Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, broken nights

[Turkkadin]

There are regularly threads started on MN about months of broken nights, breastfeeding and having babies sleeping in bed with you.
I'm not trying to be goads or unsympathetic, just trying to compare styles of parenting young babies. Maybe it's a generational thing as I'm 52. All 3 of mine were breastfed from birth for 3 weeks then bottle fed.
They weren't rocked to sleep and were often put to bed at night awake.
None ever co slept with us. They all went through the night from a matter of weeks old and all were good settled sleepers. I'm not saying our way was better but it seemed a lot simpler.

My response as a completely sleep deprived parent:
Fuck you OP. Fuck you.

After the day I've just had....also a resounding fuck you. I breastfeed, I don't co-sleep. My 3 year old still doesn't sleep through. Baby sleeps better than he does and they've both been raised the same.

And I'll tell you now, when I posted this morning at 4:15am, when I'd been up for an hour with my 11 month old who is completely unable to self settle. Your thread made me cry, I bawled my eyes out. It made me feel like shit.

So good for you if you had babies who could settle, feel free to pop round to mine and try 'just putting him in his cot' and see if he doesn't cry, you can do your simple bedtime while I have a rest, see how long you last.

Only a matter of time before the OP suggests our babies won’t settle because...oh I don’t know....we are too stressed. Or maybe because breastfeeding means other carers don’t get to feed the baby making them overreliant on mum to settle them. Or some other guilt bullshit that sets up parenting as adult vs baby.

Gooooaaddyyy

Bet my bottom dollar OP has DIL issues.

In other news, do fuck off with your ' I'm better than you because my kids slept post.'

You sound like someone I (unfortunately) know. Spectacular comments such as “if all this attachment parenting and fourth trimester stuff is so great then why are so many children now diagnosed with all these ‘problems’ such as adhd and autism”
Haven’t spoken to her since she said that. I co slept with my dc and will with my next baby due in a few weeks if I need to

I have a 4 month old who is BF and we cosleep using a sidecar cot. She wakes three or more times a night for a very quick feed and always settles straight back down.

I have an older dd who was formula fed, slept in her Moses basket and stopped night feeds from 5 weeks old.

Despite their differences I was on my knees with exhaustion after DD1. I couldn’t sleep myself as I was frantic with every noise and rustle as well as up multiple times to replace the dummy. If she did wake it could take hours to resettle. I counted oz of formula consumed anxiously and worried myself sick when she hadn’t had ‘enough’

With dd2 I feel relaxed and happy even if some mornings I would have liked a wee bit more sleep. I don’t feel on my knees and am quite happy with how things are. I find BFing easy and very rewarding which is such a bonus after my total failure at it with DD1.

My whole point is that all babies and our experience of them as parents are different. I find my second daughter easy to parent. If she was my first maybe I wouldn’t.

I co-sleep and breastfeed because weirdly I actually like my baby, enjoy cuddling him and meeting his needs. But each to their own I suppose.

I love co sleeping with my (breastfed) baby boy. He’s nearly one and it’s going so fast. I know it’ll be over soon and I enjoy every minute of it.

My older DD (also breastfed) wasn’t really fussed about co sleeping. She doesn’t know this but some nights, before I go into my own bed, I sneak into hers and spoon for ten minutes. I just love the feeling of her little warm body nestled into mine. And even though she’s four I still love sniffing her head!

The thought of putting a three week old baby down alone and leaving it makes me feel sad. Even when mine were in Moses baskets they were still next to me.

I’m obviously a big softie.

I’m 53 and breastfed on demand with DD until 11 months my milk supply dried up as I was by then pregnant with DS - he was a very hungry cluster feeder and sometimes fed on and off all day and all night
He weaned himself by 9 months as just preferred real food
I didn’t co sleep as such but had Moses basket touching bed at same height and always fed to sleep on that side so could gently transfer
So no it’s not a generational thing - we should just do what works best for us and our offspring obviously considering safety and guidelines where appropriate

I’m currently Co snoozing with latest addition to family - Reuben

The thing is OP, that’s what worked for YOU and YOUR babies. That’s not the same as what worked for me and my babies. It’s like someone who has breastfed without a problem saying to someone who can’t breastfeed “well I just breastfed mine, it was simple”. It’s just not that simple. Sometimes people need to realise that we are all different and our experiences are all different.

Some of the posters have decided to add stuff as they have gone along! Just to make my post sound even more sensational! There was nothing sensational about it in the first place. You have all just decided to turn it into having a really heavy go.
Never have I once said I left my babies alone in their own room at 3 weeks??? They were beside me in a Moses basket in my bedroom for months. Never have I said I didn't like them in bed with me. We were advised not to co-sleep as it was considered dangerous. I followed professional advice that was given at the time. Anyway please don't take it all so personally. I'm not taking it personally that my original post has been sensationalised and misquoted to make me sound, to your design, even worse. I'm big enough to tolerate other people's opinions even if I don't agree with them. I can even cope with an opinion different to mine without calling the person who offered it names?? I'd probably just ignore it actually . Keep calm and just move on

"So none of yours screamed when put down. Do you think that's because of your parenting or just luck?"

Would you mind answering that question? What would you advise for someone whose baby becomes inconsolable if put down awake (or even asleep) and then left.

She’s not going to answer that question, don’t bother.

My first child had reflux and if put down to sleep less than 30 min after a feed would spit up all over herself and cry in pain due to discomfort. We had to hold her upright for months and she got used to falling asleep like that.

The advice to leave her in bed at 3 weeks would have resulted in screaming and suffering for her.

Would love to know what supermum Turkkadin would have done.

Yep, come on OP Mine is awake. I've been trying to put him down for 50 minutes. Every time he's put in the cot he wakes up, and cries. So how am I managing this "putting him down" then? What would you do? We would you suggest? Your babies didn't do it, so you must be better at this than me?

Or, are you 30 years away from actually being fucking knackered and you can't actually remember the bone crushing tiredness, the feeling like absolute shit when people are judgemental, the relentless exhaustion of having a new baby and not knowing what to do for the best because all your instincts are telling you to do one thing and people and their opinions are being arseholes to you.

You were being a GF, you know it, don't pull the oh, who me?! No, I wasn't meaning it like that, no you're just taking it the wrong way! Bollocks! When it comes to babies sleeping, if you haven't got anything nice/helpful to say then shut the fuck up.

for all the mum who are awake with babies right now. It gets easier. I promise. You're doing a great job however you choose to feed, manage sleep (or lack thereof) whatever type of nappies you use etc. It's bloody hard being a mum, so here's some virtual support from one mum to another.

Oh, and my first dc slept like a charm - to the point we daren't mention their sleep habits to the obviously struggling and sleep deprived parents around us for fear of them forming a (very sleepy) mob! We thought we had it sussed and wondered why all these babies didn't sleep?
So then we had another one........ let's just say dc2 taught us how incredibly lucky (and it was sheer luck, not skill of parenting or techniques or anything else) we'd been with dc1! We didn't have an unbroken night for, well, a long time. Just different kids, and although being parented the same, dc2 hadn't read the book that told them what they were 'supposed' to do! 9months in utero wasted when they could have been swotting up!
It's all luck.
12 years on? They both sleep great. Safe to say we had no more after dc2!

I can’t even understand why you posted in the first place. What a pointless bloody thread.

I don’t know why people automatically assume, gently encouraging a baby to sleep for a longer stretch at night means leaving them to cry in the night and not be comforted?!

I did gentle sleep training from about 6 weeks and they were never once left to cry!

All I did was at night, kept it as dark as possible, stayed in their room on the chair to hold them (not took them downstairs and put the tv on and stimulated them etc) minimal speaking and interaction.

I woke them up at the same time every day, that seemed to be the key. Soon as it was 7am I made it bright, noisy and carried on as normal (even when they were asleep.) I changed them out of pyjamas, washed them and put them in clothes for the day.

I used to put them to bed at 7pm and then do a dream feed at 10pm.

My daughter by 7 weeks had dropped the 2am feed and was sleeping through until 7am, she was a natural sleeper though and always loved her naps etc.

My son still needed a night feed until 9 weeks and then when he dropped a 2am feed he used to frequently wake up at 5.30am until about 3 months when he went until 7am.

They dropped the dream feed at about 9-10 months when they were on 3 meals a day plus milk feeds.

I’m never up in the night with them unless they’re poorly.

So please don’t assume that just because you don’t co-sleep etc that you’ve left a baby in a dark room to scream and cry and not be comforted!!!

That's very useful advice, I used to turn all the lights on at bedtime, stick the telly on, wave toys at DD and give her some Redbull. It would never have occurred to me to put the lights down low and keep interaction to a minimum. That must be the reason she took a while to sleep, didn't like to sleep in her cot and wanted feeding in the night

My moms slightly older... has 8 children... all breast fed... me for example up to the age of 4.5. My youngest sibling is just 12.

She bed shared with us all.

But I suppose in a 3rd world country where these “guidelines” aren’t there from professionals women just get on and do what they must or what is traditionally done. Women in my culture have always shared their bed with babies.... it’s the norm.

I’m always intrigued by these “guidelines and standards” being enforced by western cultures.

But you know what is most unfortunate, when women feel a need to do as they are told because it is right... I wish I never listened to these professionals and had just followed my mother’s advice from the get go. I would not have had several mental breakdowns from exhaustion with a baby that did NOT sleep no matter what I did! And I tried everything even getting a damn “sleep consultant” 🙄. I didn’t co-sleep until she was 4 months old! And the first time after a good nights sleep I felt so refreshed! I even managed to have a shower in the daytime instead of my usual 3am shower. Slowly life began to get back to some level of normal.

When I had my second... I went straight into bed sharing! These days when I’m exhausted it’s usually my fault for going to bed really late. And my oldest now sleeps in her own bed... and through the night. Something we only started doing when she was about 20 months... it was a challenge, but it only took 2 weeks to get her used to the idea and another 2 before she stopped stirring in the night. It was also much easier for us to cope with a toddler doing this than a baby... as I would have struggled to know if something is genuinely wrong or if she was just having a whinge.

I don’t know what your AIBU is about, because we all parent according to the child/children we have.

.

I have 3 children and have breastfed, bottle fed, coslept, had them in cots in their own rooms, they would be put down awake/wouldn't be put down awake and self settled and slept through at various ages between birth and 30 months.

I don't really have a point.