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?

maddiemookins16mum - I know a few like this too but it doesn't appear related to how they behaved with the kids in the early days.

We've co-slept with the kids till aged 2yrs approx each time and we have always stayed with them to help them sleep until they didn't need us to (ard 3yrs old) and I've also breastfed each till about 5yrs old, and 'yet' they are very well behaved at bedtime. My oldest (5.5 and 8.5) just take themselves to bed and have done for a while now. It could be complete luck or it could be linked to the fact that we attended to their needs over the first few years. Who knows. It certainly worked for us and made up for the frequent wakings of the first couple of years.

DC1 gave us 9 years of no sleep, by which I mean waking upto 9 times a night and waking us every single time, screaming, kicking off. We tried everything, ending up with prescribed sedatives that didn't always work but gave some brief respite on occasion. DC2 , luckily, was a reasonable sleeper.

People don't believe me , as they say that there is no way I could have kept on working etc, but I didn't have a choice. I scraped my way through life for many years but here with sleeping children now 😊

4 DC, not one slept through before 1 year.

DC4 still joins us in bed during the night.

Everyone is different. It's not helpful to compare.

Mine doesn't sleep. I've tried sleep training, I've tried drugs, I've tried solid routines. And when I say I've tried them I mean been absolutely bloody consistent for months at a time.

He's 2.5, and I can count how many times he's slept through. He takes a long time to settle, wakes 2-3 times a night, wakes up at 5. I am broken.

That’s common sense. Who wakes a sleeping baby for a feed? That would be bonkers.

^^ the hv suggested this, we smiled and nodded and never did it. No way was I waking her when she was asleep.

I think early wakers are more common than terrible sleepers. So if you don't adjust your bedtime a 5am start will wipe you out

Mine are 5 and 7 and still wake up in the night but the flip side is they will have a lie in. So it could be worse.

I didn't get a full night's sleep for FOUR YEARS!!!!!

as though those of us with bad sleepers are particularly stupid and kept the big light on all night, played them Hey Duggee as a bedtime routine, and never took them to the bloody park.

I used to be alone on freezing beaches in December running DD like a dog, no other parents within 500 metres, every single day. And I'd get "does she get enough exercise?"

I'm glad I had one wonderful friend who used to constantly tell me how great a mother I was compared to her and how much work I put in and how she saw that what she did immediately worked whereas I could do it 100 times and it still wouldn't. Poor woman got her non-sleeping active child for DC3.

And MN early wakers thread. And no, not 6am. That would have been heavenly. 4.13am and up for the day. Were it not for those amazing women, I'm not sure I would have escaped PMT. My score was very close (and I was lying about some of the answers).

It's not no sleep, it's poor sleep. Mine were never that awful but even then, just being woken up once say every other night for months or even years does have a significant cumulative effect. And most parents know that's fairly sleep disruption in the grand scheme of things.

Fairly mild sleep disruption, I should say.

My youngest is almost 13 and yet to sleep a full night

Of the 30 or so mums I know well enough to have discussed it, I would say around

• 4 have kids who were still waking loads at age 3 or 4. 2 of those the children in question are in process of SEN diagnosis and have multiple issues.
• 4 have kids who woke a lot at night until somewhere between 18m and 2. Of those most did some kind of sleep consultant or sleep training.
• 5 had kids who sleep through early on (under 6m) & continued to do so.
• the rest had kids who slept through between 6m & 1.

I think most have the odd phase/regression where sleep goes to pot, but among my social circle, by age 1 most kids were mostly sleeping through, by age 2 not many at all weren't.

Trilbydoll

Agree re early wakers.i know a lot of toddlers and 6am is the norm.

DD1 has always been an amazing sleeper 12hrs per night (6.30-6.30) from six weeks. DD2 is now 8 and still doesn’t sleep - their routines were always the same, tried every trick in the book etc she just doesn’t need sleep. Both were FF (medical reasons on my part) so in that respect I’ve been lucky as me and DH used to take shifts overnight.

Since I’ve had the DD’s I’ve developed chronic health issues of my own which have led to insomnia, I haven’t had a decent nights sleep since I was pregnant with DD1 - she’s now 10.5yo.

I think it’s really difficult to understand just how hard a non sleeping baby/child can be. As PP’s have said lots of people try and give well meaning advice and it can be incredibly frustrating.

Four children, two bottle fed, two breast fed. None of them slept till they were two, so eight+ years of no sleep. Not much between them, so DH and I slept in separate rooms so we could split our sleeping (he'd have one, I'd have the other).

We came through it unscathed.

I think one of the points missing here is that it's not just one child. I can't think of anyone I know who with one child that doesn't wake at least once or twice a week up to the age of two. You then have more than one child, so that's another two years. I would say all of mine (now aged 2,4 and 6) have been relative good sleepers, but I have at least 2-3 nights when I am woken by one or the other - even if it's just one crying out in their sleep. You then add in that many kids of that age will wake well before 7, then I don't know many of kids this age who get enough sleep

My two are both fine sleepers.both exclusively bf. DS slept through (7am to 6am) from around 4 months, DD from around 7m (but she had been 6w prem and very small so needed a feed at night for longer).

This thread highlights how different social circles can have radically different experiences. Among my friends the kids are pretty ok sleepers on the whole.

Lucky you OP. My first had been a problematic sleeper from the outset (now 9).. but possibly SPD, her mind is always on the go. Middle has always been a brilliant sleeper. Youngest has barely slept through ever and is 3.5, no sign of that changing. Good sleepers are born not made, unfortunately we have two rubbish sleepers here!

Both of mine were really good sleepers, both breastfed, totally not down to parenting skills, I had never even held a baby before I had DD, it was very much learn as I went. My friend gave birth a month after I had my first, we used to spend a lot of time together, her DS was a terrible sleeper and I actually found myself lying to her and saying DD didn’t sleep well either, I felt guilty that I wasn’t struggling. I lost more sleep with them during the primary school years with various bugs and illnesses than I did during the baby and toddler stage. Wish somebody had warned me about all the illnesses that kids get!

Low birth weight meaning 1-2 hourly feeding day and night (breast)
Colic, horrific ear splitting screaming painful colic
Born during the hottest summer since the 1920’s or some such, I of course read up on cot death, low birth weight, over heating contributes to cot death risk do I was on my nerves after multiple miscarriages being terrified of anything happening to our baby.
Then of course vaccines always affected sleep, general calmness.
Then teething affected sleep
Then croup..every time a sniffle came along so did the croup, sometimes weekly for months, resulting in me doing all nighters listening to my baby/toddler struggle for breath and wake up every 2 minutes by coughing until they then vomited all over the cot...full cot bedding changes, BUT kid disturbed and yes...up for the day from 2am!
Then the usual childhood illnesses, chicken pox, rashes of unknown origin, blah blah blah.
Even the clocks going back/forward would affect sleep or lack of it.

At 5 years old, the child slept through the night. I ran into the room thinking they were dead, but no, just sleeping.
It got better from then on.

One thing after another.
Health visitor said “keep a sleep diary” I was up to the child 16 times in one night, 16 times.

Beyond horrific.

DD first slept through the night a week before her 4th birthday. She wasn’t consistently sleeping through the night until she was 7. She had silent reflux as a baby and it was utter torture. By contrast, my sister had a sleeper just a few months after me. She was utterly smug about it ‘til her second kid was born — and he didn’t sleep. Then she got it. My DD is an only child for several reasons but one of those reasons is the lack of sleep.

I had 2 persistent poor sleepers and I certainly felt like the only one going through this slow torture.

The only thing worse than the sleep was the insinuation from people with good sleepers that their baby's sleeping was due to some kind of excellent parenting and not completely down to good luck.

It genuinely took years to get over the extreme loss of sleep over those years and even now I feel it has ruined me forever, I cannot ever sleep more than 7 hours now even if the children sleep late, I will still be up. It has changed the entire rhythm of my sleep.

My DD is almost six months and she woke up at 10:30am today 🤣

She woke up at six am and then again at 8:30