Tell me your honest to god experiences with your newborn

[Mitsufishi]

I am going through hell for the third time around with a newborn.

Everyone says 'sleep when they skeep'. But how? Mine would never sleep, in bed, on me, maybe in a buggy or sling if in constant motion. They all went on to be horrific sleepers so 'this too' did not pass.

My mother says 'all newborns are like that, people who say otherwise are lying'. So it's just me who can't cope then?

Honestly tell me, what was your experience with a newborn. Because I have friends who seem to have had it easy and have seen evidence of it. My mother insists people are lying to show off. But I don't think there's such a fashion for that any more and that actually if anything people often tend to make things sound worse than they are these days rather than the other way around. In any case I've seen friends newborns and babies that effortlessly doze off and wonder a thousand times over what I'm doing wrong.

I am finding a lot of these replies very reassuring. I had a terrible sleeper in DS1 (5-9 wakings a night until he was 10 months old) and hoped my second born would be better (like I was as a baby).

Nope.

He is 5.5 months and wakes every 90 minutes (or less) throughout the night, too. I've not slept three continuous hours for weeks and am close to trading him in for a guinea pig.

I've been beating myself up over this, assuming it must be something I do wrong with my babies. It seems that's probably not the case. I just hope DS2 finally 'gets' falling and staying asleep by around a year, like his older brother did. I first started getting 7+ hours just before my maternity leave was up.

So now I think it's probably not my fault. It just is.

It's very yhard. Whenever one of the twins woke I always woke the other and breastfed them both one on each side. At least that removed the risk of feeding one at 1am, up an hour, 2am next one wakes for an hour.

Another plan that worked 2with them was I slept in their room for a year as I breastfed that year and their father did every night waking from years 1 - 4 and I did just about none, which worked out at about the same number of nights each, very fair as we both worked full time. Obviously if one of us had been up for hours with one of them the other might well plough in to help but that general division worked. I also used to take them to the gym on Saturdays - put them in the creche for 2 hours and I would have a sauna and then sleep for over an hour on a lounger -0 best afternoon rest ever, best use of a gym too if you have a baby up at night.

Another thing we did with baby 1 who was the worst of the lot and cried from about 8 - 12 or 2am just about every night for 3 months.... was I would hand her to her father after a feed at 10pm and get to sleep. he would stay up with her until mid night with her over his shoulder. If she was awake at midnight he would come to bed then and hand her to me for a feed etc.

Now some weekends by lunch time I have not yet seen any of the 4 of the 5 who live here as they are either busy or not woken up. Big change from the days they would be up from 5am raring to go at the weekends.

The very active none sleeper first one is now a City lawyer who worked 41 hours without a break last Christmas and usually works late and earns just over £100k. I suspect her ability not to need much sleep (she never has) is part of her success so eventually it paid off.

My DD had colic. She cried 7-7 with short bursts of settledness but only if held and on me. I failed at breastfeeding (lactation failure) and felt like I was crap at being a mum because I was so overwhelmed. She had been yo the doctors 10 times at 10 weeks because I was convinced there was something wrong with her. I lost so much weight and spent my day holding and rocking her whilst crying and apologising to her. Obviously, it got better and she is now an awesome 3 year old whom I adore. However, I can't quite bring myself to have another baby. Especially as I tend to break out in a cold sweat whenever I hear a newborn cry. I have to fight the urge to either run away or find the baby and make it better. YANBU. I hope your lo settles soon.

Oh, and she didn't sleep through until she was 2 and had dropped all of her daytime naps by 13 months, so another crap sleeper here!

DD - great sleeper, slept through from 3 weeks, is 26 months one and sleeps like a log. A brass band could march through and she wouldn't stir.

DS - horrid sleeper, boot camp sleep trained him at 5 months. He finally stopped waking at night when we moved him into his own room (he was sharing with DD) at 9-10 months and will do the full 12 hours, though lately keeps waking up to 'sing' or 'chat' ... Developmental spurt I think. He still wakes up on and off during the evening sometimes and in general is a very light sleeper. He has been awkward from the word go, much as I adore the little lad.

I'm quite sure much of it is personality and believe they are born with it. When I look my children and at all my nieces and nephews and watch them growing up, I can see that those character traits we commented on as babies are very much part of them to this day.

I have DT's and as newborns they only ever napped for 20 minutes twice a day at different times. Now at 11 months they have one nap of about an hour. DTD1 was a very slow breastfeeder and would take at least an hour for every feed and up to 3 hours to feed and settle at night. DTD2 would not breastfeed and was pretty much bottle fed from birth despite my best efforts to breastfeed her. Since they were born I have had one nap...

They are all so different, you can't compare. It sounds like you have had three who all like to stay close to mummy!

My eldest was a velcro baby, even on her first hours out of the womb she was howling unless held close to my chest upright. She didn't see the inside of a cot or moses basket till she was at least 2 months old! I remember the 7 other babies in my NCT class would consent to be pushed about in prams while my DD was in the sling and I was using the pram as a trolley to push the shopping about in ...

Conversely I remember my first night in the post natal ward with my youngest - he spent it lying cuddled up in his cot having a little look about him and snoozing. I spent the whole night on tenterhooks wondering why he wasn't howling because I wasn't holding him and was there something wrong?

He has always just been more chilled about lying down in bed and settling than my eldest. He's nearly three now and actually likes going to bed. He wakes up at 7.45 ish but he will lie and doze in bed till about 9am if you let him! He also likes going for an afternoon nap.

My daughter is just five now and also is easy at bedtime these days, but it took MUCH longer, when she was my son's age I was still sitting by her bedside for ages and creeping out once she had really started to doze off. She also was massively resistant to any kind of daytime nap when she was younger and she would only nap if rocked in the buggy or in the car. Even now as soon as she wakes in the morning up she springs!

My first woke every 45 minutes to feed for around 30 to 40 minutes. Till he was one. Which was when I broke (I was so tired I used to fall asleep while feeding him on the floor of his room - he used to fall into the cot bars when he was asleep and sat up when he was dreaming, so hated being in it), ignored all the books and advice (apart from the bits about making the bed safe for cosleeping) and took him into the bed with me so I could dream feed and get enough sleep to function. He started sleeping through at four and a half or so.

My second was a dream comparatively (though she had moderate reflux so had to sleep in a sling or propped up at a fair angle), did her Moses basket, cot with the side off bolted to the bed sidecar fashion and woke only every hour (went to every two by the time she was one - bliss!) for a ten to twenty minute feed. The sling was great here as she had to be a lot more mobile and upright with the reflux, else she would probably have caused more trouble!

Turns out both me and my brother were like this. I've since apologised to my mum. ;-) :-D

i found with all 3 of mine they where breastfed all different it was obviously easier to sleep when i only had 2 children when i had my 3rd baby i never got to sleep when he slept so was up and running on empty this was not babys fault though was just so busy with my other 2 i did not find it hard though my babies where all easy babies i love newborns my youngest is 9 months now i miss it

DS1 was a good sleeper. I breastfed, and he'd wake 2-3 times a night for a feed, but then go straight back to sleep in his moses basket afterwards. I genuinely got more sleep with a newborn baby than I did when I was pregnant.

DS2 wouldn't sleep unless he was being held until he was 8 months old so I either had to walk around the bedroom holding him until he was sound asleep, then put him down and cross my fingers and hope he didn't wake, or half doze with him on my chest. DH and I took shifts to sit up holding him all night for the first few weeks as we couldn't put him down at all.

I think so much depends on the pregnancy, the labour, the baby and the mum, as well as external factors such as stress etc.

DC1. 16 hours in labour, forceps, could not sit for a month, baby did not stop crying all the time, struggled to feed, colic, reflux.... The first fortnight was hell, the first 6 weeks a nightmare. DC1 was a truly difficult baby (toddler, infant, child....). The only salvation was that DC1 slept through at 6 weeks (and took the dummy). We co-slept, I did everything with the baby in a sling, was never able to eat a single meal sat down, bf every two hours....I will always remember my mum who came to stay for a fortnight a couple of weeks after DC1 was born. She wasn't even through the door, she took one look at me and said go to bed. For a fortnight she slept with the baby, just bringing it to me for feeds and then taking it back. She saved me.

DC2. 6 hour labour, quick recovery. Easy chilled out baby, mild reflux, no colic, slept through at about 7 weeks.

DC3. Induced labour so an exhausting 7 hours (6 hours at 2 cm, 11 minutes 2 cm to baby out) but quick recovery. Easy chilled out baby who slept loads, did nights 7-8 weeks. World's easiest baby.

My sister's 2 DC are 2 & 5 and still don't sleep through. I think that is the single most exhausting aspect of parenting.

DS1 - horrible delivery - he ended up in the SNBU - although he was big nearly 10lbs - but the best baby ever - slept through at 6 weeks, only cried for a feed and smiled at everyone

DS2 - easy delivery - 8.3 lbs - baby from HELL - never flipping slept (even in the early weeks) - cried non stop but definitely didn't have any problems - even cried when I took him for a walk in the pram. I remember pushing him up and down in the hallway every day to get him to take a nap, with him screaming and me crying my eyes out.

It was bloody awful. It put me off having any more children as I found it so traumatic. he is nearly 5 and has only just started sleeping through the night. (Lovely child now but still a very uptight person so I guess that was just his personality coming out in baby form)

DS only actually slept on top of me or the washing machine (spin cycle) which was not funny after the first six months. In between this (and the burnt out motors) he screamed. Never ever slept in cars, prams, fresh air etc.
For four years I thought this was normal.
Then dd arrived and slept seven hours which threw me into such a panic I called out the health visitor to witness it. I truly thought she must be brain damaged.

Both my Nieces are amazing sleepers.

My ds was not a good sleeper, until about 10 months, when he started to sleep more and self settle, and would have one feed a night until 14 months.

My dd is a poor wee soul with horrendous reflux, and at nearly two we can still get awful, shitty nights.

Both were newborns who liked to suck, and be held.

Swaddle blankets, a baby hammock and a dummy saved my sanity. They slept at least a bit.

None of mine were sleepers, napped here and there, didn't sleep through until around school age. We drove them all around, pushed them in buggies, rocked and rocked and rocked them-actually to be fair for "we" read "I"! My youngest finally slept through age 6, by that point I had mastered the "duvet lift and cuddle while partially conscious technique" as after 10 years without a full night's sleep I sure as hell wasn't getting up to try and get him back in his own bed. I used to desperately hang on to the theory that a bad sleeper was a bright child. (Seems to be true in DCs 1 and 2-number 3 is just a cuddler who loves people!) But many people I knew had babies sleeping from a very young age and to be frank-when you are so knackered you can't function-it is just not fair! Good Luck. (Can't get DCs 1 and 2 out of bed now they are teenagers! )

Try baby massage. Worked wonders for my DS (and very helpful if they have trapped wind). Ask your HV if there are any groups near you. Fresh air is also good.

I had a non sleeping one. Screamed non stop. Only slept upright on me, so I couldn't sleep or do anything other than pinned too the sofa.

Actually I think a combination of her difficult birth and I now think silent reflux were to blame.

Only child as we can't go through it again. So sad.

Ended up at millpond sleep clinic. They sorted out the sleep issues after 9 sleepless months. I owe them my sanity!

First one, terrible sleeper until she turned 2, waking up every 2-3 hrs...
Second, only naps in carrier, but so much better at night. He had colic for 3 months, just about getting better. Close caboo carrier saved my sanity. He naps in it for 2-3 hrs and I can get on with life. Highly recommended.

'Napping here and there' and 'waking every ninety minutes' are not normal; it is evidence of a baby who has not been put into any kind of routine and has been permitted to sleep for as long as it likes throughout the day; has not had all its nutritional requirements between 7am-7pm and is therefore seeking food (or simply solace) at night. Gina Ford is the answer. As is waking a baby from its daytime naps and practising (at a suitable age) controlled crying.

We had two weeks of utter hell until DS got his tongue tie diagnosed and snipped. Then he was so grateful to be able to eat, that he settled into a nice, calm baby. I still remember the horrendous sleep deprivation though - that went on until we gave up on trying to do it properly and co-slept! Before then, DH was giving one evening bottle of expressed milk, so I could get 4 hours of sleep if I bf then went straight to bed when DH got home. That kept me saneish!

DC1, awful sleeper, didn't sleep through (without me in his bed) until 7years old.

DC2, slept through at about 7/8 months.

DC3, slept through from 4 weeks!

It's luck of the draw. I hope things improve for you

Pistol dear old Gina is the last person I would ask for advice. Her routine advice go against biology of breastfeeding and is the first step to breastfeeding failure. I don't envy your babies.

I would have given my right arm for ds1 to be a baby that screamed and wouldn't sleep and kept me up.

He was born after a horrific labour, ventouse which was put on the wrong part of his head and a really misshapen cone head as a result, plus secondary moulding the next day.

It was all fine within a couple of days. But when we got home, he was the quietest baby I've ever known. For the first 6 weeks of his life he spent next to no time awake.

He would wake (quietly...no crying), feed, go back to sleep for 3 hours. Wake, feed, squirm around for 5 minutes and go back to sleep for 3 hours. This was the pattern every single day for weeks and weeks.

He was (or would have if I didn't keep waking him) sleeping 8 hours at night by 3 weeks.

It sounds amazing, and outwardly I smiled at all the 'lucky you!' comments. But the reality is, for the first 6 weeks I was crippled with fear (that i didn't tell anyone) that because of the birth he had some sort of brain damage which was why he was so quiet. I was a bag of nerves, full of anxiety and didn't enjoy those first weeks at all. All the time he was asleep I'd be hovering over him and watching.

Now at age 6, I think that how he was as a baby was a kind of indication of him in the future. He still needs a lot of sleep and will happily trot off to bed at 7pm whilst I'm still trying to peel ds2 off the living room doorway to drag him upstairs.Ds2 will in jumping on the bed at 6am, ds1 will happily sleep through it until I go and wake him at 7.45.

He just needed a lot of sleep as a baby...but at the time all I wanted was to be able to 'join in' with other new mums who'd be moaning about how tired they were because the baby wouldn't stop screaming.

Grass is always greener eh?

My first was a bad sleeper - only cat napped for 20 mins, I was overwrought and exhausted.

All my mum friends had babies they could put down and to compound my misery they told me it was because I wasn't doing what they were doing!
UNTILL second baby came along, they got my first baby, and could not believe how awful it was, and I could just nod and smile as that phase was over for me.

I really thought they thought I was putting itching powder in her clothes, or making her stay awake somehow, until they had their own bad sleeper, and then they were so sorry and rang me a lot to ask what had I done to survive it!

It's horrific, and my heart goes out to you as it's bloody awful to have babies who don't sleep- it does get better, but only when they're in school, IME. I agree, they're brighter than sleepy babies, and are too fascinated by life to sleep through it!
I wore my DC for the first years. Just strapped them on to me and got on with it.
I did what I had to do for my own sanity, got a sling, walks in the park, some mixed bottle feeding, babies just had to come along with me!

Fwiw Sheila Katzinger who wrote all the right-on breastfeeding and natural birthing books, thought she was doing the "right thing" with all her babies as they were going to sleep and everything was rosy, untill she had her fifth baby, and then she knew what other mums were complaining about- her fifth baby taught her to eat her words, as she didn't respond to any of her old tried and tested methods, cried all the time, didnt sleep, and drove her batty! Ha!
There is no normal, ime you get what you get, and no point thinking there is a magic cure, a special routine, or guru to help you out. Just do whatever suits you and your family.

Hugs to you OP. you will survive, but it MIT take a few years to recover- don't neglect your own health and do whatever you have to do to stay healthy and sane!!