...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.

*here sorry

Bagel that's a good point, I have met hardly anyone in RL with these issues...but my theory is that people lie about it.

After a bottle of wine, a friend of a friend admitted that her baby never slept, but she would not admit it on pain of death for fear of being judged a shit mother.

I openly tell everyone and everyone how horrific it is, in the hope that more people know how bad it can be and are not totally shocked/feel like a failure.

I'm pretty sure I am responsible for some of my friends remaining childless at 50

I've lots of people with these issues but I think that's because I've been extremely fortunate in that I've found a couple of lovelt, supportive toddler groups where we all tend to be quite open and matter of fact about stuff. Fairly sure they've saved my sanity. I also live in a small town and can walk everywhere easily. If I lived in a larger place where I had to drive or fight a toddler onto public transport, probably I wouldn't have the energy to get out and actually tell people what was happening.

Mine aren't bad, especially the youngest, but from what my parents tell me we were all right up there with some of the DC described in this thread. My DM had a sleep deficit until the youngest was well into their teens. I thought immediately of her when some of you mentioned effed up sleep patterns decades later!

What Inwonder with all this, is whether these long term sleep issues are a feature if the last 40 years or have always been an issue.
What about when people had up to 12 kids and when a whole family slept in 1 or 2 bedrooms? You never seem to see reference to any of these issues from that period.
Why is that?

Redtowel yes, people do lie about it an awful lot. I am brutally honest because people assume my life is rosy claiming carers allowance and not having to work during the day.

Its not rosy, I'm usually catching up with my sleep (Drs orders because I'm so tired I'm more clumsy and keep burning myself cooking) Cleaning up another nights destruction or attending Drs, CAFs or therapy on top of the usual day to day chores.

SLeep deprivation is bloody hard to manage effectively but I've found a ton of ways that work for me. Most of them cheating! I spend more on food than most because I buy recipe boxes. Saves me having to plan or shop for a recipe. But when you add in bus/taxi for shopping its probably the same.

I keep everything the same, same breakfast cereal, same daily snack for school. Pay for school dinners to save making packed lunches. Pay for my grass to be cut that sort of thing. Those little bits really do help me crack on with it and I'm a single parent so no other choice. I can't do a 2 person job on half a persons sleep!

That hotel advert, Lenny Henry in that hotel bed all over the place....

I actively sneer at that advert, I feel seriously that I want to punch him in his superior, smug fucking face over and over again until he is blood spattered all over those comfy snug pillows. I feel personally offended by those adverts, actual anger at the audacity of the way he rubs my face into the plain and painful fact that I have not, and will not have the luxury of that kind of sleep for a very long time.

It's pathetic.

I haven't read the whole thread but the first few months with our twins was hell on earth. At one point I was lucky to get 45 minutes sleep the entire night! I used to refer to our bedroom as The Torture Chamber, it was impossible to get more than 20 minutes sleep for weeks on end! I had to have emergency surgery to have my gall bladder removed. It was the happiest day of my life, I got to have 11 hours of unbroken sleep I cried when they discharged me!

It put me off having anymore dc, dp has had the snip! When I see pregnant woman now I shudder!

I too wonder how the hell they coped in the past with 10 in a room but I reckon they were all so tired from their 18 hour days of hard graft (including the kids) they all just slept like logs. I think they had different sleep patterns then too according to some random documentary I watched once.
Although how they coped with the fleas has always baffled me.
We live in such sanitary, sterile and boring times in comparison...

I decided to count how many times my DS woke up last night and was fed back to sleep (ebf 6 months) I stopped counting at 8 times after 11pm. He has already woken twice since I put him down at 7 and is stirring now. I am so knackered I have completely turned on my DH!

As in turned on him in an angry way not turned him on sexually (I hope!!)

I think sleep has always been an issue, there's not a magic solution we've all forgotten. However, dealing with babies was women's work and, honestly, how much attention was given to any issue that affected only women? Plus yes, maybe different sleep patterns, less isolated living etc.

In a room of ten I expect you'd get used to sleeping through an awful lot. After all, people sleep next to Heathrow or trainlines and get used to it.

In olden days you'd also have a hell of a lot of support from family/neighbours - so you could nap in the day. I had no family or friends nearby, didn't know the neighbours and I don't think that is that unusual in this day and age...
And didn't people (unmarried mothers) do things like go out to work all day and leave their babies on their own?
Someone told me that a baby never crying is a sign of serious neglect more than one that is always crying - as in they have learnt there is no point in crying cos no-one is going to come (guess a much more extreme version of controlled crying)
And I'm sure in some countries even now new mothers are kept 'in seclusion' for at least the first month - iirc in some arabic countries it is the first 6 months. So new mothers aren't expected to do anything but sleep and feed the baby with other women doing all the cleaning/cooking etc...which sounds lovely if it is voluntary but enforced I think I would go insane...

That does sound like bliss! I wonder If I could request that from my family? Only focusing on the boy and not the housework!

Boy (aged 8) was up at 9pm (even after falling asleep at 7pm and given melatonin at 5pm) he then went back to sleep and woke at 11. Then again at 12:30 attempting to hot foot it downstairs to play games. I alarm his door. Its the ONLY way either of us get any (4-6 hours) sleep. I don't know if he woke up anymore times after that. Exhaustion took hold and I slept heavily. If he came out of his room I'd have heard it. He was up at 5:30 this morning.

Don't worry proudmummy, I laugh about it too. If I don't I'd probably cry.

And a big Yy to that Lenny Henry advert. Every time I see the one where he's in a bed in the middle of the street I fantasise about a pigeon flying over and doing a dirty great shit all over him. Then I feel slightly better!

Some people seem to have no idea how badly their kids sleep. MIL has always maintained that hers all slept through all the time. DH however, clearly remembers from a young age lying awake in bed for many hours, too scared to move in case he got a hiding off his DM.

We didn't get help from family until I was signed off work with exhaustion and stress due to lack of sleep and exacerbation of health problems, and DH was on the verge of a breakdown. The HV actually asked MIL why nobody had ever had the DC for even one night to help us, and she said her DH couldn't cope with disturbed sleep. HV then told her that frankly he should suck it up for one night since we had for over 3yr, and if someone didn't help us soon we'd be in hospital! I felt rather embarrassed as I certainly don't ask her to say that, but MIL did actually have the DC the next night. She asked why we didn't say it was that bad - we had been! She had been told all about DS1's issues and had invited herself to enough of his hospital appointments to be fully aware of the problems we were having re sleep apnoea, night terrors, etc. I guess many people just don't want to listen to how bad it is and switch off when you do try to tell them. This is probably why many lie about how good a sleeper their DC are - nobody wants to hear otherwise.

Yes, yes, Ipswich, I have actually sat opposite my mum at a table in tears at how exhausted I was with not having slept for more than a two hour stretch for 18months while also looking after a non-stop three year old aand an extremely ill husband and she still did nothing. Just told me about friends of hers who'D had it even worse as if that would make it better. Now that things are better, I can't be bothered to tell her that I am still utterly exhausted through never ever having the chance to recover.

Just spotted this thread. I have a 5 year old non sleeper. I think after 5 years I am generally pretty well adapted to lack of sleep and will to a point plough on but then it will just hit me on days like today and I find I don't have the energy to even get off the seat.

I found out yesterday DS is being awarded Higher rate care DLA from September and it was a relief to finally have some acknowledgement of how much sleep is broken with him.

Another thing that has come up in this is the shocking lack of support - particularly from your parents - when you need it the most. I'm amazed at how your parents could sit by and watch you drown with their defence being: "Well I need MY sleep". We ALL need sleep that's the point!
I don't even have a particularly good relationship with my mum but she has helped me when I've needed it and so I can't imagine how let down you must feel when you've not been helped out by your folks.

DH felt incredibly low about it. Especially since he was well aware his DM used to regularly have his DN overnight - "but he slept all night!" was her reasoning when DH pointed out to her that she'd never once offered to have ours when it all got really bad.

SIL keeps telling DS1 he can come and sleep over when he sleeps all night. Like it's something he can just decide to do He just looks blankly at her. We have tried it all, with the exception of IL's fantastic suggestion of just leaving them to sob all night. Why they think that'll work when DS1 was so scared of sleeping and his breathing stopping, we couldn't leave the room before he fell asleep to pop to the toilet next door without him getting so upset and hysterical he'd vomit.

My DS is 18 months and has never slept longer than a 2 hour stint.
During bad periods of sleep I will have maybe 3 or 4 broken hours a night for up to a week. At one point I had slept for 6 hours in 4 days. His sleep is appalling and I do worry about its impact on his development.

Last night he finally caved at 00:30 and woke for the day as normal at 5:30 / 5am (with wake ups between)

I have no advice. I am on my knees with tiredness.

I've already commented upthread about how little sleep I get n how I cope but I just wanted to add that DangerGrouse raises a good point.

Today, I had a very close family member (who knows exactly how things r for us at home) listen to me describe my night n I said I actually felt rock bottom had finally caught me only for them to say how awful it must b n how they feel for us n that they'll help out as soon as DTs r sleeping thru! U kno, when we won't actually need it. The irony would b funny if not so cruel .

Yes Silver. I get that yoo

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