Dying of no PISSING SLEEP, will anyone mourn me?

[SnailandtheWail]

DS is three months old. I love him, I do, but I’m about to leave him out for the magpies.

He has NEVER slept for more than three hours straight, it’s usually two, last night it was one hour at a time.

There’s nothing wrong with him that I can tell. He’s fed. He’s changed. He’s safe and warm. He’s winded. He doesn’t have a dummy. He hates swaddling so I bag him. He will happily go to sleep but he can’t stay asleep. He knows what night is, he’s out and about loads in the day, it’s only the odd day I watch back to back episodes of House while he naps on me. I don’t breastfeed, for reasons I don’t care to go into except it was fucking hard and I thought my breasts were going to rot and fall off. I

For various reasons I sleep with him in the spare room. One of those reasons is that DH doesn’t do any night waking, I do it all. He has an incredibly important job that is fiddling with computers 9-6 at a sports company and people might die if he’s too tired to do something with their computers. He has offered to do a night here and there but there’s so much moaning and lamenting about his tiredness the next day it’s not worth it to me because it makes me want to boil his head in salt water, like a big ham.

This morning when I said I hadn’t slept he informed me that it might be time to ‘look up some tips or get a book’ to help DS sleep through. Because by now, apparently, he should be happy to sleep alone in his crib and sleep for 5+.

Well no one has told DS that. In desperation I have been trying co sleeping but he’s still a pain in the arse and I’m still not sleeping. What are these ‘tips’ I'm missing or is DH just being a condescending twat? A woman from my NCT suggested cranial osteopathy but it sounds like hokum. I couldn’t get on with wonder weeks. It annoyed me as HOW can it be one size fits all and it just feels like it ‘works’ through confirmation bias. All the other 7 babies in said NCT are apparently all sleeping like dreams 9pm -7am with max two wake ups. I’m thinking of leaving the group because reading that honestly makes me want to throw my phone in the river.

I don’t think I’m looking for any answers here. It’s a vent and hopefully some solidarity and also please give me sympathy that I am probably not going to see my impending 36th birthday because this will be what kills me.

I was quite pretty so previously would have had an open casket, but I now look like Nosferatu so that will no longer be an option.

Cranial Osteopathy is very good, in my opinion. Neither of my children slept well. They both had underlying fluid issues in the ear, which occasionally led to eardrum perforations. Once I started them on Cranial Osteopathy everything changed. Not overnight, but gradually. Both my children were also bottle fed and I would go to bed at 9pm. My husband would then be the one 'on call' for feeds or just awake babies until midnight. I then was usually up from 3am - but at least I had up to 6 hours continual sleep which made a huge difference.

Applied for my I instead of eye contact!

There's a third thing I forgot. Once fed, changed winded, etc put him back down. Again you'll feel a bit terrible I always did as you're basically meeting his needs through the night and nothing more.

However, it worked for me. Like I said though I doubt it'll work for everyone.

As an experience mother of two, I have the answers! My first was a terrible sleeper and my second an absolute dream. Here's the list of things I did differently second time around to make a better sleeper:

1. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

It's pure dumb luck.

Honestly, your DH should wise up - read a book about it?! A, fucking when?! B, if there was an answer why would any parents have sleepless nights, ever.

Have a serious talk with him, he made this baby and you're not breastfeeding, he should be pulling his weight. It's not fair for one spouse to be on their knees with exhaustion and the other to be getting a full night's sleep.

Oh, and I know others have said about the cuddles helping but just in case it doesn't work for you - DD1 wouldn't sleep lying down (reflux) for months. I cuddled her for every fucking nap. I was soooo over the cuddles. I wanted to lie down, alone, in my bed for, oooh, four hours, with no one touching me.

Lastly, my mum's just given me her big ham pot - I don't need it til Christmas Eve, you're welcome to borrow it if you would like.

Otherwise nap when the baby naps.
Lol, this very much assumes the baby (a) naps and (b) naps somewhere other than on the OP. The correct advice is “inhale a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk, which should be called a mother-of-a-newborn-sized bar, to stay awake while the baby naps on you, and perhaps watch Netflix if you have an ounce of luck and they’re not the kind of baby who wakes at the slightest noise”.

(I will put a curse on anyone who says anything about vacuuming around a napping baby to teach them to nap through noise.)

@hotmeatymilk

Your DH is being a twat. We had LOADS of sleep books and they were best used under the legs of the cot to make the mattress the right height to sidecar it.

I also left my NCT group full of lying witches with their stupid potato babies who did things like “sleep” and “not have colic”.

I did everything right: fresh air, night and day, blah blah blah, and DD woke hourly at a minimum til she was 18 months. Tiny, adorable bellend. (She sleeps through now! My looks recovered briefly but it turns out that work and parenting saps you more than sleepless maternity, sorry about it.)

Give up, stop counting wake-ups (let the night pass in a blur), cosleep and cuddle – the baby will still wake but you’ll be horizontal and expending less energy, and focus on YOUR SURVIVAL:

Hot coffee. Equally hot shower. Bracing walks. Cursing at trees. Scrolling mindlessly on Mumsnet. Mainlining Haribo. Handing the baby to your useless husband each day at dawn/5am in the winter so you can power nap before the day begins. Early nights. Find your people, the ones with equally bastard babies, and rejoice in their company. Delete the NCT fuckers. More Haribo. Read every single terrible MN sleep thread while nodding vigorously in solidarity. Make up many “go the fuck to sleep” lullabies. Get a sling and make DH learn to use it and off he goes each weekend/evening/morning so you can sleep. Bonus points if he WFH and can sling nap the baby during meetings. Live off oven chips.

It will end one glorious day and… you will actually feel worse and gross for a bit because your body is so behind on sleep, one night is merely enough to remind it of what it’s missing and you feel fucking horrendous for a while.

Oh how I wish I found my people when my own Satan-spawn were tiny.

May I second mainlining Haribo, hot coffee, hot showers and handing over the baby at 5am.

Also, boil twat face's head in cola rather than salt water, it'll come out lovely.

None of my friends had non-sleeping, non-colic babies, their houses were pristine and they managed a bath (a BATH!!!!) at least once a week. The lying bitches.

You're not alone op. I promise it does get less fucking soul-destroying.

Tell dp he's in charge on Friday night. See how he likes them apples.

Could your DH not do some weekend waking at all? Unless he works 24/7 then surely he could give you a couple of nights off? Another thing that helped me was going to stay with my friend for a night or two.Babe left at home with Daddy! Is this something you could do? Its unfair that you have this 24/7 .

I can't help you with the sleep except to say hang on in there... it will get better-at some point. But your post was so well written and so funny-so you haven't lost all your faculties yet buddy-it really made me smile.
Keep going kid!

@hotmeatymilk words to live by for the first two and bit years!

Hot coffee. Equally hot shower. Bracing walks. Cursing at trees. Scrolling mindlessly on Mumsnet. Mainlining Haribo. Handing the baby to your useless husband each day at dawn/5am in the winter so you can power nap before the day begins. Early nights. Find your people, the ones with equally bastard babies, and rejoice in their company. Delete the NCT fuckers. More Haribo. Read every single terrible MN sleep thread while nodding vigorously in solidarity. Make up many “go the fuck to sleep” lullabies. Get a sling and make DH learn to use it and off he goes each weekend/evening/morning so you can sleep. Bonus points if he WFH and can sling nap the baby during meetings. Live off oven chips.

I had two babies like that. Very bad sleepers. The eldest didn't sleep through the night alone until she was 3.

You somehow do survive. It will get better, it really will. What I can say is that I wanted to scream when people kept mentioning cranial osteopathy. For one, I couldn't afford it but by 5 months, I couldn't take it any longer so used the cash I got for my birthday.

I felt murderous when the next 2 or 3 nights, it was 10 times worse. And then just like that, by the 4th night, he was sleeping through. Definitely worth trying.

Funnily enough I was looking through my photos this morning and found a screen shot of my Fitbit this time last year - DS was 7 months and sleep was SO BAD. Some night I was getting three hours broken sleep and I felt like I was going insane. Now a year later he sleeps 6.30pm - 7.30am. How did we get here? I think things to look at are:

1. Day sleep - is he overtired? Is he napping regularly during the day? I can’t remember what the ‘wake window’ at 3 months is but prob not more than 90 mins
2. Age - it just does get better as they get older and I think 3 months is still very little abs lots of babies are terrible sleepers at this age.
3. Book - I absolutely loved something by Lucy Woolf called the baby sleep solution or something along those lines. The big takeaway for me was night weaning, but I don’t think you can do that while baby is so little.
4. Day sleep for you - can you nap during the day at all? Sounds like you’re out and about a lot. When I look back on the early months with DS I sometimes wish I just tried to nap while he slept rather than trying to fit so much in. Im crap at napping but even if you manage 30 mins a few times a week it helps.
5. Sleep consultant. Again I think your DS is prob a bit little but if you did want to try one I loved the millpond clinic - v well renowned and used by the NHS. And not more expensive than other consultants who have no actual qualifications or experience!
6. Balance with DH - I did exactly what you’re doing - I was too tired and pissed off to put my foot down and demand what I was owed and I do regret that now. You NEED one full night off a week at the very least. With a formula fed baby there is literally no reason you can’t have this. Let him moan about it the next day. Just leave the room/blank him when he moans! Also can’t he do 7-12 during the week so you can get that chunk of sleep? That gives him PLENTY of unbroken sleep to tap away at his keyboard in tip top condition the next day.

Hope at least some of that helps. IT DOES GET BETTER!!

Ooh thank you for that thread. I’ll read it.

DS naps in his buggy when it’s moving, pings his eyes open like saucers the moment we enter an establishment where there are seats and that sells coffee. Or wine. He just knows.

Alternatively he will nap ON me and that’s what he was doing at 5am this morning with his little spider fingers sporadically grazing my face or just RUBBING the back of his head against my pyjama top. WHY. I’m so touched out I could scream.

So sleep while the baby sleeps can do one, or I’d never do a wee, or eat, or clean my teeth in the ten minutes window I have before he realises he’s not physically ON me.

That’s why I binge a lot of House.

And he knows damn bloody well it’s night, there’s one pissing little night light shaped like a penguin and I don’t speak to him, because I don’t speak to anyone if they wake me up at 4am to gurgle incoherently at me.

I know people Mean well but offering tips on how to get babies to sleep is sort of missing the point of the thread I feel!

First - lots of sympathy. It’s shit.
Second - your DH could have the baby from 5am to 9am. Or 6pm to 10pm.

Who are all these people with tiny sleeping babies? I think they must be lying.
I had 2 terrible sleepers and 1 okay-ish after a bit. DS2 nearly broke me, and he’s still a pain in the arse age16! The good news is is it doesn’t last forever, I’ve just had to drag my PITA 16 year old out of bed for college after 11hrs sleep so he must have started sleeping at some point!
Seriously though, your DH needs to share the pain, not just talk vaguely and annoyingly about ‘finding tips’ 🙄 , he needs to get up and BE USEFUL when it’s all kicking off at 3am. Don’t give him anymore slack.

Sorry just read your further updates - ignore the napping suggestion, but invest in the rockit for your buggy - jiggles the Pram when stationary, so you can walk him to sleep then stick it on when you get home/to coffee shop/🍷 bar and he should stay sleeping

I don’t know because mine still doesn’t sleep either. She’s 9months old tomorrow. I am getting a sleep consultant for Christmas. I spend wakeful nights looking at one bedroom flats on right move to rent to so I can move out on my own. It’s nice to have a plan.

My DD was like that until she was 5, and that is why she’s an only child.

I still want to kill people who say their baby/toddler/child sleeps through the night and she’s nearly 19 now It’s a rage that will never leave you!

I did the same thing as you because my husband too had an important job fiddling with computers. Now in hindsight I should have kicked his arse into next week and made him do ever other night. Don’t get to where I was, where I started hallucinating because I was so sleep deprived. You take care of yourself and get more support from him. Hope your baby sleeps soon!

Oh,OP wish I could give you a hug and take your monster for a few hours.
I remember these days,eyes like saucers and first 3 months driving in the car because the little sod could sleep only when he felt the motion of the buggy/car.
No help from anybody.

Definitely kick in the nuts for DH and hand over DS to him for a few hours. He’s helped to create a new life so can take responsibility for it sometimes,no shirting around it conveniently.
Scream if you need. Sometimes we have to lose our shit to be heard💐

No tips, but I love how you write and sorry, I don't suppose you want to hear that at the moment.
Both my DC's were the same - if we left them to cry, they vomited - so we co-slept - it was the only way any of us could get a good nights sleep. And sorry again, I know you've tried that.

I hope you find a solution because it's relentless.

@SnailandtheWail when she was four months DD once woke up at 3am to practice blowing raspberries for a sodding hour next to my face. I made a note in my phone calendar to wake her at 8am on a Saturday when she’s 14. Revenge is a dish best served cold – a nice side dish to your husband’s head.

I think it must be part of the NCT registration rules that all babies will sleep extremely well except 1 and that 1 exception will always be you.

Mine is 14 months and still wakes all bloody night. We co-sleep and now I can just about ignore her when she's sleeping on my head for the most part.

You're still in the thick of it and I remember how much I thought I was going to die at that age. You're not alone. Netflix, coffee, long walks outside (although mine wouldn't sleep in the buggy so that usually ended with me holding her in one arm and pushing an empty buggy with the other) and yeet that baby to dad as soon as he's home from work.

Facebook and baby classes will convince you that there is something wrong with your baby because everyone else is sleeping 14 hours a night straight but this is very very normal, I promise.

❤️

Oh also, I agreed to do all night wakings and in exchange, my husband got up with her on the weekends and I had an uninterrupted extra 2-3 hours of sleep both Saturday and Sunday mornings. That was a huge help.

Been there, it was hell. But remember it won't last long. One day, you'll sleep through, get up, frantically race to baby's cot to check. Baby will be fine, just slept through the night!

FYI I always also got the rage at all the NCT mothers going out for dinners etc with their little darling sleeping soundly in the pram. I attempted it once despite knowing it would fail and ended up with DS1 sleeping on me, latched on to my breast, muslin slung over whilst trying to eat my meal. Never again.

Agreed!! Mine is 6.5 months. He slept with only 2 wake ups from 6w-3m
.. then the shit hit the fan and it never stopped... we justified it, jetlag, teething, being in a new place. but now we're back home and everyone has sleep trainined their babies to sleep through the night and here I am waking about 10 times... I kid you not... although I agree with Pp. Don't count the wake ups. No good can come of it! Do you EBF? I feed mine to sleep... perhaps too much. but everyone has a different opinion / technique that worked for them! Perhaps I should actually fully commit to one of them ...