...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.

The poster who was questioning hallucinations on one nights poor sleep - I get this too

My dp is a horrendous sleeper, he doesn't ever sleep more than 2 hours before waking up / going to the loo etc etc and is a loud snorer who wakes himself up. Those bad nights with him result in me feeling absolutely hideous, headachy, nauseous, like my body clock has totally been messed with

I will be in serious trouble when a baby comes along!

mumoftwoyoungkids

Your post really resonates with me. Hugs. I know exactly what you mean.

This too will pass... This too will pass...

I have to say that when exh was here I felt worse, because I resented him for not doing more. When I was on my own, I knew it was just me, so just soldiered on

Op - after three or four years (not your suggested three or four nights) I still won't cry it out. Not an option for me.

Coffee, lots of.

Not too many stodgy carbs.

Never tell anyone how little sleep you've had, that way no one keeps mentioning it to you and dragging you down, after a while you forget yourself.

The ability to sleep anywhere helps, if the timing is right and DS is asleep I'll have a 10 minuet nap in the car just before school pick up (not when its boiling hot obviously).

I was a mess. Stupid, grumpy, angry and miserable. Two sodding years. We only have one child as a result.

You asked it it made me question 'crying it out'... No, but I did feel murderous rage at anyone that suggested it. Honestly, proper, real red mist anger. I was not myself.

Well I suppose none of us have a choice really, do we?

You have to let go of how it felt to be normal, and live in hope that it will change.

Letting go means expecting to feel sick, cutting corners, curbing social life and expectations. It means turning a blind eye to how you look (within reason) and how your house looks. Your priorities change and your world narrows down, just to survive.

Hope is important because we all need that to get us through.

I haven't had the life I want for 7 years now, because I have non-sleepers, AND a progressive disease which makes me cruelly tired. Yet I still cling to the hope that one day I might get some sort of life back.

Until that day I don't allow myself to think about my life. That way I can't get too depressed about it! The truth is, I live in fear of not coping the next day, like for example, tomorrow the kids are off school and I have no help dealing with their night waking and my very busy toddler. I have no idea how I will get through a 14 hour day alone with them, and have us all stay sane. All my thinking will be on how to keep us all safe and fed, there won't be any time for thinking about anything else!

From a practical point of view, I have to set out clothes the day before (helps not to have to think in the morning!) and set the table for breakfast. I always stay up to clean the kitchen rather than come into mess at the start of the day.

I made a list of meals so I don't have to stand and think what we will eat. I live off alarms and reminders for everything, all saves my poor tired brain from having to work too hard!

DS2 did not sleep through until he was 26 months. He'd be up multiple times a night and we finally 'broke him' by refusing to let him in our bedroom during the night (he'd wander in) and he slept on the carpet outside our room every night for FOUR MONTHS until he admitted defeat.

I returned to work when he was 11 months. I would regularly have no recollection of my 1.5 hour drive to work on a v busy motorway. Terrifying when I look back on it. Co-existing would be the best way to describe my relationship with DH through that period. We stopped at 2 children primarily due to this sleep deprivation torture.

None of mine seem to even start sleeping until they're 3. You just cope with it although every few months one if you will snap and then it's time for that person to sleep on the sofa bed downstairs for a couple of night unbroken sleep and let the other one cope. At the moment im trying to cope with a non sleeping 3yr old and a non sleeping 1yr old who seem to tag team throughout the night.

We have twins. They didn't sleep at the same time (for more than about 20 mins) at the same time for more than a year.

So basically there was always a baby awake, for a year.

After the first week, I genuinely thought I would die from lack of sleep.

I don't remember hardly any of the photos from their first year being taken. It's all a haze.

By the time they were about two and a half things had mostly settled down and I was getting about 5 hours a night, which is still about average for me now.

I can survive extended periods on about 4 hours sleep and have gone to work recently on 2 or 3 hours sleep and functioned fine.

I never understand why the media makes such a fuss about Maggie Thatcher only needing 4 hours a night. She was a twin Mum - of course she was practised in functioning with out sleep. Most of us are.

Due to work hours and general life, I only get 3 (or 4 if I'm lucky) hours sleep a night during the week. It's not ideal, but I can't make more hours in the day. I think some people can just do it, others can't. My sister Has to have her 8 hours a night, else she is physically ill.
Admittedly, come weekends, I am asleep shortly after my daughter, so guess my body has just become accustomed to coping during the week and playing catchup at the weekend!
I always say anyone who gets more than 7 hours sleep should donate some to those who need more hours in a day ;)

I have to do nights on call and work during the day with my job. Plus all the other home/family stuff too. And I have calcifying tendonitis in my shoulder which is worse at night . I have just got used to feeling a bit tired, most of the time I think. I do grab rest when I can though. So, yes to a quick nap or even 10 min relaxation helps. The Headspace app is good.

You do just get on with it. You have to. There's not really an alternative.

My dd is 19 months old and only slept through for the first time a month ago. She's now been reliably sleeping through for the past 2 weeks and I can't believe it. I'm still expecting her to go back to waking up constantly through the night.

She woke up 3/4 times a night until she was 4 months old, then the hell of sleep regression kicked in and she woke hourly until she was almost 9 months. That's not even an exaggeration. From 9 months until recently she's woken 3 times minimum on a good night up to at least 10 times on a bad night. It's just been horrendous and has put me off having another child.

I've been a horrible irritable bitch for the past year and a half. Constantly run down and getting ill with colds and random illnesses. Even though she's been sleeping through for a couple of weeks I still just feel awful. But I suppose that's life and you just have to deal with it!

Hope your dd is feeling better soon and you get some more sleep

I look back and think the same. I used to think 2 wakes a night was good and my interrupted nights went on for years as ds wasn't sleeping through at 2 when dd came along.
I don't have loads of sleep now, about 7 hours. Ideally I'd have 8 or 9. But if I get up during the night its a big deal. I like to know I can go to bed and that's it until the alarm goes off. No exaggeration, this is one of the (admittedly many) reasons I won't have a third baby. I've done sleep deprivation, I've survived, I don't want my comfortable life disrupted thank you.

And I agree with those that say you get used to it. After a few weeks of the hourly wake-ups I just got used to it happening and could cope. I don't think the other mums at play group even believed me when I said how badly dd slept as I just seemed quite normal after a while. Unless they just got used to me looking like a zombie

Totally true about it making you an insomniac. Cruel.

I never considered letting them cry because I don't think it would've helped. I thought about how I'd feel being left to cry if I was scared / hungry or whatever or even if tbh I was just being a bit of a twat and I couldn't do it. I think dh would've though.

Wow. Some amazing and really heartbreaking stories coming through here thank you for sharing! I am in even more awe now of you lot. I'm really sorry to those who's lives have really suffered as a consequence. I'm really impressed by your strength and I hope you are appreciated by your families!
Making me realise even more what I a loser I am for not coping with night. I wouldn't last a week in the army.

I think it's actually easier to be sleep deprived for a longer period of time than it is to have one bad night when you are used to sleeping well. Once you get over the initial shock of not sleeping, you kind of 'auto-correct' for tiredness, so you have little systems in place to keep you going and end up adjusting to a certain extent. Personally, one of the worst things, for me, is having one random good night as you feel as though you should be revitalised, but actually you just feel sluggish and lethargic. The first time my son slept through (when he was well over 3), I woke up feeling like shite because apparently I had barely moved in my sleep, so I was achy with numb hands and feet and a crick in my neck!

Danger to be fair, you would have coped if your little one had been a non sleeper. You would have had to, it isn't like there's a choice

It is the reason I always advise people not to have children if there relationship isn't 100% sound though.

My DH and I have always had a brilliant relationship but the first two years after the children were born were very, very hard. I

ATruth Thanks. Am clinging to "this too shall pass". Ds is 2 now and his sister started sleeping reasonably from 3ish (just after Ds was born ) so I figure I'm five years in, one to go which makes it sound like I'm nearly there.

I agree one night of sickness floors me now, I don't sleep very well anyway, but I just got used to being a zombie! I can sleep anywhere now though, at any time, a skill I think!

DD woke throughout the night for feeding as a baby, as most do. I don't remember much about that period of time as you just muddle through. She's 2 now and sleeps for 11 hours most nights, but on the occasional nights now where she wakes for whatever reason (usually when poorly), it feels like a horrible shock to the system.

A friend of mine had a baby around the same time as me and she was an atrocious sleeper. The awful thing was that when her DD started sleeping through the night, she found she couldn't do the same as she had had 2 years of broken sleep and her body was too used to waking up - I felt so bad for her

I wouldn't last a week in the army.

You'd be surprised how quickly you'd adapt Danger. DS1 has been in the army a year now. Before he joined I could never get him out of bed, now he copes really well on 4 or 5 hours sleep if he has to. A couple of weeks ago he had to stay awake for 36hours and managed fine. He still sleeps a lot when he comes home though!

I don't remember the first six months of DS life, so glad I have the photos. I have not had an unbroken night's sleep for 2 years now. My short term memory has deteriorated, but I am coping. Like a pp said, I keep going because I have to.

I am bottom of my list of priorities, I just cannot bear having a dirty house so in 'empty' moments I clean. I am extremely antisocial these days, and rarely go out apart from to work/ with DS at weekends. I am hopeful things will improve as he gets older. Much to my surprise, I have ended up being the exact opposite mother to what I expected. There has been just one night when DS did not spend at least part of the night in my bed. Anything for an easy life, these days!