It's not the case that most parents of babies/toddlers 'get no sleep for years'

[Echobelly]

I'm aware I was pretty fortunate in getting two kids who were both pretty good sleepers relatively early on - I was preparing for the worst because all the folklore about having a baby is 'Hahaha, you'll never sleep again' but TBH, I think only about 10% of parents I'm friends with seem to have had really persistent non-sleepers (as in still multiple waking often age 3-4+).

Seems to me that most babies actually sleep with no more than one wake by about six months (and one wake's generally pretty copable) and while it may be true you don't get a lie-in at weekend for years, and may get worken early, it's not years of broken sleep as some people seem to give the impression.

Disclaimer: not implying terrible sleepers don't exist, that that's not awful to live with or that it's anyone's fault if babies/toddlers do or don't sleep

But basically AIBU to suggest that the majority of babies and toddlers don't actually deny their parents restful sleep for years on end?

Our DD has always been a sleeper. She sleeps through and has done from a young age. I do agree with pp's about your perspective too though, it wasn't uncommon for me to get up 5.30/6am for work before I had her so if she's up around 6 I don't class that as particularly early.

I have found myself getting a bit embarrassed and trying to play it down, especially now with teething and still no night waking - I can honestly say we've never felt sleep deprived and it's just been luck. If we had another baby we know there's no guarantee it will be the same!

Mine didn't sleep through till 2. He was resistant to going to bed, would wake up anything from every 20 minutes to two hours. Then wake at 11pm and be up till 3/4am. Regularly. Till after he was 2.

There was an awful six months period from about 18 months till he turned 2 when he dropped all naps, but still didn't sleep at night. I was a shell of a person. He is a child who once stayed awake out of sheer FOMO till 1am.

I went to a baby group once where there was a very vocal smug mum of a good sleeper. Told me it was probably my fault DS didn't sleep, and then a list of things I should have done/be doing. She was pregnant with her second and I wished heartily for her to get a non sleeper second time round

YANBU OP, i think some people deep down regret having children (sooooo many people i know either weren't very good at contraception or viewed it as the "next step" and just had a kid without actually thinking it through) and just want to spread the unhappy around with a big stick.

You also get the martyrs who've decided that sleep training is cruel and so never helped their kids to sleep properly, and they too make themselves feel better by spreading the unhappy about!

I was utterly terrified of sleep dep when i was pregnant, everyone online rammed it down my throat. DD was a typical newborn but then slept pretty well, 4m regression was a few weeks of waking lots, and then at 6m we broke the habit of feeding to sleep and she gradually worked her way up to 1 night wake at 8m. Its been fine!

@JaniceWebster I don’t understand the OP didn’t mention anything about that, I’ve never had anyone take ours overnight as we have no family nearby (that would be willing!)

I've never regaled how shit my first was at sleeping because I'm not unkind. My second slept through from 3 weeks and was a dream even from a newborn. He would wake for a feed then go straight back off. I've never told any expectant mum that either because that would be as equally as unkind.

theproblemwitheyes

So YOUR baby was fine, meaning everybody else's baby must be fine too? What a ridiculous post.

The smug attitude of the "perfect parent" is so unattractive.

I had 2 very good sleepers, 1 less good, 1 awful... but it must be my own fault, obviously

Definitely not sleeping with only one wake up by 6 months. I don't know anyone who had a baby like that....except for the one smug NCT friend who thought she had it all figured out while the rest of us were doing it all wrong...and then she had baby #2 who was not at all like baby #1.

But both of mine, who were definitely up a few times a night between 6-12 months, were sleeping mostly okay with only 1, sometimes 2 wake ups at 2. My now 2.5 year old sleeps through about half the time.

But I would say I generally wasn't completely exhausted after about a year. Mostly because you adjust, but also because dh shares the load with nights. That's not to say that kids don't still go through rough spells with sleeping up until about 4-5. I think that's pretty normal, but it's usually short lived.

I agree. My kids were "multiple wakeners" so I was disturbed frequently during the night for years- breastfeeding, bed hopping, very early wakening.

But I was never short of sleep. It just takes early nights- I would go to sleep at 8.30pm, so even with several awake episodes and an early start I was never sleep deprived.

My son had reflux and was a terrible sleeper due to discomfort. I felt so tired and alone, I wanted to ease his pain and I wanted us both to get some decent sleep. Hearing tales of great sleepers made me feel worse tbh.

I have a 6 year gap between my 2 dcs. Neither slept through the night until they were 4. I was exhausted for 8 years.

Sleep deprivation had a huge impact on my mood and I felt broken by 7 months in with baby no 1. We had tried sleep training unsuccessfully but ended up co sleeping which was the only way I survived those years. Add in lack of family support and partner working long hours. We don't support new mums well.

I think it's hard for those who haven't experienced it to imagine it. My friend who baby's were good/ average sleepers struggled to understand. Then when her kids were very fussy/ restricted eaters I was shocked by this as my kuds hoovered up anything and everything I put in front of them.

YABU and goady really. You have no idea what it's like to barely be able to function because your child will not sleep to save himself. I barely started getting about 5hrs a night when he was neatly 4yo. He had severe acid reflux and vivid nightmares (night terrors)to the point he wouldnt even recognise you when you were trying to soothe him. To this day, 7yo, he sleeps with one of us, because both me and my husband just could not cope anymore. Grrr I rarely get this argumentative online, but this is very touchy for me.

Seems to me that most babies actually sleep with no more than one wake by about six months (and one wake's generally pretty copable) and while it may be true you don't get a lie-in at weekend for years, and may get woken early, it's not years of broken sleep as some people seem to give the impression.

The point is, parents aren't using a scientific measure, they are responding to what it feels like. So all of this ^ might well be "pretty copable" to one person, but completely beats another person.

I'm a pretty resiliant person. I'm very organised, I'm pretty stoic. I'm very much an optimist and a person who always looks on the bright side. I can find positives in most things BUT I need my sleep. When I am sleep deprived I do not function at all well.
So Person A getting 3 hours sleep, then an hour or two of being awake then then another 3 hours sleep might be fine, but doing that every other day for a year could break another person.

YABU

I had a good sleeper too, thank goodness. Decided not to risk getting a non-sleeper second time round and there was no second time!

Mind you, I have a healthy dose of selfishness and was more than happy to leave him to grizzle the odd time. I always managed to go to the loo, as well. I can never understand these mothers who said they didn't get to go to the loo alone until their (neuro-typical) children were 8. How?

Some do, some don't. I never had enough sleep but would have said that at all times of my life :-).

I haven't a clue, to be honest. All I know is my own experience. And based on the conversations I had with other mums when mine were babies, I certainly felt like the only one who bred non-sleepers. Reading your post reinforces how alone mums of non-sleepers feel and you also remind me of how isolated I felt. I met lots of mums like you.
When you're going through life with a non-sleeper, it's soul destroying. But the minute they sleep through, you almost forget the hardship behind you. Still, non-sleepers exist and destroy parents' health. It does actually happen. How often? Who knows! Who gives a shit, really? As long as everyone gets through it.

I think claiming that many babies sleep ‘well’ by 6 months is a bit optimistic - I only know of one (it was my nephew, so for a while I lived in hope my DS would be the same. But having met other parents through baby groups I quickly realised this was a bit of a pipe dream!) Mine was about a year when he regularly slept without waking or waking just once usually because he’d lost his dummy - although he’s always been easy to put to bed. But I would definitely agree that it’s not a case of no sleep for years on end in most cases. Just like I know of only one baby that slept through at 6 months I only know of one two year old that wakes regularly and won’t sleep anywhere except with mum.

Mine were good sleepers but I stopped bf at three months, was happy to let them whinge and they never ever ever came into our bed. From about four months they both slept well barring illness. No sleep 'regressions', although DS1 liked to wake around six for several months.
I went back to work at four months and would have struggled massively on regular broken sleep.

My kid slept great but he needed to be given medical treatments and had numerous hospitalizations so whenever we would get to sleeping all night long that would be disrupted. I'd have been ok with broken sleep vs him screaming 99.5% of his every waking moment while awake but hey ho at least that stopped and he was happy as a clam through nothing I did

As a parent if twins the sleep deprivation was harsh.

@BackforGood - fair point, copability can be very different. I was surprised how well I coped with one wake up, given I'm someone who takes their time to settle with sleep, but yeah, could be harder.

TBH, it was only people without kids who ever told me I'd never sleep again - what I"m saying is I disagree with the general popular idea that this is the default case.

I guess it's just human nature that some people seem to have read my question as 'sleep deprivation isn't a problem, LOL!' or 'it's a total myth that any baby deprives their parents of sleep'. I was actually trying to say something I think that's not talked about enough which is that while there is this popular image of 'you will never get any sleep when you have kids', that's not the case for the majority, wasn't at all intending to be goady to anyone who has been unlucky. But I can get it might seem galling, so I apologise to anyone upset, not my intent at all.

Interesting point also that maybe some parents aren't admitting to poor sleep, but I don't think it's that taboo (maybe it is IRL?) and I'd imagine it would be pretty hard to hide if you were barely able to keep your eyes open - OTOH I am sure people can give experiences of being very good at hiding it from their friends.

I'm

I consider myself lucky, my daughter went through the night at eleven weeks and continued to do so. She’s twenty three now and still at it,,🤣

She was a night mare to get to bed at about four on, it would take us at least an hour. In hindsight she was scared to be upstairs alone. We didn’t quite get that at the time.

I did loose my ability to have a lie in. Before we had her we would lay in bed unbelievably till at least noon at the weekend.

Now it’s rare I make it much past six or seven am and it’s been the same since I had her. And she’s still a relatively early riser. 🤷‍♀️

When you have multiple children, it turns into years! Two DC here, 4 and 2, and I'd say it's only really been the past few months we've had pretty consistent sleeping through from both of them. (Though eldest still has the odd wake up).

Eldest I would say slightly worse than average in that she had silent reflux as a baby, suffered hugely from the 4-month sleep regression so was waking hourly for a couple of months.. Did then go through night with only 1-2 wake-ups and had long stretches of sleeping through from about 14 months but which would then alternate with months of disrupted sleep.

Youngest probably slightly better than average - no reflux issues, wasn't affected by four-month sleep regression and was a much more reliable sleeper through the night from earlier on.

However, both were at nursery and prone to catching all the bugs which had a huge effect on their sleep. And obviously not just at the same time - could have a week of one being ill and waking up and then the other!

So I do think I have suffered with sleep deprivation for at least 3.5 years!

And that's just with two, on average, average sleepers.. No idea how people with big families cope tbh!

No coincidence that their sleep has been much better since lockdown as they haven't been ill!

I had 2 really awful sleepers with quite an age gap. I've had 10 years of inadequate, broken sleep and have never recovered. Yabvu!

YABU. My first child was one of the babies who never slept a. He 1) napped for no longer than 15 mins at a time, until he was well over 12 months 2) woke at 5am at the latest every morning and 3) woke frequently in the night, at its worst it was hourly. He was a happy healthy baby but just didn’t sleep. I was frantic.

The first year of his life is a blur. I didn’t want to go to parenting groups or activities because I was so tired I didn’t want to drive - or he’d sleep in the car, wake up as soon as we arrived then want to be fed as soon as we got there. This impacted on my/our social life as a mum and baby, and I didn’t make any friends so I was quite lonely. I remember once when he was about 5 months old arranging to meet some uni friends - he was awake that day solidly from 5am until midday, when he fell asleep for....ten minutes. I cried because I was too tired to go. He’s now a wonderful, happy, intelligent 5yo who sleeps wonderfully but my goodness he was a terrible sleeper.

DD, who came along 2.9 months later, was a totally different experience. I’d say she was more in line with an ‘average’ sleeper - longer naps, fewer night wakings.