...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 can however now sleep any time anywhere. Useful on boring train journeys...

Ds1 had me up most nights until he turned 4 earlier this year. It was awful. I survived with copious amounts of caffeine. I delayed having ds2 purely because of it. Ds2 is only 9 months old & he's slept the same amount in his little life so far as ds1 has in total I reckon. Ds1 doesn't go to sleep until 8.30pm & up at 5.15am every morning. He's a machine.

I became obsessed with DS wakings - I had a note pad by the bed and would write down when he woke, desperate to find some pattern, some miracle to solve it. Never bloody did but look forward to his older years when I can embarrass him about the torture.
As others say looking back those first 2 years are a haze, I drove a car, I worked, I saw friends and family but I have so little recollection.
My DD slept through from 6 weeks and I suddenly realized what all the mums with sleeping babies actually experienced! I actually remember her as a baby, which is really nice.

^You just get on with it, TBH. My DS woke 3-4-5 times a night until he was 4.

You feels crippled by it, then you sort of just get used to it.

Mind you, 17 years later, my sleep pattern is shot to pieces.^

This although dd started to sleep more than 3 hours a few weeks after her third birthday (ds had slept soundly, lengthily and regularly since he was 9 weeks old). Just getting on with it, caffeine, red bull, carbs. Feeling like sh*t and being very short tempered.

I think mumoftwoyoungkids has it spot in. Sleep deprivation becomes your version of normal. You just get on with things but with a constant fuzziness/headache and a lot of irritability. Your sleep patterns also become screwed up. I work in a job that requires me to bring work home in the evenings. I'm often so tired I have to take a short nap once the children are in bed, then work, then go to bed late (invariably for a broken night's sleep!). Depressing to hear that I may still not be able to sleep well even when the children are older.

Danger in response to the 'cry it out' question:

No, absolutely not.

Two screaming babies is infinitely worse than one so you leap from your bed like a starting gun has gone off to grab whoever is crying and walk the floor with them in another room so as not to wake the other one.

Ah, fun times. .

I found that when it came to dc2 the lack of sleep was much more bearable as I was expecting it and used to it. dc1 it was this horrific shock to the system and I was furious about it all of the time. with dc2 I just went with the flow. but that's been 7 years in total, now only getting woken once a night for about the past 6 months.
agree with everything that has been said above. I also have horrific memory loss and presume that is down to broken sleep?
I can however fall almost instantly into a deep sleep, any where, any time, just give me the opportunity

Ds1 didn't sleep through the night until he was 6.

I was already an insomniac. And, from the time he was 2.5, a single parent. It used to take at least an hour, after he'd woken me up, to get back to sleep.

I remember some nights, clinging to the side of his bed, begging him to let me sleep. And other nights, staring at the tv all night, unable to sleep because my damn brain wouldn't switch off from 'The Fear' ( the one that says the minute you fall asleep, he's going to wake you up). Urgh.

I coped by sleeping more or less the whole time he went to his dad's ( and oh, the anger when xh would cancel his visits). And the rest of the time everything was done in a slight fog.

Thank God for Dh, who, when we had ds2, would insist on taking him downstairs for the whole night so I could sleep. It was a lifesaver.

I can cope on very little sleep, but had been getting increasingly short tempered and stressed (not like me at all) over the last two weeks due to even less sleep than usual. I had a pretty frightening health scare last week that was attributed by the consultant to lack of sleep and rest. Baby DD2 is not a good sleeper, and we're night owls, catching up on work etc.

It was a real shot across the bows for me and I'm trying really hard to stop work/MN early and get to bed earlier, knowing that DD2 will be awake and wanting milk (still bf).

So I thought I had it sussed, but my body knew better.

So yeah, night all

DD is 2 and has always been a terrible sleeper. I'm just used to it now, and just stop getting stressed about it.
Last night I put her to bed at 8.30. She woke at 10.30 but DH quickly settled her. She didn't wake again til 4.30am. I could have cried with happiness. This is huge for us as she usually wakes every 2 hours. She went to bed at 8.30 tonight, woke once about 10 mins after I put her down and is still asleep now at 12.05am. I don't wanna jinx it but hope this is a turning point

I haven't slept properly for about 19 months.
I constantly have a headache and feel woozy. I've put on 2 stone as I just grab the easiest food which is never healthy. The house never looks clean.
I feel like I've aged 10 years.
It becomes the new normal and you adapt.
I still can't do cry it out. It's just not for me. I'm sure DH would though.

I can't nap to catch up as I wouldn't sleep at night, even when I'm this tired. I sleep so light now and have very fretful dreams so never feel rested.

I hate everyone else who says that they are tired and have to stop myself punching them square in the face.
Oh yeah......anger.......That's a great side effect.

Agree with pp you don't have a choice but would not say everyone gets used to it. I am not a nice person without sleep! Not sure what everyone thinks of me when I do have adequate rest (adequate because it's never sufficient) but definitely struggle to cope with irritability even temper when deprived or even just disrupted.
I do agree with those who said that you just get on with it because you have to but then once things improve an unexpressed one off night gone wrong can set you back far worse then when you are at it regularly!

Oooh Sellmysoul (perfect name for this!) your first few lines echo exactly how I felt and worse. I found it so uncomfortable and even with helping hands around did not get used to it. The physical emotional and mental toll all feed in to each other and the effect on every aspect of life is huge. I barely adapted (if you can even call it that) and even that was with very much a temporary view. Despite all the replies about I really don't know how those who said it went on for years truly manage. The stamina and sheer determination alone…

That should be unexpected above not unexpressed

What a great thread!
You get used to functioning on less sleep. You factor it in to your day to day decisions: "Do I trust myself to drive an hour down the motorway? Probably not." "I will record this meeting so I can pick up the details later." Kind of thing.
DD1 (just 5) has only just started sleeping through fairly regularly. She suffers / ed from confusional arousal since she was really small (now that's a real bitch!) and would wake 5, 6, 7 times a night and just flail and howl inconsolably, kicking and writhing, unreachable and impossible to wake. It screwed me completely and has, I am sure, impacted on our relationship on some deep level, as The Fear, as a PP called it was unbearable and I lost it with her on a couple of dreadful nights, begging and pleading with her to stop, obviously to no avail. We saw a consultant paediatric neurologist who said that there was nothing to do but to tough it out and hope she'd grow out of it, which she appears to be doing at long last. But it's been a hard slog. Meanwhile, DD2 ( 2) is doing much better and just wakes once or twice per night and settles easily.
And the CC thing, I think that if you have a deep and heartfelt conviction that CC is harmful and cruel, you won't go down that road no matter how hard it gets. It wouldn't have worked with DD1 anyway.

I had twins and was a single parent. I did not sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time in the first 12 months. I used to fantasise about sleep. I remember being so sleep deprived when I was making myself a cup of tea while attempting to put on a load of washing, that I caught myself pouring milk into the fabric conditioner slot in the washing machine. You know those moments when you realise something's not quite right but can't work it out and then it clicks? There was swearing...

I won't lie. It was hard work and the first couple of years were a haze. I remember special moments and I had (still do) an amazing bond with my twins with no issues of PND or family dysfunction, but TBH it was sheer hard slog.

Now, many years later, after a brief interlude of proper sleep, I regularly cope with 4-5 hours a night and rarely have more than 6 because I decided to change careers to one that involves shift work. I amazed myself at how well I coped with it and have put this squarely down to being 'trained' for it by my DC.

I'd also say that the fitter and healthier you are, the better your body copes with sleep deprivation. I eat well, exercise regularly, don't smoke and rarely drink. I think it makes a difference.

Not very well but like most have said I don't have a choice.

I regularly throw up I'm so exhausted. What tends to happen is I just keep going then one day I hit the wall. I crack up, cry lots and have to sleep or I get flu and can't move out of bed. It's at this point dh has to take over.

I'm convinced my PND was/is as a result of years of sleep deprivation. Both my dc had CMPA which really doesn't help with their sleeping.

Echoing pps above - new normal, The Fear is horrible, worse on the odd day after sleep has improved a little, sick, angry, but just get in with it as there's no other choice. Hallucinating is horrid though - I imagine that I can hear whispers (like someone spoke, but I didn't quite catch it), or see things out the corner of my eye that aren't there...

Right, back to feeding DS 2,and hoping that these are hallucinations...

DS is nearly 5. I "sleep" on the floor outside his room. I'm not the same person I used to be.

Echo in so many PPs, it becomes the new normal. You begin to dread the nighttime and get consumed by TheFear that as soon as you fall asleep they will wake up.

It sends you lower than you think you can go. I love DD so much but at 4am when she's up for the 6th time, I feel like I might hate her or that I might throw myself out the window. Then you get up in the morning, put one foot in front of the other and keep going...

When my DS was a few weeks old I hallucinated and had intrusive thoughts about him, and very nearly had a complete breakdown. It's fucking horrendous.