...to not understand why so many parents post constantly wondering why their child wakes through the night?

[sleepingtroub]

Post after post.
"My child is 5mo and wakes during the night to feed"
"How can I implement a routine on my 5week old?"
"How can I get my 6mo to sleep in their own room without waking up"

When did it get to this?

These are all normal things.

Before I was even old enough to have a child I was fully aware of the concept: baby = no sleep
Obviously it's not as bad as that 24/7 but why are so many parents expecting their old sleep routines to continue when they have a baby?

It's because some babies sleep a lot (lot LOT) better than others. We had a spectrum even just in my NCT group from one who went to bed as a newborn at 6.30 and woke once (was given dreamfeeds) to one who was so bad the mum was hospitalised. Mine has finally started sleeping through, sometimes, at 15 months. Not now, obviously, given the time.

You do start to feel that if only you filled them up more before bed/bathed with lavender/changed the temperature etc etc they would sleep better. People offer suggestions like this which seemed to work but are often just coincidence.

I was given this sort of information in antenatal classes and in a leaflet that came home with my notes. I’m not sure that it made much difference overall though given the topics of discussion amongst parents of babies in my area who presumably got the same information. I had very realistic expectations of my son’s sleep and that didn’t stop the lived experience of it being incredibly hard (he woke every 45 minutes until 15mo).

I think that posting something that makes sleep-deprived parents feel that they are thick for not appreciating how this might be in advance is not a very kind thing to do.

See my earlier post at 05.13
Always put a happy child to bed and not before 😊

What’s that in response to, Monty?

Night waking issue.why?

If I wasn't confident in my own parenting, many things/people would have me believe that I'm doing something wrong. Some people just need reassurance. Some people are not willing to listen to their baby cry it out to install some order. Some babies are born to professionally avoid sleep.

My mum has form for making me feel like shit because my sons aren't easy at bedtime. The other day she said 'just make them know it's bed time and calm everything down, then they will sleep. That's what I did with you and you now love your sleep'... Oi mum, I'm actually a crap sleeper. The reason you think I love my sleep is because I spent a lot of time in bed trying to nod off. So well done to you, happy I made her life so easy, apparently. So, once they don't sleep (sometimes for hours) what am I supposed to do then mum, especially when they will still wake up at the crack of dawn, refreshed, while I am wrecked.

It was just a bit confusing and out of context as though you were directing a particular poster to your earlier post. No one here is asking for advice, just commenting on the OP’s POV.

@sleepingtroub I kind of get what you mean. I’m not a parent but I remember in popular culture (movies, tv, cartoons, books, etc) the sleepless parents were always depicted. I’m late thirties and watched stuff made in the 80s but even media from the 1940s and up distinctly portrayed the sleepless nights for parents of a newborn.

I wonder if it’s not being permeated through popular culture and general home cultures anymore and so people have become disassociated with it? General / common knowledge being lost if you see what I mean. Kind of like how there are lots of 25 to 45 year olds who can’t cook proper meals because they grew up going to restaurants, eating fast food or ready meals? You see people on here ask all the time if it’s safe to eat something one day past its expiration date.

I mean, for me, one of the main reasons I opted out of being a parent because I couldn’t stand the thought of not sleeping especially combined with the amount of noise children make. So as an outsider to parenting, I always thought the first year of a child’s life was plagued with horrible sleep patterns as a given. I wonder if and why parents aren’t being prepped with that info anymore.

I have twins so both exposed to the same routines, one slept through the night and did not need night feeding from 2 months old. The other did not need night feeding from 3 years old and only slept through the night at 4.5 years old. YABU for thinking all babies are the same.

People worry, it's natural.
I co-slept and it worked for us; my one and only was born just over forty years ago and co-sleeping was a tabu subject. We didn't tell anyone :-)! My worry was 'What would people think?', and 'We're told not to do that!'.

Later we came across loads of parents and children who did the same which was gratifying.

Things go in and out of fashion. Every parent has to make their own mind up.

You'll do what is right.

Because sleep deprivation is awful and feels like it will never end! Your post can be applied to all threads on here. People just wanting help.

I’m late thirties and watched stuff made in the 80s but even media from the 1940s and up distinctly portrayed the sleepless nights for parents of a newborn.

They depict it as one comedically bad night with a brand new baby. I've never seen it depicted not as a joke.

I thought I'd be fine with the sleep deprivation because I knew what it was like to be very tired and go to work etc. I had no idea what it would be like to see all the seasons change without a single night of unbroken sleep, and how it would make me feel.

And then we did some gentle sleep training and DS slept through the night, more or less every night, and it felt like my whole world changed and got brighter and also like I might actually get through this without getting sacked or killing us all in the car. I also became a much, much more patient, fun and interactive mum once I wasn't so sleep deprived I hallucinated. So that's why people want sleep - is it that surprising?

And there's a difference between a baby who wakes and a dreadful sleeper. For a blissful couple of weeks at 3 months DS woke once in the night for a feed and then went back to sleep. Then he hit 4 months and was up every 45 mins/hour until we sleep trained, months later. I knew he would wake in the night as a baby, I didn't know that I would sleep in 20 minute blocks for months, long after he was a newborn, which felt more or less like not sleeping at all.

Yes, with above, no one realises what sleep deprivation is when it lasts for months. I expected to be ok as had worked night shift, no it's very different as you also can't put your feet up when you get home from work!!

Agreeing with the above. No one knows what sleep deprivation is like until it happens to them. Everyone questions whether they are doing things right after having their first baby, or subsequent babies if they were lucky enough to have a good sleeper first time round. Other people lie about their own babies sleeping which makes people question themselves. People with good sleepers tell others it is all down to having a good routine (which it isn't IMO, it's just luck) so that's why people ask about routine. Surely the whole point of MN is to share knowledge and support others with what we already know 😊

Because a lot of babies actually do sleep through from early on so I guess you would be wondering if there was something you could do differently to get more sleep. My eldest slept through pretty consistently from 2 months - no feeds between 10pm and 5am. My second didn't sleep through the night for six years though!
I think it was mainly just down to different natures, although DC1 was combination-fed and always slept in a cot/basket whereas DC2 was BF and co-slept because she wouldn't settle anywhere else.

I’m not sure where the expectation came from but I genuinely thought that when you had a baby they started off not sleeping then over the first year slowly got better and by the time they were a year they’d sleep all night. I didn’t realise they could go back and forth with it and still be waking for years. I’m not actually stupid or normally that naive but me and my friends all started having babies around the same time with me being one of the first so I didn’t know anyone with toddlers or read much about sleep beyond a year however I had read enough before my DD arrived to not be worried about a routine until she was nearly 6 months

I’ve found the opposite to be true, actually. If someone tentatively posts that they are struggling with sleep deprivstjon, 500 people will immediately descend to tell them ‘but it’s biologically normal! In non-western countries they all sleep in the same bed!! Have you tried co sleeping? Don’t leave your baby to cry or they will grow up damaged!!’

People cope differently with sleep deprivation. If you can manage on a couple of hours’ broken sleep a night, great - carry on. Not all of us can, and when you are in the middle of it it’s very hard to care whether it’s ‘normal’ or not.

For me, I posted because I was repeatedly told it wasn't normal and babies do and should sleep.

I did not go to antenatal as baby was born after fifteen years of infertility and I never expected baby to arrive.

I was surrounded by friends, family and indeed health visitors who said it was normal for babies to sleep.

It wasn't till a friend of a friend who happens to be a baby massage teacher popped in I realised that actually, some do not sleep.

Baby is now fifteen months and is sleeping, I now sleep with one eye open in disbelief.

Sleep deprivation is beyond words in terms of what it did to me. I had the extreme end where for first three months you would be lucky if I got two hours a day, total and broken at that.

So I posted for help, because I was constantly being told I was doing it wrong and it was normal to sleep.

Op I don't think people do post exactly as you're saying or expect young babies to sleep the whole night through. I think people post when their babies are barely sleeping.

For example, my first baby obviously woke up a couple of times to feed at night, but he'd usually go back to sleep after feeding. He'd take a nap in the day.

My second baby barely slept day or night.

YANBU.

A lot of parents don't seem to bother to read anything about baby and child development, they rely on information being spoon fed to them by midwives and health visitors.

Parents aren’t posting in here because they feel a waking baby is abnormal. We all realise that a baby or toddler, in some instances, children too can wake at night

There have be plenty of threads where some idiot asks "why isn't my 2 week old sleeping through the night yet?".

Oh god the 'just cosleep' crowd. If it works for them then wonderful but they are so insistent that it is the solution. Neither DS or I sleep if we're in the same bed.

Yes, Lisasimpsonsbff. Often coupled with the (slightly racist/othering) suggestion that all non-western parents co sleep with their kids because it’s so much more natural.

Western culture places a lot of emphasis on babies "sleeping through", being in routines, self-settling etc so I think it sometimes comes as a shock to people when babies don't do these things as and when the books suggest.

I include myself in this! Before I had ds I thought it would be breastfeeding then placing in cot and having 3 hours to myself before needing to do anything again... how wrong I was! I had health visitors telling me off for wanting to cuddle and comfort and not "teach self settling" - he wasn't even 6 months old. Hearing stuff like this certainly didn't help matters.

I'm no expert now (let's face it who is!) but I
do accept that regular waking through the night is a perfectly normal part of development and that they all learn to sleep through at completely different ages. My ds started sleeping through regularly at 1 and my niece at 6 months - neither mum did anything "wrong" and neither baby was a "difficult baby" or "poor sleeper". Don't get me wrong I know some babies are poor sleepers but I don't think it's realistic to stick this label on a very young baby who is just doing what comes naturally.

They all get there in the end, let's be kind to ourselves and each other as well as accept that waking at night is natural and normal for a lot of babies

I think that was expecting babies not to sleep. Dd1 was quite a good sleeper. Nothing prepared me for dd2 who is almost 3 and still doesn't sleep all night. Nobody tells you about that!