To think sleep deprivation is serious?

[Philllyeagles]

I haven’t had a full nights sleep in a year and a month now, that’s how old my youngest is. She’s been very attached so no we haven’t been able to have her stay out so I can rest.

she is getting more confident so may stay at grandmas with her big bro soon! But this years give me a lot of reflection (maybe because I’m awake so much. Lol)

The best nights we’ve had (less than a handful though) is 4/5 hour stretch. Only got 1 waking during these nights. Felt fantastic.

A normal night is me seeing every hour of the night. Whether it be for 5 minutes to give her a cuddle or an hour as she’s woke and is chatting. It’s been tough :/

early on people checked but as she’s older people don’t care. I’ve went to work and again. It seems no one cares and this sounds silly someone on our teams call last week was like “wow I can’t function I only had 6 hours sleep” (that’s fine I’m not berating them) and I thought that would be fantastic tbh!
for me anyway.

I feel like I’m expected to be 100% in every aspect of my life and not be affected by being so drained. My 100% goes to my kids of course. My husband made a comment about how I’ve changed and I stayed silent but wanted to scream at him. He doesn’t get up in the night , he doesn’t hear the kids. He’s had breaks. He sleeps through. I am so drained and what a stupid fucking comment to make when I put my
heart and soul into trying to raise our kids to be the best people they can grow to be, and he’s nitpicking me for being different than the energised 20 year old he met!!!! (I’m 27 now)

Am I dramatic? I feel like people don’t get how real and how draining it is to not sleep properly. To have a bad night, and know you can’t catchup on sleep. To fuel yourself with red bull so you can do emails and calls falling asleep.

I say this with kindness...
Sleep deprivation stops you making sensible decisions and seeing clear solutions.

Example: I spent 3 months frantically and continually searching for and cleaning the THREE mam bottles we owned before realising i could just buy a few more and not have to run around looking for them every 5 mins and also just wash them once a day 😵‍💫

• Cosleeping can help people get more sleep- cosleeping is very clearly NOT helping you get more sleep
• your DH needs to just do the nights for if not a week, 3 or 4 days, as a one off so you can get back on your feet. You sleep anywhere else and get earplugs. If you really cant get him to I'd beg your mum for 2 nights.
• then you really need to sleep train.We didn't for various (valid & invalid) reasons with my youngest and were DESTROYED at 10m. A good night was 2 wakes a bad night was 4 or 5. I sat my dh down and said enough... It was 3 hard nights but even on those first three we got 8hrs+ straight after that first wake. now we get 6 hours unbroken on a bad night. We used ferber to teach self settling.

Its life changing

I hear you OP. An aspect of this I really struggle with is that my body image is poor atm. I intend to make better diet/exercise choices the next day but then I'll be exhausted once again and be craving carbs for fuel and lacking willpower.

It's a nightmare op. I've not had an evening to myself and a decent sleep for almost 8 years. My son is autistic and has been given melatonin , this helps him fall asleep (eventually) but I have to go bed at the same time as him to guarantee a few hours sleep in a row. Dh can't do nights as he has a serious health condition and his meds make him drowsy. Your dh can help though , and he bloody well should! You might have to make demands , but sharing the load is vital to your health and wellbeing.

It won't last forever. DS started sleeping through when he was three and then continued to wake early (5am ish) for a few years after. If he'd been the eldest DC I'm certain he'd have been an only! I remember the days walking home from work in zig zags along the pavement because I was so exhausted.
Now he's 16 and will quite happily sleep until the afternoon. I have become a very efficient sleeper through it all and can manage fine on 5/6 hours so I get loads done day to day. That's the positive I take from it.

My 2.5 year has only just started sleeping for 4-hr stretches. Before now he's literally woken every 15-45 mins. I actually can't believe it's possible to survive (if not thrive) on that level of sleep disruption ... but here I am. Sympathy, OP.

Your DH is a twat! How dare he opt out of the night parenting and then decide that children should be in their own bed?!

My DH and I alternated wake ups for a whole night with DD2. She’d have a couple of bottles a night so one of us would have a slightly disturbed night of feeding her and then cosleeping but the other one slept through. Doing this every other night was manageable.

DS is 10mo and is in his own room. I’m BFing him so it’s me who feeds him but DH gets up to go and get him for me. Feels more manageable that way.

Ohh I feel for you so much. I’ve suffered with insomnia so similar hours to you and it made me ill. Plants, flowers, trees…everything sleeps. It’s THE most essential element to function in my opinion. More so than food. I have no suggestions but you aren’t being dramatic and I really feel for you

You need to sleep train. It's not fair to have a sleepover when she won't sleep through the night.

I took a week off work and got my 14 month old into his own bed, sleeping through the night. Did a rapid return sort of thing.

Letting your baby cry is not the same as making them cry, and you are allowed to think your own wellbeing is important too.

I'm just getting over a year of broken sleep, where I've basically been waking every couple of hours to pee. It has been devastating, so I understand what you're going through. But you can try and sort this.

Christ I remember feeling this, mine are early 20s now and you do get past it. Just hang on in there.

Day naps could work well for you, I still do them now when I've had a bad night

Yanbu, i worked night shift for 2 years and averaged 4-6hours of sleep per 24hrs. Apart from being a horrible parent and wife as i was so grumpy and miserable, one of my eyes recently had significant vision loss which can not be repaired. I had no risk factors but what i did find out is that people who work night shifts/ have way too little sleep are more likely to have eye diseases. So you are not being silly, and go book an OCT at the optician just in case.

Can you go to grandma’s for a night or two and get some sleep? Leave your DH to it. He should be helping.

I had this with my youngest (who at 10yo is still very clingy tbh). In the end I was so exhausted I booked a weekend at a hotel and just slept. I really needed it. Recharging can do you a world of wonders.

Not my thread but it resonates so much with me that I’m reading each comment and taking in both the boosts of solidarity (body image in particular - mine in through the floor but carbs and sugar keep me functioning in the day and willpower is zero) and the suggestions of what to do.

One thing which seems so so simple but so important to remember… not all babies are the same… My first was a bad sleeper, and one night of being ‘allowed’ to cry solved it in a heaven-sent, miraculous way. In desperation, I have ‘allowed’ this one to cry; she has just cried and cried and cried, and it hasn’t worked. I’d encourage anyone who is thinking ‘you non-sleepers need to don your big girl pants and sleep train your babies’ to consider that we’ve probably tried… I’d love for you to suggest something I haven’t read about in desperation at 2/3/4am.

Cosleeping doesn’t work for us. She settles worse being able to smell boob I think (and before it’s suggested, I’m not ready to sack off the numerous and lifelong benefits of breastfeeding yet just for me to sleep better).

Husband doing half the wake ups doesn’t work for us; if we’re lucky she’ll go back to sleep for 20 mins then wake up needing settling again. And I tell you what, one thing that makes you feel wistful about hourly wake ups is 20 minutely wake ups.

Lack of sleep is desperate. But it's not just about you and your family.
If you crash the car and kill someone because you were tired, no one will care that you were sleep deprived and the person will still be dead. If trip and injure your baby you will absolutely be blamed and rightly so. If you have an accident at work blah blah...
You owe it to society to function. You need to sleep enough. Partying all night and falling asleep at the wheel is no more negligent than feeding a baby all night and crashing.
Do whatever it takes to sleep enough. Sleep train, make DH do more, get a night nurse, pay your parents, give up work, whatever. It's completely unacceptable to be so tired that you don't function properly.

Ah sound the mum-shaming has arrived.

I had this with my eldest and remember going into work and being so tired that my face felt numb. I used to hope that someone would notice how tired I was and send me off to go and sleep in the medical room 😂. Obviously nobody ever did!

DH shared the nights though when I went back to work-it's just not fair otherwise. You need to go and spend a night somewhere else, so you can catch up on sleep and let him see what it's like.

@Philllyeagles youre completely not being unreasonable - rarely do men or even women with ‘sleepers’ get the sheer torture of a poorly sleeping baby. The solution, though, is for you to go away for 3 nights midweek and leave your partner to it. It might not make him
more sympathetic but it will probably wean your youngest off their dependence from you.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with dependence by the way; but when it impacts your functioning as an adult to such a degree something needs to change. You matter too, and no baby is going to be harmed by not having someone to cuddle every time they stir. A bit of crying is ok, especially if with a loving parent albeit not their favourite parent.

My son is 4 and last night slept a 9 hours stretch for the first time. He has NEVER slept through. I am so sleep deprived it’s made me ill! They don’t call it a form of torture for nothing..

Urgh, this triggers my PTSD from having a DS who never slept. As suggested before, I think you need to change your approach and put your baby in their own room for a trial, in case they're reponding to one of you by waking so often. This really helped DS, even though I was reluctant to do it. By helped, I mean he had some 4 - 5 hour stretches regularly, which was still hell but just a bit less hell. I think if you can get 4 hours in a row you can just about manage.

I remember when I was extremely ill after I had a head injury and post concussion syndrome a decade ago, when all the terrible physical and cognitive symptoms were so overwhelming that my anxiety became too debilitating... so debilitating that I literally didn't sleep for nearly a week. I was so unwell with sleep deprivation that I had a terrible breakdown and my GP overprescribed too many different psychotropic drugs.

I ended up being harmed permanently by an off label antipsychotic.that gave me an involuntary movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia. The drugs were probably the icing on the cake after the insomnia 💔😢

Have you at least tried sleep training? For your sake AND the baby. She's not getting proper rest if she's waking so much.

Yup it’s horrific! There’s a reason it’s used as a torture tactic.

As a chronic insomniac I can sympathise with you on this. Lack of sleep is my trigger point,like for some people it's being hungry. If I've had a crap night with little sleep,I feel like I'm wading through treacle the next day.

You need to put her in her own room and let her cry it out a bit. People can criticise me all they like, but this sleep deprevation sounds like it's starting to ruin every aspect of your life and its just not worth it.

Nothing much to add except its the worst!
My husband will help but sometimes it's just easier if I do it. The crying pumps my adrenaline and then I can't sleep anyways. That's when I get the rage 🤪 when everyone is snoring including the babies but me!!