To have a late night / early morning rant about how no sleep is ruining my entire life?

[Notsleepingandnotcoping]

Lying here unable to sleep as have toddler with me. He refuses to go in his cot.

I have a three hour window (you can almost time it to the minute) when he goes to bed where he will sleep. Usually 730-1030. Then he wakes and that’s it.

I can either try to sleep myself then, or get all the other shit done. Either way I’m exhausted but if I sleep I am in chaos. If I don’t I have literally no sleep.

I can’t see friends, have a glass of wine, there is no enjoyment or pleasure in anything at all.

rant and moan and misery, pure misery.

i wish I had never done this.

Yep its fucking hard, thankfully I've blanked out most of the memories of DTs shit forever sleep, and now at 12 they still wont sleep past 0530.

Will he sleep in bed with you? I could never do it with mine because they were bloody starfished across the bed. Can you look at a toddler bed, a toddler doesnt need to be in a cot?

I had a horrendous sleeper where none of the sleep training tips worked. So I will not say that there is a way to fix the toddler’s sleep if you just tried/read the right book/paid the right person, because I don’t know if there is.

The only thing that worked for me was to move the question on from “how can I get the baby to sleep, argh argh fucking ARGH why does NOTHING WORK, shut up smug bastards with your shush-pat fuckery” - where I was for a long time - to “given that the baby isn’t sleeping, how can we get enough rest to cope?”

So we did a lot of taking turns. Sometimes I would come from work and go to bed and DH would do the dinner/bedtime stuff himself, and then we’d swap another day. Sometimes one of us would go and sleep in a cheap hotel for a night.

When it was really hard we did shifts where one parent was on duty and the other one was at the other end of the house with earplugs in. It isn’t like you get loads of sleep that way when there’s yelling, but you get some. Sometimes DH would stick the baby/toddler in a carrier (we had a toddler carrier) and the on-duty parent would go out and walk around the streets for an hour or so, which didn’t always create sleep but at least usually stopped the yelling for Mummy Mummy Mummy.

If you can’t get the baby to sleep, you need to use all the resources you’ve got and one of those is the other parent. Even if he’s hopeless or if you can’t sleep through yelling or if it just feels easier to do it yourself again. Lack of sleep is harming you.

Hi OP

i am sorry that you are going through this and I do hope that you can arrange an appointment with your GP, or speak to your HV for some real life support. Please consider what people have suggested in taking some sick time off work to get some rest/ self care time during the day while your little one attends nursery.

What are your husbands thoughts on the situation? Sorry if this is something that you have already discussed.

If you've got room could you put two single mattresses together on the floor, two mattresses side by side.

i used to find if my DD could feel my hand next to hers, just the presence of us together was enough. I put it on the floor so she wouldn't fall and hurt herself from a normal bed.

Then when she cried at 10pm, I'd go up and go to bed then. She didn't sleep on me, she'd sleep next me, curled up. I'd talk to her and say I'm here, right next to you, now try to sleep, I'd do it over and over, and she'd feel my hand next to hers so we were touching - but enough space both of us. Roll a duvet up and put it between the two single mattresses on the floor and that will stop his feet and legs kicking you. Two separate duvets as well. You only need a kiddie duvet for him he's so small. Or a sleep sack maybe.

Once he knows you're there and there for the night, he'll calm down.

it's the fact you want to get away from him and put him somewhere alone that he's stressing out. many kids out at nursery all day long look at nighttime as a chance to reconnect/bond with their Mums. They do need lots of snuggle time. He can feel your need to get away, his senses your stress - but 10pm is OK for a bed-time isn't it? For a while until he grows out of this phase.

The other thing is the sleep association of the first sleep before your DS sleeps.

You must make sure that first sleep is how he will find sleep again, through the night.

So you need to make sure you're lying with him at 7pm in the same position with hands just touching as he goes off to sleep. That will help bed in the idea that Mum is with him when he first sleeps and in that same way.

As far he's concerned 7pm, 10pm, 2am, 5am they're all the same to him and every single sleep must be entered via the same pattern, just touching hands. at 10pm you're not there so he goes crazy.

I'd suggest being in bed a little earlier than 10pm, say 9:50pm so you can be there to touch hands just as he wakes. He'll think you've always been there.

No this isn't a great way to live - but in time, in a year, he'll be bigger and you can definitely move him to his own room by then. By then, you could put the mattress further away and just the sound of your voice will be soothing.

You have to keep lying him back down and putting him in the same position to sleep, on his mattress, with your hands touching, you lying down too. You do this over and over again for the first night, all night if you have to, through the tears, through the protests, through everything. Then the second night. By the third it will embedded, maybe earlier. I did this with my DD.

I'd take 3 days off work to do this. And then it will be sorted, finished and you'll be sleeping again normally and life can restart.

You've got this. Motherhood is so tough, but you CAN do it. Just keep shhing him. Don't get angry, know that the other side of normal sleep is possible. It is. It will come, I'm sure.

Hey OP, I feel you. I don't think everyone on this thread knows what true chornic sleep deprivation feels like.

You really don't have anything to lose by calling your health visitor. They might surprise you by coming up with something useful. And if they don't, never mind. You tried.

Other than that, when he is around, your DH's useful role should be keeping screaming DC out of your earshot so you can sleep. Most people don't have big enough houses to do that without somebody having to go out.

If you can't go to a friend/relative/Travelodge, can DH put DC in the car and go for a drive?? Plenty of people end up doing that at night

Hi OP. A lot of what you've said resonated with me. My DD had the sort of temperament where any sort of sleep training would result in her getting so hysterical that she would make herself sick! Sleep training just wasn't an option for us so I get your frustration at people who keep insisting that ST is the one solution to your problem.

What did help me though was getting my DH involved. I appreciate this is not possible for you for whatever reason. Is there anyone else you could ask to step in? A family member or friend? I think you might be surprised at how differently toddlers behave when us mums are not around. Once DH started dealing with all the night wakings, DD started sleeping much longer stretches in her room and sometimes even sleeps through. She's 19 months so not far from your DS in age. The first night was bad but not as bad as I anticipated.

Secondly you sound depressed but more than that, so angry that you want to push away any help because so many things so far have not worked out. If you could maybe speak to the GP, they could prescribe something to help you feel a little less down (although ultimately a good night's sleep would do the same!).

All the best OP. I hope it gets better for you.

Can you take your bed apart. Take the frame out of the room. Put the double mattress on the floor beside the wall. Put another single mattress beside that. When he wakes up he will be near you but eventually when he goes back to sleep you will able to shuffle over a wee bit. The main reason you can't go back to sleep is because you are fucking furious.
I suspect it's not your toddler you are furious with, maybe it's your DH. For being too 'busy' and showing no interest in your struggles.
But it's easier to project it onto the child because you don't want your relationship with DH impacted.
All that beating yourself up won't help. Negative self talk and self abasement and chastisement are not good motivators. It hasn't worked to motivate you so far in your life, has it? Other wise it would have worked by now. But for some reason it seems comforting to buy into thoughts of being a failure. I guess there's a certainty there for you about that. Rather than wondering if maybe you aren't quite the failure your mind would like to tell you you are.
So may as well give that up 'technique' and try being nicer to yourself.
That might have a knock on effect on your mood when you are woken in the night.

I just screamed at him which is absolutely awful and really who does that?

Everybody. Everyone who has been in your situation does that. The only mums who never ever scream at their children are either lying to themselves or have loads of support or placid children who sleep solidly. But every one who has been through what you are going through understands. Been there. All survived in the end.

You’ll probably never believe me in a million years but I’m in genuinely quite astounded by you - in a good way. Useless and roadkill and disgusting isn’t even remotely near to how you come across to me. How the hell you’ve lasted this long on so little sleep and managed to work (I don’t even care how badly you’re doing your job due to sleep deprivation - you are still somehow turning up for work)… I would be absolutely out of my mind and it would have happened after about a month. You’re made of tougher stuff than me, OP.

I have no advice on dealing with the sleep as I think you’d be best seeing a GP or someone else who knows more of the details, given how chronic it all is. But there’s no way you should view yourself as anything other than someone enduring the absolute limits of sleep deprivation and still somehow functioning. ‘Failure’ doesn’t come into it.

Will he only sleep ON you? Would he sleep next to you?

When my DS was 18 months old, he slept in a cot with a drop side next to our bed so that I could reach out and comfort him in the night if he needed it. Occasionally I'd wake up with him lying on my head, but I managed to get 4 to 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.

@Notsleepingandnotcoping

I get it. I had two very similar to this and a lot of the comments here are extremely unhelpful.

I DID NOT let them "cry it out"

You mention in one of your posts that you feel he needs to reconnect. This is entirely possible. Is there any history of PND (please, please understand that I am NOT saying this is your fault!) Sometimes when there is children can become very clingy.

The suggestion of he the two mattresses, or even two single beds might work. I found, in the end, I gave up on the cot, got a safety side for my own bed and just let them sleep with me. Some nights they did still climb on me but I think knowing that they were sleeping with me all night made them more secure and (after not very long) they started to sleep better, albeit besideme, but at least it was BESIDE me, not on top of me.

There is a reason that sleep deprivation is used as form of torture. Yes, oviously it does get easier, my 15 and 13 year olds don't sleep with me 😳but that comment isn't helpful to you right now.

I genuinely don't know what to say to you, I wish there was a magic solution.

Just to check (and I'm sorry if I missed this above) Is DH involved much in toddlers life? Children can get extremely clingy to one parent when other parent is absent, either physically absent or emotionally absent.

The "if you died" comment is especially unhelpful imo. If we died of course our children would have to do things without us.

@Notsleepingandnotcoping there's a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. I don't have any practical advise to offer. 30 years ago my two DCs were rubbish sleepers and I never found a solution. I'm sorry you're having to cope with such a rubbish situation.

Your first paragraph is heart breaking.

@TerriblyNaice

It's taken me 5 weeks of meticulous consistency to cot train my baby. We're just about getting there. He's only 10 weeks old.

give over is it heartbreaking! Baby will be clean, fed, will have no doubt have had loads of cuddles in the day. They are in a warm, clean, safe cot. Cherry I’m sure he/she will be just fine.

I’d just book myself in a hotel for a couple of days. Toddler will soon settle themselves to sleep when they’re realise you’re not there and will be fine. Break the cycle.

For gods sake, it's like 3 hours crying over a week and then everyone gets proper sleep.

@roadsweep

exactly! It is not going to leave a child traumatised. OP evidently cannot go on as she is so sleep training is a good solution, it’s not horrible at all.

@TerriblyNaice - That’s a ridiculous thing to say.

Parents who never put their babies down to sleep, do neither themselves nor their babies any favours. Children who get no sleep have behavioural problems, and I’m not surprised - they must feel as awful as their sleep-deprived parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a correlation between the rise in cases of autism (one in two on Mumsnet) and the crazy thinking among modern parents that it’s normal for babies not to sleep. I read this all the time on here and it’s rubbish.

People - including babies - need their own space and to be left in peace some of the time. A baby who sleeps in its own cot is much happier for it. The problem with most babies is that they are so used to being over handled, they don’t know what to do with themselves when they are finally put down.

Anyway, I can’t imagine months of no sleep. It’s no way for anyone to live. OP, let your son scream. He will get over it sooner than you think and you will wonder what the drama was all about.

I am very grateful for the kind and supportive tone to many later posts. I realise it can be very frustrating when there is what may seem an obvious solution but I do feel I know my baby/toddler well by now and the traditional methods of sleep training which mostly involve being there, either at timed intervals as per Ferber or others such as shush and pat seem to serve to distress him even more. I imagine if he could talk he would say ‘why aren’t you picking me up?’

Last night I tried just leaving him and it worked him up a lot. I left him for thirty minutes and I realise that doesn’t sound long but when you are listening to your child screaming it’s a very long time indeed.

For a variety of reasons I have had DS completely single handed for a week now or I have been at work and it has unfortunately coincided with a challenging sleep phase. He hasn’t always co slept: he was in a Snuz pod for six months then transferred to a cot. But from time to time he will simply refuse to go in his cot and I do find the lack of personal space extremely hard, especially since neither of us sleep well when he is in bed with me.

It is a bank holiday weekend and I am hoping to snatch a bit of peace. Thanks again.

I completely understand what you're going through. My DS was like this. My DH worked away and I spent so much time shouting and then crying. My life was miserable for so long. Lack of sleep is complete torture.

@BorisJohnsonsHair your nick is hilarious.

@roadsweep @LuckySantangelo35 there is no point in even trying to explain how wrong you are.

Just wanted to interject and let you know that's total bollocks. My friends baby went from exclusively contact napping, to sleeping 12 hours in her own crib with no sleep training whatsoever, and actually refused to be held for naps, over the space of a couple of months. It's developmental. You're talking shite tbh, we evolved to keep our babies close and that's why they're programmed to want that. Babies are supposed to wake frequently, it protects them from SIDS and obviously helps keep their mums milk supply going. Do you really think if the human race needed sleep/cot training, we'd have got this far?

Autism 😂 good lord, you lot will say anything.

Hi OP, sorry, it sounds hellish.

Can you afford a night or two in a hotel? At a friend's? Just don't be there. To get yourself back and remind your toddler that there is such a thing as sleeping without you.

Also, your first few posts gave me the impression that you were a single parent, but you're not. Sounds to me like dh has to step up, for instance by letting you sleep away.

You know your toddler and what you’re trying isn’t working

weve HAD your toddler … and worse… and we bit the bullet and it works

eventually

30
mins isn’t enough you have to really commit to it.

been there, got the t shirt AND hoody and there isn’t another way

@DonnyBurrito thankgod you said if, you are right what a load of nonsense!
babies are over handled wtf 😬