it, OP, until you meet your own child and start to understand their needs. However, best go in with your eyes wide open - serious disruption is inevitable!

[Arthurfowlersallotment]

Hey OP, I haven't slept for longer than four hours at a time since my DD was born in....April.

Yay!

[halcyondays]

I have two children who are/were bad sleepers, I was a bad sleeper. Presumably your sil gets more sleep by bringing them into her bed, keeping them in their room wont make them sleep.My MIL would have been stricter than I am, she didn't agree with co-sleeping, but she still talks about SIL being a terrible sleeper who wouldn't sleep well. I think it's mainly down to luck. One thing about mine, though, is that lthough they are hard to settle and would wake during the night, they never woke early. But some people have children who wake terrible early, no matter what they o.

[halcyondays]

If you have a long period of disturbed nights, you do get used to it and for me, co-sleeping did help as I was much less disturbed than I would have been. I was still getting a decent number of hours sleep, although it was interrupted. But tiredness is inevitable with babies nd young dc no matter how well they sleep.

[louisianablue2000]

I think, barring SN or disability/illness that by 2 and 5 it's not unreasonable to expect children to understand night is for sleeping and that getting up and wanting to play with Mum or Dad in the middle of the night is not on. So, I do think that is a parenting choice. But agree with PP that said until teething is over you have to expect broken nights. DD2 was a 'good' sleeper who had obviously read all the books but whenever she had a tooth coming in then we'd have a week of broken nights when all she wanted to do was nurse for hours and hours. Oh, and potty training gives you some broken nights as well but they tend to be of the 'get up and take to the loo then back to bed' or (at worst) get up, change all sheets on child's bed, shower child, then back to bed. That's not going to convince your OH though is it!

[harverina]

No one can prepare you for how awful the sleep deprivation is in the early days. It is horrific. Honestly, I do not wish to scare anyone but the sleep deprivation was way worse than the labour pain for me!

But Id say that in most cases it does get better as the months go on. My DD started to sleep all night from 8pm-5am from 11 months old. Now aged 2.8 she sleeps all night from 8pm-6am I'd say maybe 80/90% of the time.

And you do get used to surviving on 4-5 hours sleep at night. Even if you work. You just have to get on with it.

I do believe that there are some things that you can do to influence a childs sleep though - we have always had a great bedtime routine which we have stuck to almost every night for the past 2.8 years. There will be exceptios to this - some babies/toddlers just do not sleep well. However, most will respon well to good routines and boundaries.

Re. co-sleeping, Im not a huge fan as I dont sleep well when my DD is in bed with me (even though she was breastfed till she was 2.5, I preferred to get out of my bed during the night). However, there have been many nights when my DD has woken up upset and we have plonked her in beside us for a cuddle - when your tired you will do anything for a bit of sleep. If your SIL is allowing her children to come in to bed with her and play games/sing/chatter during the night then she is crazy!!! However, what works for some....

[harverina]

Jin I agree with your post - OP sleep training is an option and usually does work. I dont like controlled crying but have a lot of friends who used this and had success with it in terms of their DC sleeping better. We decided not to let my DD cry, we found it just caused us all to be upset (I tried it once for 23 minutes. I think by the end I was crying more than my DD). I loved Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solutions.

[Linnet]

All children are different, you really can't pre-empt how they will sleep.

I have 2 dd's. Dd1 sort of fell into her own routine, slept through at 5 months and never looked back, even now as a 15 year old she can sleep through anything.

dd2 was actually settled into a routine quite early, purely because she had to fit in with all the routines that we had already with work and school. She slept brilliantly from about 4 months right up until she as about 18 months/2 years old, then she started waking through the night.

If she was up before I was in bed I'd take her back to her own bed but if it was the middle of the night I would just take her into bed with me. Life is too short for faffing about all night taking your child backwards and forwards to their own bed. If you have to get up in the morning and go to work you will take them into your own bed so you can all get some sleep.

dd2 is 8 now and sleeps through the night perfectly well, I look on it as a phase that she grew out of.

[SarahWarahWoo]

I can see where you are coming from, I stayed with my sister for a night whilst heavily pregnant and was horrified (and exhausted ahead of a long drive home) that her children, aged 5,6 and 9 didn't sleep much, they were running around, up and down the stairs at 0545 on a Sunday morning, the youngest woke my sister up at 3am to tell her that "teddy had fallen out of bed"! My sister and husband treated this as normal and didn't make any attempt whatsoever to get the children back to bed. I have spoke to friends and stayed with other families where that kind of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated, their children are taught when it is acceptable to get up and play, also when to go into their parents room, using light, heating or other methods of making the children aware of what time it is. When they are young, away from home/routine or poorly then of course things are different but as a parent you can do a lot to help yourself. My sister doesn't seem to care.

Her 9 year old didnt sleep through the night until he was 15 months old but my ten week old is sleeping 7-8 hours at night. Whilst I appreciate that every child if different I think that parenting techniques can make a huge difference. Being laid back (babies are very aware of anxiety) and following routines help (we woke baby if she slept through a feed time in the day but not at night). Good luck with TTC, it took me a year and I am loving every minute of it!

[MrRected]

Another Gf-er (with dc1) and variations with Dc2 and Dc3...

Dc1 = 12 hours a night + 3 hours in the day from 11 weeks
Dc2 = hourly wake up calls (Gf abandoned) till 8 months when he was diagnosed with silent reflux. Medication+ routine saw him sleeping 12 hours straight from 11 months od.
Dc3 = 12 hours at night and a few hours in the day from 10 weeks old. She spent a month in hospital from 5 weeks old - where she was institutionalised on scheduled feeding pattern, so sleeping through was a natural progression. Shame that I couldn't sleep peacefully until she was 6 months old because I was terrified she would die in the night having been critically ill with respiratory failure/illness.....

Guess it shows that you deal with what you are given :-)

[CheungFun]

I think a lot of it is down to the baby tbh. DS is a good sleeper, he's just turned 1 and sleeps from 7pm-7am, if he's ill or teething he will take ages to settle at night and generally wake up earlier.

One thing we did from the start though is to do all night feeds in as much darkness as possible and minimal talking etc so he knew the difference between night and day. I think this helped.

Another thing I think helped was not getting up at the first cry, sometimes he would cry for a minute or two and then fall fast asleep by himself.

Anyway, you won know until the baby arrives, but personally I dont think there's anything wrong in having ideas and plans before the baby arrives, just be prepared to adapt.

[Glimmerberry]

I don't think you are being completely niave - you've seen some parenting around you and already decided that you don't want to emulate that. You just have to remember that you might have aims and goals, and it's not a bad idea to agree these ahead (i.e. you both agree a good sleep routine is important) but remember, the baby you get is the baby you get.

DH and I work full-time, have to drive etc. We've been absolutely religious about sleep routines. At 7.30 every night, it's bath then final feed in the near dark by the cot, down to bed. We don't talk much/speak softly when its night time, make every effort to demonstrate that night is different from day. If DS doesn't just nod off (which most the time he does now) then it's just a bit of patting and shushing. If he ever wakes in the night now, it's just some more patting and shushing without getting him up. We had a bed nest when he was little so between feeds he went back into his own cot and he's been in his own room since 6 months. We try to be very consistent through disturbed spells due to growth spurts /teething. This has worked for us -at 16 months he consistently sleeps for 12 hours at night and has a 2-3 hr nap each day. BUT, honestly I think our "success" has been 50% us and our routine and 50% the child he is -he likes to sleep. Sleep habits can be heritable -I like to sleep too and am a 9-10 hour person rather than the average 8 hours.

So I guess what I'm saying is have a plan, talk to your partner about how you'd do things but remember the hugely unpredictable factor that is your (potential) baby.

[Glimmerberry]

Oh, and the final thing is that having children is bloody exhausting. Even if they sleep 12 hours each night. Once you have one you are going to know tiredness like you've never known it before.

[BlueberryHill]

I can understand why the OP's DH is focusing on the sleep aspect. My BIL and SIL have a child who is difficult about sleeping, doesn't sound quite as bad as the OPs but not far off. It is something they talk about a lot as it impacts on their quality of life. If you don't have kids and your brother has one that doesn't sleep and talks about the downsides a lot, then that is the majority of what your DH hears about children. He will find it difficult to look at the positives.

I didn't know what I was getting into first time round, that is normal so don't feel bad about asking the question OP. I've always wondered about my DN, how much was him not being a good sleeper and how much down to not have a proper routine in place. Before anyone flames me, when he was little he didn't have a set bedtime, was up with the adults in the evening, every evening so why would he want to go to sleep? It has settled down now with a bedtime routine, but he still have bad nights / phases and he is now 4. I think that he is just a child who finds it difficult to sleep.

With DS1 we made the beginners mistake of always feeding him to sleep / rocking him to sleep and then at about 12 months we decided to try to sleep train and give him different cues to go to sleep, we did a mixture of the ssh / pat / crying routine. He is now a great sleeper and was from 18 months. We went on to have twins, they are now two, they are good sleepers, DTD1 is great, from 7.30 pm to 7.30 am. DTS a bit more tricky but both of them get themselves off to sleep. They learned to self settle from the word go, because there was no way I could rock two babies to sleep. However, I think that I am really lucky with them, they are good sleepers and I helped them along

Good luck, remember they are fun, everything is just a phase and pick your battles.

[post]

I think there are lots of wise words about choosing to prioritise sleep training; that's certainly possible, and knowing that it still might not work; also very possible.

But I'm also picking up, I think, that you're taking on the role of managing your dh's worries, looking for reassurances to present to him, etc? Id advise you not to take that on as a job for yourself, I think that could end up being as stressful as anything else, if (when) things are hard and there's a bit of 'I told you it would be like this, you said it would be ok,' iykwim?

I actually think you're being wise to think about how you want to do this ahead of time, and you sound as realistic as anyone can be who hasn't had dcs about how it might be. And quite lovely. But I think it would be a good idea to also say to your dh 'we can decide that we'd like to do it like this, and it might well help. but there will be huge disruption, we will lose sleep, sometimes it might feel like as much as we can bear. Knowing that, do you still want to do this?'. It just feels like it sets a bit of an equal intention between you, does that make sense? Rather than it being your job to make it manageable for him.

[Nanny0gg]

Bunbaker: I'm inclined to think that those parents who think their parenting has made their children sleep through from an early age have never had a baby that just won't go to sleep. Same as those parents who have children who aren't fussy eaters - they have never had to deal with a very fussy eater. In their minds these children don't exist, just useless parenting.

^^
This. With bells on.

[peaceandlovebunny]

living with your own children is nothing like looking at a family situation from the outside. i distinctly (sp?) remember telling my then-husband that the baby would fit in with us, there would be no need for things to change.

hmm.

after the baby was born, i learnt a lot.

[GreenPetal94]

I personally think its about teaching children to go back to sleep on their own when they wake in the night. If they can do that you have cracked it. But you do need to think about this from the beginning and it's probably an opposite method of parenting than co-sleeping. We went for own bedroom from early age and also the boys shared which has helped.

[GoingToRegretThis]

Blueberry, Glimmer, Sarah - yes, I think you are all right.

Basically DH had no contact with children really and like most blokes was a bit oblivious to them. Then DN1 came along and he thought she was the most amazing thing ever BUT then whenever he stayed with BIL it was all 'I only got 2.5 hours of sleep last night' and then the whole thing where SIL announced she was not returning to work and poor BIL felt like everything was on him.

It wasn't of course and they survived, and DH doesn't think I will do that. But I think it is his only model of being a parent and it does sort of scare him.

Actually post it is funny you say that, I had that very convo with him last night in bed after this thread, and he basically I won't lie, I am scared about aspects of it, but I committed to having children with you and I will do my level best to be a good father.

I don't think you can say fairer than that really. And in some ways I'd rather he go into it like that and be pleasantly surprised than be like my own dad who didn't even know what a nappy was.

Also lots of good tips here like Cheung's so thanks for that, I may save this thread for pointers if we get lucky

[GoingToRegretThis]

Also I should be clear, SIL doesn't co sleep, at least not as understand that term.

The girls have their own beds in their own room but they find it hard to settle and then one or other is up all the time which wakes the other up. So one will be talking and the other can't get to sleep, then one gets out of bed and starts peeping round the door, then the other gets up too, then SIL settles them again but at 1am it's 'Mummy I can't go sleep' again so she tucks them up for a cuddle with her.

But as often as not she just gets up with them as BIL wakes up then. So it is not uncommon for them to be downstairs playing, watching a DVD at 4am as they simply won't go back to bed.

SIL is a good mum, her girls are lovely and polite and ahead for their age, I think they just are not good sleepers and I wonder if it's possible to invest in making a child a better sleeper within their own 'sleep range' iyswim. Sounds in many but not all cases it is, which is heartening.