to think very few people have YEARS of sleep-deprivation with kids?

[drivenfromdistraction]

I have 3 kids, aged 6, 4 and 2. The middle one is a fantastic sleeper (since the age of two, was dreadful before that) - shuts his eyes at 6.30pm and opens them again at 6.30 am. If he was my only child, I would be very smug and think I'd done this with my fab routines.

The other two - different story. Youngest still wakes at night 4 or 5 nights a week and needs resettling, which takes an hour or more and leaves me wide awake. Eldest has always been an early waker (5am-ish) and now is struggling to get to sleep, and waking in the night with 'bad dreams' two or three nights a week and then taking hours to get back to sleep.

For seven years, I have almost never had an uninterrupted night. This is unusual, isn't it? Other people don't seem to be sleep-deprived like this. I have just taken the older two to school for the first day after half-term, all the other parents were making comments like 'Oh, it's hard to get up early again after the break, isn't it?' Wtf? I have been up before 6 every day of half-term as usual (either the eldest or the youngest awake and usually both) plus being woken in the night.

Are there other parents like me out there or am I alone?!

I was a hell of a lot more tired working FT and childless...

Two of my births have been EMCS. Haven't never ever considered this am issue for sleep problems and still can't see the connection.

Two of my dc have asthma and ezcema - as do I.

It stops no one in this house sleeping.

Asthma is easily bought under control with a puffer, takes 2 mins for my two year to sit up and take her puffer using her mask. Anything that requires more than this would mean a trip to A&E and doesn't really come under the heading of a normal nightime.

Ezcema is obv worse at night and requires care and attention to make sure the dc can sleep through without ripping their skin to bits. Cool rooms, cotton bedding, cool nightwear (no onsies for eg), bath with medicated oil every night and nightly application of mosituriser and steriod cream means I am rarely woken with ezcema related problems. If I am then I cream with mosituriser (kept by my bed) and they lay down and go back to sleep.

None of these ailments require anyone to be wandering about in the middle of the night.

young correction! IN YOUR EXPERIENCE "None of these ailments require anyone to be wandering about in the middle of the night."

How about you do us all a favour and accept that your own experience doesn't cover the whole of human experience and the other peoples experiences may also be valid?

sorry but just have to also piss myself laughing at asthma being easily brought under control with a puffer...what are you fecking 12 that you can't imagine it might be different for others?

SERIOUSLY??

Don't bite IceBeing

Twatty McTwatterson threw a big line out to see if they could catch anything...

Don't bite.

If your dc asthma isn't being controlled by their inhalers then I suggest you visit the GP's as you are putting your childs life in danger.

Sounds like they need a asthma review to me. When was their last one? Have you explained to the GP that the puffer doesn't stop your child wheezing?

Maybe less time on MN insulting people and more time talking to the GP?

Do you know the procedure if your child has an asthma attack?

10 puffs and if the tightness isn't better within half hour then you need to visit A&E immediately.

I am told this every time I visit A&E with my dc so I'm not sure how you don't know this if you do really have a child with asthma?

Didn't realize you were an asthmt nurse grasshoper iy must be fun to know everything.

younggrasshopper, you are coming across in a very provocative way. You don't know the ins and out of everyone's live and health conditions! Dd2 and dd1 both have asthma, but they both present in very different ways have had different medications and that combined with the fact that they have very different personalities means that it has different affects on their sleep.

grasshopper a child's sleep can be disrupted by fairly mild, but uncontrolled asthma. Wheeziness is often not apparent, but instead a kind of hyper-active state.

DS was 6 weeks,DD was 10 weeks and they've slept through ever since.The only time they got up in the night was if they were ill.They have never spent a night in our bed-we have our bed,they have their's.They were never rocked to sleep they were put to bed awake and happily nodded off by themselves.
To be honest,unless they're ill,or there is SN involved,I struggle to understand why children of school age and above need to get up in the night. It's a habit-their body clocks are waking them because that is what they have got into the habit of doing.I look after a boy who is nearly 7 and he gets into his parents bed at 2.00 every night,and they have no sleep for the rest of the night while he happily snores away.Not only that,but sometimes he even wakes his younger brother up to go with him.Meanwhile,the parents are absolutely knackered and it's making them ill.What???? Who is the adult here??Another mum I know was giving her daughter 4 bottles of milk a night up to the age of 5.????She actually asked me how to get her daughter out of the habit.
I'm not smug-we started as we meant to carry on.Bedtime is bedtime-their beds,not ours.Yes,we've had bedtime battles-the kids not wanting to go,dragging it out etc-but they stay in their own beds all night and we all benefit from a decent nights sleep.

4 dds here, aged between 7 and 2. I've had sleepless nights for 7.5 years.... Sadly, I've gotten use to it. I yearn for my kids to sleep through the night.

Dd4 has just turned 2, she is in the process of dropping her daytime nap. So, some days she falls asleep nicely. Some days she is a tyrant and just needs a nap - it's like she's in the process of recalebrating her body clock. She often also wakes up early, so 4am this morning... I do hope we can iron this out over the next few months...

Also, my dds seem to suffer lots of nightmares. I remember this also. We usually hop into their beds to stop encouraging them coming into ours. I couldn't imagine leaving them on their own in bed when they are scared.

I'm a bit of an insomniac, I see dd1 like this. She wakes up every morning at 6 am, she just doesn't need more sleep (unlike dh and dd2).

My sympathies to those with sn sleep problems. We suspect dd2 is on the spectrum and currently seeing a psychologist. I get about three hours of down time in the evening to recover from full-on days, I think that's how I get by....it must be hard without it....

More people throwing out big lines in the hope of catching a bite.

I have had asthma for over 30 years so I have aquired a bit of knowledge but tbh anyone with a child with ashthma should know what I know. Its not rocket science. Its the very basics of keeping a child with ashtma safe and is told to every parent by every nurse, GP and A&E doctor they meet.

But, like I said, some of you will become irrationally defensive.

Am loving all the 'in my house, they know it's bedtime' and 'my DC know that night time is for sleeping'... it's not permanently 3pm where I live with the sun shining and their friends outside. My DC know it is bedtime and that they should sleep at night but that doesn't mean they always do...

I have had a routine in place from day 1 with both mine - DD slept well to start and has got worse as she gets older and now wakes almost every night, DS has never slept well so am close to 5 years of disturbed sleep in one form or another.

Sleep deprivation is a killer in many ways and the smugness on display from some of these posters is pretty disheartening. The answers that some of you condescend to share will have been tried by EVERYONE who is struggling - and I mean EVERYONE... trust me, you will try anything!

Children are individuals and as much as it sucks, some of them are just shit at sleeping!

21 years here.....DD2 has autism, diabetes and epilepsy. every noise needs to be investigated. its not that i dont sleep....i just have my ears open! and i do get up to check a few times a night.....hmm....nope...i dont really sleep do i?

any way wasnt it Mrs Doyle who said staying awake was fine....only hallucinated for first five years...

I agree, I even said as much in my first post .. some children are non sleepers.

Its how you handle a non sleeper that makes a difference.

Butgof forbid anyone on this thread looks at themselves. Its much easier to just shout the word 'smug'.

younggrasshopper, I don't think you're smug, you're just wrong.

10 years intermittent here. God I hate these smug people. My 4 dc have all slept differently: ds1 atrocious at night and an early riser (still is), dd1 slept through from 9 weeks, terrible day sleeper and now gets easily spooked in the night, ds2 generally all round decent sleeper, dd2 (15mths) is bloody awful both day and night. I have done nothing differently with them. It's just how they are.

Over 7 years of no sleep. DD up every night with reflux induced asthma, vomiting, chronic pain. GP thought it was all sorts of things. Took years...years to get to the bottom of it all as DD has delayed allergic reactions so she doesn't respond to traditional allergy testing. Took years' before GP decided to send us to a gastro clinic. Once we had a proper diagnosis, and then meds to deal with it she could sleep. Sometimes it's not easy to figure stuff out.
And don't start me on puffers - never got the coughing under control. Only diet did.

Young - I think that it is smug to come into a thread full of people genuinely struggling and pipe up with 'you just haven't tried x' and 'you're doing it wrong'... but maybe that's the sleep deprivation talking

Right off to bed - fingers crossed for good nights for us all!

Not here. Regularly waking in night before 6 months old - but at age 3, 7 and 10, I have to shake them to wake them at 7.20am each morning, and they sleep until 8/8.30am at weekends. All three have slept until 8am at weekends since I can remember. 3 year old knows if he wakes up - he should go and see if his brother and sister are awake before disturbing parents, older 2 have clocks and know not allowed out of bed until 8am at weekends.

Obviously every so often someone wakes up in the night, but its rare. DD age 10 was recently sick during night and managed to do this without waking us up. Also went through phase with DS1 waking age 2 demanding bottle in night, and DD having nightmares, but generally managed to nip these things in bud quite quickly.

However quite a few of my friends esp with young kids (ie under 4) do report sleep deprivation so I guess its not that rare.

I'd be pretty sad that my 10 year old was being sick in the night and felt they couldn't/shouldn't come and wake up mum or dad.

Is that the case or were they just quite happy being sick on their own and thought it was no big deal/weren't upset about it?