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.

There you go, that was your trip to ‘Paris’.

@hotmeatymilk 😂

I haven't slept through the night for 8 years. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but sometimes kids just won't sleep through the night.

My eldest was ok, he started sleeping through when he was 3 but that happened to be when my youngest was born. She slept in 20 minute incriments for the first 2 years of her life and still wakes up every night and she is 5.

DH will get up to deal with her but she doesn't want him so their middle of the night arguments end up waking me anyway. I blame the BF'ing for them only wanting me whenever they wake in the night.

Anyway good luck maybe yours will end up different but you get used to it. No choice otherwise.

I have found my people! DS is 7 months old, and one night when he was 3 months old decided to sleep for 9 glorious, uninterrupted hours just to prove he could do it and is actively choosing not to ever again. The baby yoga mum who announced "I'm worried my baby is sleeping too much" after I'd just tearfully recounted my 43 minutes and 12 seconds of sleep across three sleeps the night before can join your DH in the head-soup. I'd love to have a potato baby, but somehow on this amount of sleep he has enough energy to run a marathon every wake window. Or he would, if he could crawl.

At 4-6 months he woke 12 times a night. One morning DH cheerfully joined us in the nursery after a full 12 hours in the spare room doing things like watching TV, eating snacks, going to the loo when he wanted, and getting a solid 8 hours of sleep, and I just burst into tears at him and babbled some kind of nonsense sentence involving the words sleep and minutes. Since then, DH takes DSatan every morning between 7 and 9:30 before he starts his important staring at a screen and occasionally having a video call, and longer on weekends.

DS only naps for me and on me. And if I dare turn on Netflix then he's awake an extra hour for each 10 minutes I watch. I'd love to just tune out and watch selling sunset but I'd like baby to sleep before they're 3 years old. He had started sleeping longer stretches (4 whole hours! And only 4 wakes a night!) Then he got a sodding cold two weeks ago and was up every 20 minutes last night. I have frantically googled, "can you die from lack of sleep?" Way too many times. Because I'm so sleep deprived I can't remember the answer. (I think it's no, by the way)

I have nothing useful to add but you're an excellent writer OP, I really enjoyed your post (although sympathise with the content, sorry it's tough at the moment)

I’d recommend cranial osteopathy, it didn’t really help DD sleep but it did pick and sort out a twist in her neck which was giving her a bit of a flat head. So I think it’s worth the money to at least try it as it helps for some babies.

I think co sleeping is the best. DD was just like this and it got better when I co slept with her in a double bed. She’d then sleep in 3 hour stretches which was heaven as it had been 1-2 hours before that.

Unfortunately I think there are just bad sleepers which doesn’t really help you but you are not alone.

Oooooh I felt so bitter about the people who's babies were sleeping through with their smug facings smiling like they were doing something right and I obviously wasn't and their weirdly calm babies devoid off personality.... I think it was all in my sleep deprived head (still is!!!) But it felt very real.

There's lots of good advice given, but I just wanted to add that your partner is a dick who needs to realise that you are doing a very important job with tremendous real life consequences if you're too tired to do something right so he can fucking step up and realise that you are currently doing a really important 24/7, and the 15 hours of the day he is not doing computer stuff should be evenly split parenting with you.

After I had a small breakdown my partner switched his work hours to start at 11, which meant he could take the baby from 5 to when he went to work and I could sleep. I breastfed so I was still roused to feed but it was all a more manageable haze. As your formula feeding your partner, at a minimum, could do all parenting from 7 - 12 to give you some sleeping time before he gets his break, and then he can take over from 6 in the morning to give you a short lie in/chance to shower and feel human/whatever you want. Everyone gets just enough sleep and no-one imagines spiders.

Also, I've just searched for cranial osteopathy after reading this thread, and my local clinic next has availability for a 15 minute consultation in March or treatment in June. Excellent. 😩

This thread is so fucking funny I cannot believe it. I'm currently trapped under a sleeping baby staring at an empty cot :)

WHY WONT THEY SLEEP. WHY DO THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO TOUCH YOU WITH THEIR CLAMMY HANDS. WHY. WHY. WHY.

DD is 11 months and is yet to sleep through the night. Is basically attached to my boob all night too, I can literally feel it becoming a deflated airbag with each suck.

When does it get better :(
When do they sleep :(
When can I get up to wee at night without waking the baby :(
When can I enjoy an evening :(

WHEN WHEN WHENNNNNNN.

Friday nights and Saturday nights are for your DH to look after HIS child, leave the house if necessary or go in another room and lock the door at 9pm, put in earplugs and go to sleep.
Threaten anything you can think of if he disturbs you.
DH can catch up on sleep on Sunday before work.

( I found the much maligned Gina Ford books invaluable for getting mine into good routines and was getting 7pm till 5am,sleep with one sleepy feed at 10.30pm by 6 months, with both, but the routines are rigid, suited mine they were happier on them but a commitment on your part. For me sleep was the most important thing so l was willing to stick to routines...and they were never left to cry it out).

Good luck

Your DH being tired and the whining that comes with it is a manipulation tactic to make sure you don’t do that again. Ignore it.

It funny because plenty of us women go back to work and we’re still tired having got up at night. Working is no excuse. I do 12 hour shifts in a hospital after having been up in the night, so does my DH.

Shoving an orange in his mouth before you boil his head is a key part of the recipe I’m sure.

This thread is the perfect antidote to the mum guilt I feel when I see all those happy calm Instagram pictures of mums loving life

My babies were like yours. I fantasised about slicing dh into pieces with a rusty spoon. We have had long discussions and he knows if he doesn’t help over night with dc2 he can fuck off and die in a ditch and I will throw the divorce papers after him. And if he moans about being tired after doing a fraction of the night wakes I really might do him grievous bodily harm. So I suggest you take your dh up on doing a weekend night and tell him you will add a weeknight shift for every moan the next day, he is only allowed to say things like I understand why you’re so tired if you’ve done this every night for months now.

OP you are hilarious.

Love your writing style

nothing helpful to add

3 months? Isn't this normal? If it's any consolation, my DS woke every 2 hours for a feed till he was 4 months, then one night decided he didn't need night feeds anymore and from then on slept 10-11 hours a night! I do remember how hard it was though OP so you do have my sympathy.

Thing is I keep saying it’s probably normal, I said to DH, well babies don’t have much logic to them, they do things or they don’t, and at this point I’m ready to accept that mine doesn’t sleep, because it’s the hope that kills you.

DH nodded sagely and then piped up ‘but Tim at work’s baby slept for six hours a night from two days old so there’s no reason why they CAN’T do it’

I think perhaps it’ll be better if he dies, not me, and I can play a tragic widow at the funeral stoically drinking a brandy and saying I must go on for the sake of DS. Then I will collect the life insurance pay out and hire a nanny to come with us to the Isle of Skye where I will skip about merrily and watch puffins.

I'm 3.5 years into this hell....and it has got better...minimally!

This morning at 4:30 she declared "night night time is finished now"...it's effing not, go back to sleep. She then declared she has a cough and needs cough medicine, in order to placate her and attempt to get any more sleep I complied with the dictators demands only to then spill an entire spoonful over the bedding I only changed yesterday...This is how breakdowns happen!

Oh and I'm single parent so no other half to boil in VAT of acid hand over to but her father did ask me the other day when the last time she slept through was and I could have happily flown to his country and punched him the face!

I am now sat at my vvv important keyboard tapping job, making sure the world doesn't end when people can't watch TV on 3.5 years of broken sleep.

Oh and when they tell you they'll sleep through when they stop napping do not believe their lies....Cherise the naps for as long as humanly possibly, I needed them to top up sleep and I have no idea now how long I'll be able to keep going without killing someone (probably one of the higher up keyboard tapping people that refer to my non-working day as a "day off")

We didn’t have kids (I like sleep and my mothers oft repeated I hope you get one just like you rang in my head loudly) but our ndn had the perfect biddable child and exuded a calm serenity when interacting with him.

Then they had a Velcro baby and life bit them on the bum hard, locked it’s jaws and shook it all out of them. The calm demeanour was replaced with intermediate levels of irritation and stress “WHAT? I’m right here” as the baby kicked off because she couldn’t see them as they walked round the car to get in.

@SnailandtheWail

Thing is I keep saying it’s probably normal, I said to DH, well babies don’t have much logic to them, they do things or they don’t, and at this point I’m ready to accept that mine doesn’t sleep, because it’s the hope that kills you.

DH nodded sagely and then piped up ‘but Tim at work’s baby slept for six hours a night from two days old so there’s no reason why they CAN’T do it’

I think perhaps it’ll be better if he dies, not me, and I can play a tragic widow at the funeral stoically drinking a brandy and saying I must go on for the sake of DS. Then I will collect the life insurance pay out and hire a nanny to come with us to the Isle of Skye where I will skip about merrily and watch puffins.

Only a small fraction of the life insurance payout to me, and I am fully prepared to stand up at the funeral and perform "He Had it Coming" from Chicago.

Love your writing style!

For your NCT lot, just wait and watch what happens with the 4 month sleep regression ... "I got them in a good routine HA!!"

Try giving a dummy to ds, even if only at night?

This is Still us at 20 months - sorry this isn’t what’s want to hear.
Nil advice only desperation and solidarity.
Ditch the NCT group.

No one else understands, it makes me so angry (with jealous rage) to see mums who are wearing make up with a babe napping peacefully in a pram. I want to scream up at the heavens about how unfair it is.

A man in a group I am a member of told me to try sleep training - prick. I did, 5 times! He then tried to tell me that we all have our struggles and that getting his daughter to drink water was incredibly difficult... my god I wanted to rip his smug lips off his face.

Apparently one day even these nightmare babies grow up and sleep... I have heard it but I still don’t believe it to be true.

Hi, my NCT group was like that too. I met a non-sleeping baby friend at a library group and it felt like she saved my life, so I definitely advise ditching your group and trying to find someone with a baby more like yours for a start.

Normally I’d suggest co-sleeping but TBH I think that’s really only a fix for when you’re breastfeeding as then baby can just nibble at you all night when you doze, so I can see that it’s not really helping for you. :(

Don’t see why your husband can’t do at least one night a week for you! And at least take over for the evening while you go and nap.

Have you tried white noise? Not those little toys but REALLY LOUD white noise on a constant loop all night? Have you got a swing? Some babies will at least nap in a constantly moving swing.

I promise it does get better. Both of mine were awful sleepers and did improve.

It’s really not ok for you to be this exhausted and for your DH not to be because he ‘works’.

@SnailandtheWail I was coming on to suggest hiring a night nanny ( or go the whole hog and get a day one too) and writing a column for a national newspaper which will be spotted, you will be asked to write a smash hit book and a subsequent film series will be yours and happy days for you. Maybe your plan is easier. Not sure. It worked for Helen Fielding and her Bridget Jones and you are a better writer. Note it won’t matter if your face hasn’t fully recovered it’s peachiness because a crowd pulling actress will be drafted in. Please confirm your favoured choice?

In the meantime spit in your DH’s dinner, go on a spa day and don’t forget that No is a complete sentence. I guess your DS might be a bit young to question that last bit.