To ask how do you do it ??

[anxiousmotherof1]

Back at full time work for a week now . My ds does not sleep through far from it . He woke up five times yesterday . Just came out of the office to get some proper coffee or else i will sleep at my desk .
Am sure there lots of working parents here with non sleepers ! How do you do it ??

My husband and I are supposed to take turns for nights, but my daughter has been sneaking past my husband and coming to me. She's 19 months and still wakes up to 4 times a night. I work in the evenings until silly o clock in the morning so always try and get an hours kip in the day when my daughter does. I find healthy eating, low sugar, no caffeine really helps. Means my body stays on a constant level of fatigue rather than being up and down all the time

With my first she was 6 weeks when I went to work ( just for 2 weeks and then off for another 2 before back full time) and bf so really no expectation she was going to sleep, but as coping mechanism I basically scrapped evenings, I went to bed at 8 , I did a nap/sleep same as her from 9-10.30, feed 10.30 back to sleep asap, which was something I had to learn ,which I did when tired enough, till then I was one of those people who could not dream of sleeping if room wasn't darkened, house silent and needing bedclothes over shoulder, now I can sleep sitting up on a plane in middle of day if tired enough.

I also made sure I had her as close to me as possible to minimise disruption, no getting out of bed to sit in fancy feeding chair, I put spare change mat beside her mosses basket, and if she didn't settle after feed she often stayed in bed , I just did everything to minimise how disruptive the awake periods were,
on plus side it was great to drink a hot cup of coffee when I was at work,

Shared all the night wakings with DH. Gave each other rest time at the weekend. Just prayed it would get better - it did.

Praying.
Bed at 8pm.
Lots of coffee.

@anxiousmotherof1 yes it helped lots, you do need to take it with vitamin C though, hence the Berocca.

I went back to work when my boy was 10 months old. He was a terrible sleeper then and still is although not as bad as we did controlled crying. I don’t care what anyone says - it totally worked for us. He’s 21 months now and we still don’t get a full night - he wakes up about twice a night but it’s normally just as he can’t find his dummy. I’ve come to the conclusion he’ll just be one of those kids that don’t sleep ☹️

Caffeine
Co-sleeping
Falling fast asleep as soon as I sat down after coming home from work
That's how I survived. I barely survived.

Then when DC started sleeping through I got insomnia - so I was still going to work on 4-5 hours' broken sleep. It was awful - physically, emotionally, career wise. It seemed that my body just didn't know how to do normal sleep anymore.

I've had to practically give up caffeine, take up exercise and practise good sleep hygiene - and now, a couple of years down the line, I can say that I can actually go to bed, fall asleep and stay asleep for 8 hours or so.

I went back to work when DS was 8.5 months - he refused a bottle and had all his feeds at night. I wasn’t safe to drive, fortunately DH works at the same company so did all the driving on the commute once he finished his month of parental leave. I fell asleep at my desk. It was awful. Fortunately I’d taken a lower skilled job to avoid redundancy and I could pretty much cope even in that state. At around 13 months I went away for 8 nights for work, DH and DS joined me for 3 nights in the middle but the rest they had to cope without me. DH discovered that he could settle him with a sippy cup of cold cows milk and cuddles. Since then we’ve alternated nights for the next year - at 2.2 years he still doesn’t sleep through. I resettle him in his bed, DH takes him to co-sleep in the spare room once he wakes. We now have 2 week old DD so DH is doing all the toddler night wakes and I’m doing all the baby ones, DH is also up with him every morning- he’s doing great but I suspect he’ll crash and burn soon!

You need to persevere with controlled crying. Just make the length of time shorter between going into the bedroom, so that the baby doesn’t get to the vomiting stage. I know sleep training isn’t universally popular but it works if you are determined enough!

My partner went through this as we have twins who were terrible sleepers until very recently. I’m a SAHM but he had to return to work and found himself falling asleep, blanking on an entire days worth of work, he started having anxiety attacks at one point from sheer exhaustion (he’s a very hands on Dad and refused to let me take the brunt of the night shift) - eventually my mum came to the rescue and started taking them on a Saturday night and bringing them home Sunday late morning. They had stopped BF at that point (I had little supply to offer to start with due to their prematurity) and whilst we still fought through the weekdays - that one night a week of guaranteed sleep helped hugely! Now I realise not everybody has this option, but if you do, it might be worth trying?

Oh and the only reason they’re starting to improve is because of an extremely regimented night time routine that we’ve been practising every night since they came home - they often flout it still and it makes us worry that it’s for nothing but it now works more often than not! The point I think I’m trying to make is - it’s horrible and can seem soul destroying but it will improve eventually... if you haven’t yet consulted your GP (sorry if you advised you have, sleep deprived due to pregnancy with 3rd baby and brain not functioning!) that might be worth trying?