To hate the sleep threads that say...

[Jennyusedtobepink]

'My 5 week/5 month/4 hour old baby won't sleep'. Try 16 fecking months of it.

I do realise most of this is down to me, and probably am BU, but I just had to say it!!!!!

Another poor sleeper here - 19 months and rarely spends the night in his own cot - starts off there (with a fight) and usually wakes anytime from 11 until 3am and then I bring him in my bed where he stretches, sighs and snuggles in with me! Not ideal but I secretly like it in a way - get loads of wuality time. Not so sure DH is in favour, but when you have to go to work any sleep is better than fighting with a striong willed toddler.

andyrobo237 - dd is similar, but wakes any time about an hour after she has gone to bed. She then proceeds to wriggle, whine, hit me, hug me, sit on me etc etc all night.

Oh and a friend had similar problems, and she did CC for 3 days and now LO sleeps like a baby 7-7pm - she has a strong will and a hubby who works shifts, so they needed DS to sleep - I have tried CC but it disturbs DD too much which isnt fair for her

beforesunrise - did you read my post about my non=sleeping baby - it was just during the night - I'd have been grateful for just 20 minutes in the day where he would sleep.

Hey Jenny - my ds (now 10) didnt sleep through until he was 3 - so know where you are coming from x

Yes, the fighting - that is fun, not. I have a many a disagreement with DH over DS sleeping, but he is not willing to take control and sort him out - it appears to be all my problem - as he 'needs his sleep'. Yeah like I dont?? Blooming Men!!

andyrobo237 - just looked at your profile. You were actually at the baby group that I mentioned earlier. Although let's just pretend we don't know each other.

xx

IMO sleeping through means baby going to bed at 7pm then making no noise or demands until 7am
Others' think it means a. baby sleeping for more than 5 hours or b. baby not feeding durimng the night but still waking regularly for food/cuddles etc (friend said 7wk old slept through but she still got up to tuck her in/ replace dummy 3 or 4 times a night ).
So people who smugly tell you that their lo 'sleeps through' may mean something competely diffrent to you than them.

Jennyusedtobepink - you looked at my profile - I never look at them - so then looked at yours, being nosey - hee hee - yes I do know you - hope you are well (if a little sleepy)! Is that why you are not pink anymore due to lack of sleep?? I am skiving on sick leave having had a vein removed from my leg, and my mum has taken DS out for a walk - I am doing my filing MNing!! It is surprising who you meet on here! I will pretend I dont know you

I'm fine, we're fine, just fed up of the sleep thing!!!

I'm in work. I never actually do anything other than MN. Although I have a meeting in 10 mins which I suppose I'll have to go to.

I won't tell you which one of the ladies at the baby group wouldn't tell me her sleep routine, although I suspect you actually overheard that conversation and were as horrified as I was!

I can't believe other mothers can be so horrible to people when someone is clearling asking for help. I am a firm believer that if you can offer a piece of advice then you shoulw, as 'what goes around comes around'. Unfortuntately some mothers see it as a competition - I hope they get the horrible teenager stage as justice!

Enjoy your meeting - just watching 'Doctors' at the moment!! It is a hard life!!

See you soon xx

I dream of sleep. I'm obsessed by it. dd (3.5) frequently wakes in the night. ds (15 mo) has just about got the hang of sleeping but always wakes at 5am. I found myself being needlessly short with a friend who complained that her dd (at 7 weeks) was waking every 3 hours - I may have said something along the lines of "she's a baby, what the fuck do you expect?".

I just had an email from a colleague saying her baby (at 3 weeks) slept from 10pm until 6.30am last night.

AIBU to hope that next time round she gets a non-sleeper?

i have been told some truly horrible things- one particularly horrid mother at a playgroup told me it was entirely my fault that dd didnt sleep cos i "didnt make her". wtf???! my boss asked if she was autistic.

NOW i have learned my lesson. i just dont tell people anything about sleep, frankly i am bored with the topic! have also a dd2 who is 4 months and has good nights and bad nights. so i am shattered.

but to parents of poor sleepers everywhere i say... co-sleep! it saved my sanity. it helped me rest. it even made me love my child a bit more (no kidding). and you know what? it is normal! and i am going to evangelize about it, just how the cc brigade does with their own methods!

snickersnack- my boss's baby slept through at 7 weeks. i told my md, and he (scary american banker) told me his son didnt sleep through until 7 YEARS! made me feel much better, and like him (the boss) much more.

My nearly 9mo doesn't sleep through the night, he wakes up for a feed at least once, usually 2-3 times.
But he is a good baby, because he feeds then goes back to sleep again!
Because he has never slept through I am used him waking up and often find myself waking up just before he does. He is cutting teeth atm, but apart from being unsettled and requring teething granules and anbesol at bedtime he isn't waking up more frequently, where as my friend's baby, who slept through since 6 weeks, wakes up 5-6 times a night every time he cuts a teeth resulting in my poor friend being a wreck!

My DS, who is nearly 7, only started sleeping through the night after I had DD, now 15 months, she has never slept through, not even one night, up and down all night long. So that is nearly 7 years in total for me! I have big bags under my eyes to prove it

It's ridiculous that mothers feel like they're failing (and they do) when they can't get a child to 'sleep through'.

I'm almost there, but it's taken thirteen months.

If it's your first, or your previous ones were good sleepers, then it's quite possaible that you don't know just how normal it is to have a non-sleeper at 5 weeks/5 months/4 hours. I can sympathise, cos it's tough at any age, but unless they get a sense of proportion then I'm afraid my sense of sympathy dwindles rapidly!

(23m non-sleeper, after two good sleepers.)

I think lots of women feel like failures because it is just so hard to conduct a normal life when you feel so crap through sleep deprivation. (when I say normal I mean the normal that is the western normal, the routine, coping without extended family, working etc etc.)

We have such high expectations of ourselves as mothers that we put ourselves under as much pressure as those who are doing it without realising it ie well meaning friends who comment that it's somehow something you're doing that stops the child sleeping.

I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse but my 4 year old has only just started sleeping through.

Though the truth is that sometimes it is what your are doing (or have done) that is to blame for the baby not sleeping. I know this to be the case with my LO. but I only know ti to be the case because I am experienced with my older two DCs. And I don't think I would welcome being told this by other people, not when I already know it. But if I didn't understand the reason behind my LO's sleep-patterns, then it would be useful to be told - depending on who teh teller was, of course! Mumsnetter, OK; well-meaning or interfering busybody or friend, slap with a wet fish.

That's true PC. Of course as parents we influence how well our children sleep or don't sleep, and of course it's partly down to bad luck. Either way it doesn't make us bad parents, even though a sleepless child can certainly make us feel like a bad parent!

PrettyCandles - I agree, and completely accept that it is mostly my fault. Not trying to be a martyr, btw.

Tippytoes - you win the prize.

Before sunrise - I suppose we do cosleep, in that every night dd gets in with us, just at varying times, but always before around 11pm. The problem is that I can't invite people round, can't go to people's houses with dd (as was demonstrated last weekend) unless we all go to bloody bed at 9pm.

ha
I was at the swimming pool yesterday and overheard the male receptionist telling someone how his new baby slept from ten to seven at three weeks, never cried, no one had ever seen such a contented baby before etc
I was pleased for him but still
Have often thought of starting a thread on aibu about resenting people with angel babies who have no idea what it's like to have a little screamer who can't be put down for a second. Like both mine . It is all just the luck of the draw.

And yet this thread is making me feel sooooo much better!