...to ask the sleep deprived, how the F**K do you do it?! Seriously.

[DangerGrouse]

This is not a rhetorical question. I want answers and I want your stories. I am completely in awe/confused about people who function with sleep deprivation it utterly baffles me.
I have a two year old daughter who has always slept well and I am acutely aware of how lucky I am and I take no credit for this and I am not smug.
The night before last she had some random "hurty ear" and spent most of the night awake crying and wanting cuddles. So of course I spent the night cuddling her and dosing her up to the eyeballs with calpol and ibuprofen etc. Normal mumstuff. The night was of course awful - I was delirious and started hallucinating at one point I was so tired. Yesterday was consequently terrible and I felt physically sick and was grumpy from tiredness. From one bad night. In pretty much two years. And all I could think of was "HOW THE FUCK DO THEY DO IT?!" As in permanently sleep deprived mothers of non sleeping or ill children?
Seriously? How do you cope? What gets you through? Do you just accept it and deal with it, have a nervous breakdown or just live in permanent hate of your days and nights?
From one totally in awe mother to all of you sleep deprived warrior goddesses, I bow down and salute you.

I hallucinated after five sleepless nights when I was being induced/in labour. I've never done it off one night without sleep!

I think your body just adjusts to less sleep after a while.

I know it's hard to understand if you have a sleeping child or one who responded to sleep training but it doesn't work for every child. Or it might just work in the short term, then at each set back (of which there are many) you're back to square one. That's what happened to us, we did it again and again. Eventually we ended up with a two year old who was forcing himself to stay awake-I think because he was scared he'd be left to cry. I suppose that might just be him but either way it didn't work. On the "why not get a sleep expert?" question, most of us who are in the position of considering it have tried loads of sure fire methods which have failed. £1000 is a lot of money for another failure.
Suspend your disbelief. Try to imagine that other people's lives, experiences and children might be different from your own. Some babies sleep, some don't. Good night.

you become accustomed to it. You don't get off scot free though. I may look like a fully functioning adult but I can tell you my mind has completely lost it.

Any conversation I am left struggling to find the right word. I know it, I just cant remember it so reach for the nearest possible word but then sound thick as s**t.
My memory is like a rusted colander.
Weight has gone up because I'm drinking more tea to keep me going.
I fall asleep more often than not when I sit for more than 10 minutes. My poor OH barely has any time alone with me because I'm usually drooling on his arm, fast asleep before the first episode of whatever box set we were watching is over.
Pizza, why oh why does pizza look so damn good when you are sleep deprived and why after you eat do you just want to slip into a silly deep sleep?

My son sleeps 2 sometimes 4 hours a night and doesn't sleep during the day he is 3 and has always been the same I just deal with it and my house is always clean I'm awake plenty of hours to do it

My DS slept great for the first 6 months and I wondered what all the fuss was about. He hasn't slept a full night in about a year. He wakes for around 2 hrs at midnight which means, at best, I get 5 hrs broken sleep as he's up again at 6.

I'm rubbish without a decent nights sleep. I feel like a shadow. My conversation skills have gone to pot and I can't think of anything amusing to say when I'm with friends so I must come across as incredibly boring.

My diet is awful. I'm fuelled by carbs and chocolate. As such my skin is crap and I can't find the energy to exercise even though I know I'll feel better.

I appreciate I still get more sleep than some parents I know. One friend's dd only sleeps at 2hr intervals. I have no idea how she copes with that.

They don't tell you this in the parent handbooks do they?

Sleep yh I remember that :-) I have 1 who sleeps great but rises early and one who wakes In a state sometimes 2-3 times a night she's 3 in November. My eldest is nearly 5 . I do think you get used to it . Doesn't help . If I'm due on I can't cope at all. If I see my other mum friends we let of steam and moan seems to help. I often hate my Dh for getting up for work at 6.30am (bastard) and waking my son who then talks so loudly he wakes up my daughter. BUT!!!! The worst is waking myself up and worrying I'm a bad parent or how many costumes I have to make this wk for the endless parties my kids have been invited to, making my tiredness my own fault..
No advice just linking arms with you and saying yep it's rotten . X

I just get on with it. Although when DC2 arrived and I steeled myself for the endless nights I was amazed to find I had a solely bf baby that slept 8-10 hrs a night- I can honestly say I thought this was on a par with unicorns- and my DM said bitterly " ignore other mums, they're liars" all of us kids didn't do sleep apparently.

dc1 needs no sleep as far as I can make out and he's 8 now. He used to to wake up and want to play or just be cheerful, he never woke and yelled, he woke and wanted to DO STUFF. Now he is 8 he gets up, tidies, plays, gets dressed and his and DD stuff ready for school, wakes me and dd, and he puts toothpaste on our toothbrushes to help our morning along:)

Your DS sounds like a total peach, lavender. Everyone knows that someone else putting toothpaste on your toothbrush is PURE LUXURY.

I haven't RTFT thread as I am desperately trying to get an early ish night but I will read it all tomorrow. I find this fascinating when I was pg with PFB my DM and DSis were mainly interested in how I would cope with black of sleep. dD was amazing and it was a non issue really though still tiring. dC2 was 18 months of blurry exhaustion. I agree you just get through it but I was a shadow of my normal self and I look back on it with horror really. I think different people have different needs - but cat naps coffee ( and wine !) helped a lot.

Lack not black

3 y/o DTs have never really slept to this day! Reflux then night terrors, etc not really stuff u can CC with.

As PPs have said, u actually do become accustomed to it. The first few months u think u will die then u just really do cope. It becomes ur norm n now, on the yearly occasion mine both sleep thru, I go running in to their room in terror thinking something is wrong!

When I can, man do I sleep but often it makes me feel worse so I don't always take the opportunity when it arises.

What I do find as well is if u stay in "tired mode" ie slumping on couch, moaning about how tired u r a lot, u will end up a mess. I've done it n been it. Of course I'm not talking about those at their wits end exhausted but if possible, I really try n stay bouncy (much to the annoyance of my DH n ,well, everyone .) n it works for me.

I can still walk in a straight line and do schoolwork after 3 nights of no sleep at all. Really quite proud of that. I've always been sleep deprived and I get through it by reminding myself that there is nothing I can do about it right now because there are things that need to be done first, and no one else is going to do them.

Right I feel like I need to clarify/justify the hallucination comment as people have really focused on it and seem annoyed by it for some reason. It was just a bit of a throw away comment really. I didn't start seeing wolves wearing flippers and a duckbill or anything. It's just those black shadowy blobs in front of your eyes in the dark started to form shapes and dance with each other like a kaleidoscope. Quite pretty really but it was definitely my shocked little brain wondering what was going on.
Hope that clears things up. Feels churlish to talk about it considering the problems people have talked about on here but I only mentioned it now as people keep bringing it up.

I bought an espresso machine!!!

Just came across this :)

DD slept like an log from about 5 weeks through to 18 months, when she had a terrible virus and was never the same after. She would be wide awake all night wanting to play, nothing seemed to work and we tried everything. I had a further 18 months of no sleep and I honestly do not know how I functioned. PND was still lingering on and coupled with only an hours or so sleep, my god I seriously was just like the walking dead.

My DD is 11 and sleeps like a log now and has done since the bad period ended but it is me that has sleep problems.

Unfortunately I have followed the exact same pattern as my Mum. We can be absolutely shattered and ready for bed at 9pm but we stay up as long as we can so we sleep longer. So we go to bed later say about 1am or 2am and then find it impossible to get up. If I do go to bed at 9pm, guaranteed no matter how shattered I am, I will wake up after a few hours and struggle to get back to sleep properly. I am a very light sleeper these days so it does not take much to wake me up. When I do wake up more often I wake up feeling sick and headachy which puts me at odds for rest of the day. I find myself having naps at about 4pm for an hour or so because I actually cannot keep awake, which leaves me disorientated for rest of evening, then I can't sleep properly when I do go to bed. It is a vicious circle for me. I can go for a week of half decent sleep, a week of proper deep sleep that leaves me disorientated or a week of hardly any sleep at all. It drives me insane and I don't know how to change it.

Like most of these posters, my tiredness makes me less tolerant, short of patience, shouty, ranty, grumpy, miserable, you name it. I hate feeling that way but lack of sleep is soooooo awful. It doesn't take much for somebody to get their head bitten off for no reason. My poor DD I think has just got used to it now and just rolls her eyes, and tells me to go to bed earlier. I desperately try not to take it out on her but as we know when kids are kicking off, it is easy to lose it at best of times let alone when you are tired.

I miss the days of a decent nights sleep but for me I have just got used to how it is now.

There is a charity called Homestart that could help a lot of you. You can self refer, it's not means tested a, and you could have your own lovely volunteer for a few hours a week. She could relieve you of a toddler during a baby's nap time and you could fit in some Zs.

Wish they'd been around when DSL was little, but I have since volunteered for them. It's a great charity and an often real lifesaver for parents.

They really should be enlisting seasoned mothers to M15, we'd pass all of the sleep deprivation tests, be used to hoiking about giant nappy bags full of kit, deal with difficult people, and are liable to forget Top Secret Information until the last minute when I seem to do most things in a blind panic

PMSL Lioninthesun.. I think a member of MI5 is already on the other thread we've been on laughing face

It was funny - you were asking on there about it and I was posting on this thread about it - must have been sharing some psychic powers there

Most definitely - or maybe "big brother" is watching over what we are saying and connecting us somehow LMFAO !!!! personally i think that thread has got way out of hand but that is just my humble opinion. I have this vision of a person sitting in a dark room with a stack of cash and loads of computers and videoscreens, too scared to leave the house for want of somebody "spying" or trying to get personal data !!!!

Maybe they haven't had much sleep...

DD was not a great a sleeper - she ended up in bed with us most nights until she was nearly 8 and went through a bedwetting phase at 4-5 years old.

The latter was pretty grim because I had to actually get up and function in the middle of the night, but on the whole I'm not too phased by lack of sleep.

I have never been a big sleeper and so long as I'm arse-bound and able to relax a bit I can function on a couple of hours if necessary, albeit probably not for days in a row. I find getting up a struggle but it makes no difference whether I've had 2 hours sleep or 10 tbh.

DH is an early riser and DD is nearly 11 so I get a lie in at the weekends these days.

Good one LOL xx

Deffo xx

I can't sleep now :)

DS1 has always been a crappy sleeper (refluxy baby, the separation anxiety kicked in), but was found to have obstructive sleep apnoea, which caused him to wake 20+ times a night. He would scream hysterically, have nightmares, night terrors, sleep walk, you name it. Had tonsils and adenoids removed at 2.9yo and we were told this would sort his sleep issues immediately. Only it didn't. His breathing was improved dramatically (no more pauses and choking himself awake wen it started again), but his body was so used to the constant waking he'd ended up with 2 sleep disorders - the names escape me since I was too tired to take it all in!

He wound up on melatonin after the HV visited DS2 at 6mo (also crappy sleeper) and I sobbed hysterically because I couldn't remember te answers to anything she asked and had almost crashed the car that morning. She made the gp refer us to a good paediatrician who has helped enormously. Melatonin wasn't a cure, more a tool to help DS1 fall asleep himself without us needing to hold his hand (he was terrified to fall asleep because of his breathing stopping). He does still wake at night but no longer hysterical, and the nightmares are pretty infrequent now. We had nearly 2 years of one of us sleeping on his floor to help him settle again. When DS2 was born, I wound up cosleeping with him because we were terrified his loud crying would wake DS1.

We did end up doing cc with DS2 by accident really. If he woke while I was dealing with DS1 and DH was working away, I had to leave him for a couple if mins until I could calm DS1 enough to leave him and go to DS2 (DS1 would get so hysterical he'd start coughing then vomiting). I feel bad about it but I am only one person and couldn't physically pick up two screaming kids at once. He actually learned to get himself back to sleep very quickly and only wakes through the night now if ill/teething (like now). DS1 is a work in progress - he's almost 4 and still waking but that's gradually getting better.

We've coped so far, surviving mainly by cosleeping, playing musical beds through the night as necessary and by drinking industrial quantities of coffee. We take it in turn to give each other a lie in every weekend and go to bed early at least once a week. It's not helped though by the health issues that I have which give me chronic fatigue, so I generally look and feel like shit all the time. DH has developed insomnia (well we both have) and is now struggling with that. It's definitely cemented our decision not to have more DC. A further lack of sleep would kill us (I'd probably murder him in a sleep deprived fit of rage!)

Forgot to add, I'm sitting on the landing typing this while I listen to DS2 toss and turn, knowing that it's pointless going back to bed until he stops. Experience tells me that the second I get nicely comfy in bed and start to drift, he'll wake screeching again. It's been quiet in there for the last couple of minutes, but now DH is tossing and turning
I also get scarily angry at anyone making a noise outside at night. A neighbour has just driven past and I scare myself with the overwhelming feeling of wanting to punch the bastard in the face if he wakes the DC. Mine wake up if a mouse farts 3 streets away. I was positively homicidal at the fuckwit who beeped his horn at 9.30 last night!