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.

It is horrendous.

We got through this stage twice by stretching out the wakings. Decided DC would only be fed every 3 hours. I'd feed them back to sleep and move to the spare room. Any time they woke up in the 3 hour window DH took them, cuddled, sang etc but no feeding. Then after the 3 hours I'd take over for the next wake up, feed back to sleep, and retire to the spare room again to leave DH in charge.

Seriously, 2 night of serious commitment from DH and both children gave up the 30 mins -1 hour interval and were sleeping through in 3 hour stints. A few weeks later we did it again to consolidate 4 hour gaps, then to get down to 1 waking per night.

Or if feeding is not central to this or this is just not going to work for you, as PPs say, stay in a hotel. You will feel like a new woman for 24h to yourself.

Physiologically we are not built to wake every hour. You miss out on deep sleep - I have virtually no memories of those very sleep deprived times and I think it's because my brain was not able to retain them without the deep sleep. It's no way to live. I don't think it's any good for babies to be waking quite so often either. My children have both been much happier when they could sleep for longer than 40 mins.

Your DH needs to step up and you both need to stop letting your 13 month old dictate who she will sleep for. When it’s DH’s turn, she stays with him – full stop. I’m shocked your husband allows you to be this sleep deprived, frustrated and sad about it and doesn’t care enough to be the other parent and a loving partner.

I had this OP. What was a game changer for me was setting myself up in the double bed in the spare room and sleeping in there with my toddler. The wake ups were down to pretty much nothing (obviously I was careful about bedding- they had their sleep sack and I had a single duvet wrapped around me.)

I'm sure the sleep deprivation in the baby years was what aged me ten years almost overnight.

My second is 21 months old and a horrendous sleeper. It is hell and no-one has any sympathy because of his age. I get so jealous hearing of younger kids sleeping through!

My DH sleeps in the spare room most nights and we take it in turns as to who goes into him which means we get regular uninterrupted nights which has been a saviour. I’m up late tonight because it’s his turn!

It’s still hell though, he wakes up at 5 each day even after a bad night.

People at work have no idea how much it impacts me, they just gently mock my caffeine habit

Sleep train.
I have little sympathy for people who won't even try to improve their kids sleep and moan about it.

Sleep training won't mean any less sleep than you're currently getting.

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

This is true but shes cosleeping and NOTHING indicates shes properly attempted sleep training in any kind of consistent way for a period of days...

You’re welcome to come and try to train my untrainable toddler. I love it when people assume that I’m just moaning about lack of sleep having done nothing to try and fix it. Believe me when I say I’ve done everything, as have a lot of others in this thread no doubt. Until you’ve had a chronically bad sleeper you really don’t understand.

Is reassuring to see more mamas are going through the same. I was feeling very lonely and nobody seems to understand the extent of sleep deprivation. My baby is 16 months old, never slept a night through and is awake every 2h or less. I’m co-sleeping and bf. I try not to mention this to anyone because people like to find easy solutions, which don’t work for me. I fantasise with sleeping stretches of 4-5 hours. Well…I hope our time to sleep comes soon! Oh motherhood!

Oh my God I hear you!! It is miserable. It's been almost 2 years for me, I'm exhausted. It effects every aspect of my life. I'm also currently ill again and cannot fight it off (unlike DH and DC and I know it's because of sleep that it's dragging for me). Solidarity, I hope it gets better for you.

OP hasn't tried training and her child is only 13 months. Not a toddler who has tried.

I had one awful sleeper, spent months starting my night in bed, then moving to the nest of duvets next to the cot to hold his hand. This was after sleep training and preferable to waking every hour. Meant I got 3 hours 9-12ish, then the rest of the night on the duvets. Over time he slept longer and life improved. He's in school now and sometimes still needs a cuddle in the night.

@Hercisback1 if you had one truly terrible sleeper you’d think you’d be more sympathetic towards the OP!

I've had one.

Co slept and saw every hour til 12 months. Sleep trained and got a 3 hour block. Hence my advice.....

Sleep is so vastly underestimated! We all know how a good diet and exercise are beneficial, even essential to health, physical and mental but sleep barely warrants a mention. Sleep is soooooo vital for good health, physical and mental. Your DH needs to step up and give you a break not just once but regularly. My DD was great as a sleeper from a young age, my DS, an awful sleeper and it went on for a very very long time, even now at 8 he mostly wakes in the middle of the night. Seriously I have never felt so unwell as when he was around 1-2 years old. I was purely exhausted and now it's a period of time that I have hardly any memories of.

Literally no logic to this. Why didn’t you sleep train before you have no sympathy for anyone who doesn’t sleep train their poor sleepers. Sleep training is not a magic bullet, as you can see if it only made yours sleep for three hours (which may have just happened developmentally anyway).

i had this with my eldest for nearly 2 years and then when I pieced everything together he actually had Cows milk protein allergy. We put him on a dairy free diet and within 24 hrs he was a different baby and slept through the night. I’m not saying this is the answer but have you considered if she has any gut issues that need reviewing? She may have silent reflux that could be causing difficult sleep for her? Im a medical professional myself and was slow to figure this out. It’s just a thought as I do think there is a link with gut issues and sleep.

It’s brutal! I’m just over two years in and I wouldn’t have believed it possible to be so exhausted yet somehow functioning. I rarely get more than 4 hours sleep a night. Sleep training didn’t work. Bedtime is still ongoing in my house as I type and DD will be up again around 01:00 until 04:00. Then we’re up for the day at 07:00. It’s torture and like you, no help from DH as childcare is 99% ‘my job’ (i do work though). Just praying that one day it magically improves as I’ve no other plan.

to highlight this is not medical advice, I’m just raising awareness.

@Mumsie2024 what helped you figure this out if you don’t mind me asking? We’ve just started keeping a good diary as our little one’s sleep is so terrible but I keep thinking surely if it was allergy related we’d have realised by now!

It's perfect logic. I didn't moan about having no sleep. When it really affected me /life, I sleep trained.

It's affecting OP so she should try sleep training. 3 hours is an improvement on what she's got.

Aye it's totally developmental that the kid who didn't sleep for more than an hour, magically started to on the same week we sleep trained.

• child should not be waking you up so much every single night
• husband is useless.

Mine woke up every 45 mins and I got husband to do 8pm-12am every night so I could get solid 4 hours.

Husband then insisted on cry it out when the baby was 6 months old. I was too tired to argue.

It worked in 2 days and the baby slept through the night ever since. Amazing. I will never, ever forget the first night after 'cry it out'. He slept 6.30pm-7am, and I got 10 hour sleep.

It is so comforting now when I have a tough day with the bub - I KNOW once it's bedtime I have a long solid sleep ahead of me.

People say bad things about cry it out method, but parents hallucinating, crying of exhaustion for over a year - it is ridiculous not to carry out sleep training.

Same here. I used to fantasise about falling down some steps, breaking a leg and being kept in overnight. Sleep deprivation is truly brutal.

I take HRT now mostly to protect my sleep. I spent my late 30s-mid 40s dealing with child related sleep deprivation. No way is it following me into my 50s because of hormones.

You said you had no sympathy for her… honestly if your child was that bad then I think you would have sympathy!

À shred of sympathy then. But not much, if people won't try to help themselves and then moan about it. Sleep deprivation is hard. Lots of sympathy for those who have tried sleep training and it hasn't worked. But to not try is foolish.

It's awful. Nights aren't sleeping any more; as someone else said, it's just day-parenting and night-parenting.

We got around this by having a 3 storey house. One of us would go upstairs at midnight/2am to DS's room, and lie on an airbed on the floor to get him back to sleep. We took turns. Yes, it would take a while for the parent still in bed to drop back off again but it did eventually happen and then the upstairs parent would deal with it til the next day.

Co-sleeping really does not help long term. Both of your heavy breathing, snoring, rolling over and heat does wake the baby/toddler.

Absolutely hear you, to be honest I didn't realise how much it was affecting me until I came out the other side, like I had just gotten so used to feeling tired and having no energy and plodding through every day it wasn't until I started getting more sleep and feeling alive again that I realised how bad I'd felt