To ask how I sort out my life? I'm drowning.

[OneStepCloserToTheEdge]

Family is me, DH and 2-year-old DS. No family.

I work full-time. It's supposed to be flexible on Mondays and Fridays as I have to work half the weekends in any month, but it's often not.

DH lost his job during Covid and hasn't managed to find a new one. He's got a disability that makes employment challenging. He has one freelance client, who pays probably the same amount he'd make from a job, realistically.

Typical week...
Monday - Me and DS do a baby club. I try to work over lunch/nap, DH meets us if DS isn't napping. I take DS to meet friends at the park in the afternoon, DH comes sometimes, otherwise he cleans.
Tuesday - DS at nursery, I work, DH works and does house renovations.
Wednesday - Same as Tuesday
Thursday - DS is with us. I try to work, inevitably fail.
Friday - Sometimes DH takes DS to a toddler club, sometimes I meet friends with him.

I'm really stressed at work, but to leave would need to build back up my self-employment - which worked better for us as a family but I don't have capacity for right now. Ideally I'd build this up in the evenings but I don't get more than an hour or two before the first wake, and I'm often shattered by then, so my brain doesn't work.

DS does not sleep through. He wakes every two hours. Biologically normal, apparantly. DH used to be able to put him to sleep/settle him, but he will not accept anyone but me at the moment, so I do all naptimes/bedtimes/wakes. DH does get up with him at 6am so I can get another hours sleep before I have to get ready for work. If DH goes in, DS shouts and screams, and both get very frustrated, and everyone is awake anyway. I am really hoping this gets better soon... he's the last toddler we know to be waking as much as he does, but most of the rest of them seem to have figured it out by themselves. He's feeding to sleep again, which I suspect is part of the issue... he stopped at 6m but I stupidly let him start again a while back.

We were supposed to be getting professionals to come and do some fairly big house renovations, but all four people who came to quote have cancelled, citing bigger projects/overall business. One today has said they'd love to do the work, but they couldn't fit us in for 19 months. I don't think I can take another 19 months of living in a building site.

DH has been looking for work, but his disability often comes up - and even when it doesn't, wages in his sector have plummeted and he wouldn't earn more than he does now. He may actually bring home less.

I feel absolutely stuck. We could maybe stretch to Thursday's in nursery for DS, but they've hiked prices because of the new 2-hour funding, so it'd be an expensive day... Plus he doesn't really enjoy it, and often we only get him in because his friends are there, and they only do two days. Most of my friends have grandparent support on Thursdays. I could push DH to spend the day with DS on Thursdays, so I can concentrate more - that would have been easier with the house renovations, as I'd have had an office to retreat to, rather than the front room (where the door is, sadly, so they have to see me to come in and out).

Am I missing something? Is this just how it is?

(Please don't suggest cry-it-out for DS. I can't do that. I'm open to suggestions on improving his sleep but through a combination of CPTSD and research, I can't leave him to cry)

He’s old enough now that you can set some boundaries with the BF and it will help his sleep. Feeding at bedtime and then let dad do nighttime’s for a week or so worked for us for our first 2 to break the cycle of the wake-feed-sleep throughout the night. Bedtime feed is the special one. It just takes a bit of persistence and you have to not give in and feed. Yes DS will complain but he will be with his dad and he will be loved and comforted. Once you are getting a few more unbroken hours then things will feel easier.

nursery on the Thursday unless your DH can do the childcare properly which means not letting your toddler cry at your door and leaving you to focus on work.

Who’s suggested that breastfeeding is the root of all evil? No one on this thread. But I don’t think two year olds need to be breastfed and I don’t think it’s a good thing for anyone in the family for a 2 year old to be waking every 1-2 hours- that’s not sustainable when the poor mum is trying to hold down a full time job and some level of sanity. A 2 year old ought to be getting their calories predominantly from solid food and during the day.

I didn’t say that stopping breastfeeding would equal no wake ups at night: I said it may reduce them. It doesn’t work for everyone but it does help for plenty of people.

Can you work somewhere else on a Thursday? Local library or pay for a desk in a co-working space (probably cheaper than nursery?) At least you could work uninterrupted.

My god this thread is insane. Breastfeeding a two year old hourly? For gods sake, cut the breastfeeding and sleep train! Then sort your childcare. You cannot work a full time job and be trying to look after a two year old simultaneously.

Op not sure if you've considered night weaning but I'm very confident this would stop the hourly/2 hourly wakes.

It is 100% normal for 2 year old to wake in the night, but not to that extent. Maybe like once or twice on a bad night and frequent sleep throughs is what is normal from people I know. And that includes a lot of toddlers who were awful sleepers as babies.

Nothing else in your life sounds too awful to me, but I know first hand that constantly being woken in the night over a prolonged period makes every other part of your existence unmanageable.

Have a read of this about nightweaning. Its by a doctor who advocates for attachment parenting https://www.drjaygordon.com/blog-detail/sleep-changing-patterns-in-the-family-bed

Thanks all, I really appreciate the thoughts.

I’m not against sleep training, just not a fan of cry it out. I’m really grateful to everyone who has shared essays/resources/ideas for how we do this. It didn’t come up in the chats with the doctors, but they did say that it’d probably only be hourly for a short time and then go back to every three hours.

Work aren’t concerned about my output, I still work enough hours and get my job done, but I don’t feel like I’m at my best and I work all the time I’m awake, basically. I feel pulled in all directions.

Sadly our local office got closed down after Covid. There’s a London one but it’d cost a fortune to get there. I’m going to explore local options, though, or worse case, coffee shops that don’t mind. I’ll go out on Thursdays and DH is going to have Enz.

It sounds like sleep needs to be our priority to sort though, and enough people do seem to think it’s solvable, so I’ll start there.

Wish me luck! DS has been asleep for 1.5 hours so far tonight 🤞

Doctors get literally 0 training on children’s sleep. 0.

i sleep trained and night weaned mine at 6 months and they went from waking every hour to sleeping 10 hours. Literally over the course of a week that happened. They are now teenagers / pre teens and still love me 😁

Once you’ve had a month of proper sleep everything will seem manageable

I think you need to either have an office in your home where both ds and dh understand you cannot be disturbed or work out of the house. It sounds like work is taking over your life as you are trying to do full time hours spread across days and evening 7 days a week in little chunks fitting around your DS and dh. When do you get anytime for you? You need to be able to mentally turn off from work.

Good luck!

(I am the one who said I stopped bringing them into bed but didn't stop feeding to sleep)

If you find that you try any night weaning strategy, whether you're deciding to wean off feeding or co-sleeping or everything all at once, and the first night it's absolutely horrendous and you're feeling like you're going to give in, check your watch/phone and just promise to give it another 20 minutes from that moment on (or 10 minutes, or pick any close-ish round time - just something that feels doable). After that 20 minutes, you can stop trying and go back to whatever you know will get you back to sleep as quickly as possible.

Then the next night take that time as a benchmark and don't give in any earlier than that time - ideally, try to aim for an extra 30 minutes. Repeat, making that benchmark/goal time later and later over time.

Note that it will take longer this way than if you power through on night 1, but if you're like me and have very little willpower at the best of times let alone at 2 in the morning and the thing you want is sleep - it helps to have a goal to stretch to, to know that you genuinely don't have to do this forever. I have a tendency to feel as though I will be sitting in this cold dark room so so so tired trying not to drop the toddler literally forever, and it helps to think "I only have to try for another 20 minutes" rather than "It's 5 hours until the morning and then I have to get up and do all the day things" (aka, literally forever).

Also, if they are getting upset then it helps me to think OK, I'm just going to try a little longer, rather than letting them just be upset for hours (which I wouldn't be OK with).

It's almost sort of training yourself, rather than training the child. It helped me to see that I could deal with nights a different way to the one that they wanted me to, and they would be OK and I would be OK. It helped me to see that even if they were upset, they did actually calm down with my presence (whereas I had this idea that ONLY BF and co-sleeping would do, before I hit on this timing idea).

Your DH needs to take DS fully on Thursdays while you work somewhere quiet (office? Friends spare room? Library?) There should be no compromises and to make it clear cut best disappear and leave the house.

Monday and Friday (if you’re not working) split the day so he has child half a day and you the other half day.

wear ear plugs at night. You’ll still be able to hear but not quite as much. Or cosleep

Go out a few nights in a row to allow DH to settle the kid. Allow him to find his feet.

To be honest your toddlers sleep sounds like mine has been. The kid wakes at 6am, and might not nap at all, and be awake until 11pm, then he's up hourly.
It's fucking exhausting trying to get a child who doesn't want to sleep, to well, sleep!

What we're finding is he needs constant stuff to keep him busy.
We visit friends, we go to the parks, we go to groups, we do singing and dancing with nursery rhymes, we've started colouring regularly. We go to the supermarket- we keep him talking, we encourage him to get very involved. We're ditching the pram and letting him walk as much as possible, still, we haven't achieved a single night where he's asleep before 10pm...tonight was 10:22pm and we've been up twice. (Improving but still, not where anyone else seems to be with their child)

I'd drop the BF over night in your position. Allow DH to take over the night feed of bottle.

I'm not suggesting cry it out, but DS has actually started to settle in his cot a few times on his own. If he seems tired but won't go to sleep, what we have started to do is see if he is happy to go down in his cot.
So he goes in with his bottle. If he whinges then we don't go to him, but if he cries, we do. So far it's working quite well, because even if he needs bringing out of his cot, within 10 minutes of being back with us he has gone to sleep.

It's desperate at this age when they're not sleeping well. With better sleep, everything else will feel much more manageable.

Thanks all.

DH will have DS on Thursdays from now on - I'm going to trial working at an office that has advertised spare space, I think, if they've got some left on Monday when I call. We'll agree who does Monday and who does Friday each week, that might be easier for now.

DS did okay last night... Asleep by 7:45pm, woken by a loud noise just before 9pm, woke at 10pm, and then midnight - DH tried to give him a bottle then, but he wouldn't accept it. After half an hour of him shouting for me, DH called me through, and I gave him a bottle in his bed... he wasn't sure to start with but then drank it all and slept until 4am. Tiny bit more milk at 4am, then slept until 6:30, when we had a feed as normal and got up.

A bottle isn't ideal, I know, but my thinking is he can go from breastfeeding > bottle feeding less frequently > watering down the milk > water over a fortnight or so?

He doesn't really feed in the day anymore, just before bed, in the morning and overnight.

I'm taking on board all the sleep training advice too, thank you. It's something I've really struggled with after he had a really traumatic birth and then due to medical negligence, I couldn't get to him. We received a full apology and an offer of compensation from the hospital a few weeks ago, but it feels wrong to take money from a struggling NHS and it wouldn't help the constant guilt and worries about his brain/our bond anyway. I know I need to get used to this.

For the record, he does not rule the roost. He's a good boy; thankfully, but he understands the boundaries and I don't let him walk all over me. I suppose I've got a mental block over sleep here, and somehow it feels different to when he's upset because he wants to do something crazy or I've told him off.

Or you might find that many people who did stop found their children thrived just as much.

Op I was like you about my older child, couldn't do the sleep training and he still has a huge association of sleep issues at age 7. Needs us to put him to bed, lie with him up to an hour sometimes, comes looking for us for every silly reason.
My baby, 14mo is literally put down in her cot and door shut. She puts herself to sleep, if she wakes up she's able to settle herself and sleeps through! The difference is I sleep trained her at 10mo. It took 3 nights and we have had our life back since then.
At 2yo you are going to have a big, big problem going forward if you don't resolve this now.

Do you claim UC? You can get a “start up” year if DP is self-employed. He would be expected to earn a full wage after the first year.

But:

1. Children's sleep cycles are different to adults' sleep cycles (they are much shorter), and

1. Even an adult's sleep cycle is only around 90 minutes, so he is actually sleeping significantly longer than a full grown up cycle anyway

OP, I apologise if someone else has recommended these but I'd suggest doing the infant sleep screening tool on the Evolutionary Parenting website (it's designed to flag up potential underlying causes, for example allergies) and also the Facebook group The Beyond Sleep Training project which will not recommend any methods involving crying and which is good at troubleshooting issues and educating about what typical childhood sleep is actually like.

For what it's worth our eldest woke that often at age two and he's now a happy, well adjusted, intelligent, sociable little boy who sleeps through the night every night. His younger brother began sleeping through at age 15 months, before I'd even weaned him from breastfeeding (he just stopped waking for it all by himself). Kids are just all different 🙂

If you’ve been offered money due to a traumatic birth - take it. Take it with both hands, and use that money to make life easier and better for you all. It won’t have been offered lightly.

Sleep - I have two DC who were awful sleepers until around 2-3 when something just clicked (night weaning helped and the only way to do this for us was to have DH go in rather than me - but I appreciate that’s not an option for everyone). I also breastfed until almost 3 so I have a sense of where you’re coming from.

Does your DS show any signs of digestive discomfort? Because sometimes, when they’re awful sleepers, it can be related to undiagnosed allergies. If he eats well, has normal bowel movements and has never had any digestive issues, obviously ignore me but it might be worth looking into if you think there could be any underlying issues rather than simply “poor sleep associations”.

Work - I’m not sure if this is the case where you are but in my town, there are a few flexible work spaces where you can rent a desk/pod for a day, a school hours day (0900-1500) or by the hour. They all have fast wifi and coffee available. Might be worth a try? You can’t possibly work effectively with a toddler wailing for you and banging at the door!

Good luck, it does all sound really difficult at the moment.

Can you go into an office or somewhere else to work...
Your ds would then get used to being with dh.. from his point of view you are there but not with him... He can't understand your working...if you go early so dh there or dh takes him to something fun/outside..early so you get a clear block of time to sleep/work!

He is two. Too old for a bottle. Why are you treating him like a newborn? Multiple feeds throughout the night, accepting this many wake ups as normal, bottles?

The sleep thing has to be tackled first.

DH needs to stop getting frustrated with DS. This is a matter of him getting a hold of himself, and an adult should be capable of this. He needs to up his game.

Buy a screen to shield off your work area from the front exit so DS won't see you when he's leaving with DH.

What are the renovations that are needed?

This too. It seems like he's doing it out of habit.

Are there not any cafes local to you where you can pay them to work there?
Ive seen places offering free all day tables for around £10 I think that includes coffee too.

I had one who woke se eral times a night until 2.5.

The thing that helped her sleep through was stopping breastfeeding.

She was a very fretful baby ('high needs") and toddler and I had been using breastfeeding as a way to soothe her. But I was on my knees after two and a half years of never sleeping more than a few hours at a stretch per night.

I introduced a bottle of water to sip on in the night after cutting way back on daytime feeding and eventually stopping The process took a couple of weeks.

Yes, this! This seems to come up so often - this strange notion that just because you work from home you can do so without formal childcare in place. You can’t - it not fair to you, your child and most importantly, your employer.

No wonder you are feeling stressed.