To want to tell this mum to shut up? *lighthearted rant*

[BrownBirdsFly]

I am a first time mum to my DD 4 months old. She is a lovely, happy, healthy baby and I am loving being a mum - however she is a terrible sleeper! I am very sleep deprived, but feel lucky to have a healthy baby and feel this sort of comes with having a baby anyway!

I have a mum friend who's baby has always been a good sleeper, even though her baby is also breastfed the baby sleeps from 8-8 and pretty much always has.

Where I'm getting annoyed is that she keeps giving me helpful advice about how to get my baby to sleep. I am a very organised routine led person, before I had baby I read Gina Ford, makes perfect sense I thought, my baby shall follow this routine (I was an idiot!). For the first six weeks she refused to be put down, at all. She screamed as soon as I did. I ended up wearing her in a sling for the first six weeks of her life whilst feeling terrible that I was spoiling her etc... And do you know what... She grew out of it - like Mumsnet said she would!

She hated her co-sleeping crib and after many many battles (and heating it with a hot water bottle, raising it on a slant, putting one of my tops in there, padding it out with towels, buying Ewan the dream sheep etc etc.) have ended up co-sleeping. She wakes 4-5 times a night and when your spending 90 minutes getting her in the crib only for her to wake up hungry half an hour later sleep deprivation forces you to take action - in our case co-sleeping!

Anyway, my friend keeps giving me great advice as to how she got her baby to sleep - just put her down drowsy but awake, don't feed her right before bed, don't let her nap in the rocker/bouncer in the day etc etc. I know she's trying to be helpful, but I really feel we just have two different babies and if she'd had my baby despite the parenting style, my baby still would not sleep! I feel this is confirmed by speaking to parents who have done exactly the same with two children and ended up with one great and one terrible sleeper.

AIBU for wanting to tell her to shove her advice - that I'm actually a reasonably intelligent person and if there was an easy way to get my baby to sleep I would have found it by now and that the cause of this is not anything I have done but just a result of my babies personality?!

Yes babies are different. Your friend probably sees you tired and thinks she can help.
Tell her your baby hasn't read the same books as her!! Wait a few years and the sleep thing will seem distant torture. You can dish out "advice" when she has a biter, veg refuser or child who refuses to share!!

I so get this, with my Ds it's food issues, since weaning, and everyone under the sun has an opinion, mostly involving peer pressure (hah!) and me being too soft...
He's now 8 and eats about 4 things, NT and yes he will go hungry rather than give in so sod off all you know-alls. Second child eats anything not nailed down so not my bad parenting, OK, he's just odd.
I should add he is healthy and active so I've stopped stressing about it

Just nod and smile when somebody new comes out with "have you tried...".

My friend's baby slept from 6 weeks, but at fours years started having night terrors and proper sleep problems, which are thankfully now sorted (he is 11yrs now).

My two did that normal baby thing of waking for feeds every 2-3 hrs, we would get one night bliss then teething would happen, or they started weaning, and wake up numerous times. But once they got the hang of sleeping apart from the occasional ear infection, sickness bug, nightmare they have been brilliant sleepers.

I would rather have it wakey baby/sleepy child than the other way round.