Am I being unreasonable .. about sleep

[TotsDaddy]

We have twins, now aged 2y10m and a little girl aged 11m.
The twins didn't sleep through the night until they were a year old, both had a 10pm and 4am feed. The 10pm feed continued untill they were over 2, I was exhausted. At the time my wife declared that she didn't believe in sleep training techniques, and there was nothing we could do except grin and bear it. It was if fact so bad, that that the constant waking damaged my eyesight ( No I'm serious, the consultant said, even before I mentioned our situation, "This sort of damage to the cornea is caused by stress and continued sudden waking")

When we had the little girl I hoped we could do better. She is now almost 1, and has been cuddled/fed to sleep on a regular basis. Again any form of sleep training has been rejected outright. She still feeds at 10pm and 5am, and for the last week has spent 2am until 4am awake while been cuddled back to sleep.

I'm told that this is all just normal and if I really asked people in private they would admit it was quite typical.

So.. am I being unreasonable about sleep?

PS - I work full time and study part time. Work just accept that sometimes I look like shit because I haven't slept properly.
With DH working away during the week, there is no help for getting up to help out.
We both take one of the weekend days as a catch up - one of us gets up, the other lies in.

Reading this thread (and having read countless others like it), I'm kind of wondering if attachment parents make high-maintenance children (still needing reassurance at 3 AM at age 4 etc) or if parents of high-maintenance children turn to AP.

starlight - re "Sleep deprivation is not caused by having a baby waking in the night and therefore should not be used as the reason to sleep train imo."

With all due respect - are you crazy? Of course sleep deprivation is caused by babies who don't sleep in the night and consequently don't let us sleep. Then they happily nap in the day while we run around to shop, cook, do school runs for older kids, etc. I'm saying this as one such parent, whose 5 month old was screaming between 10:30-midnight, 2:30-3:00, and 4:30-5:00 last night. Then awake for the day a bit before 6 AM.

As I wait for DD's bedtime so I can slump in bed, why do you think I am so sleep deprived that my eyes hurt? Take a wild guess

DS has not fed in the night for over a month. I don't know why other 5 month olds scream, but mine was probably doing so because he was constipated and in a bit of pain. He did a huge poo in the morning and slumped off to sleep pretty much immediately.

As to what we were doing between 6PM-10:30PM: I was bathing him at 6. Then he was off to sleep before 7. Then I prepared dinner for me, DH, & DD. Ate dinner. Gave DD a bit of quality time until her bedtime at 9 PM. Then helped DH pack for his business trip today. We were in bed as DS started to scream at 10:30PM.

I suppose you are trying to say I should have curled under a blanket and started to snore the minute DS went to sleep at 6:30 PM but I have other responsibilities. I could hypo tell DH to buzz off and not expect to see me before DS turns 1 but DD needs a mother. So no, I can't sleep when baby sleeps.

Reading this thread and many others like it, it does look like AP people have DC waking up for reassurance many times in the night and the rest of us either had babies sleeping through on their own early on, or bit the bullet and had a few nights of crying, then had babies sleeping through without needing regular reassurance in the night. Except for illness or the rare nightmare etc.

So I do honestly wonder - Were these babies very needy individuals to start with, who would wake up and call for parents many times in the night regardless of parenting style, or does AP make children who wake up and need night-time parenting much more often?

Starlight- most people have other things to do when their kids are asleep, I don't see putting a child to bed at night as sleep training I see it as teaching them daytime is for fun and nighttime is for sleep.

As you say sleep is the most important thing so why should we not teach our children a healthy attitude about it, what happens when they start school and they decide they are tired will you just tell them to sleep during class if they did'nt sleep the night before?

Surely it makes more sense to start teaching them from an early age rather than letting them run around/eat or watch movies for a few years and then suddenly change your mind a few years later?!

I don't mean to sound preachy but my son is now almost 3.6YO and obkly in the past 8 months has started sleeping all night but before that we just put him back to bed until he eventually gave in although he does get up between 4 and 6am everyday

Although I have to say birth-9 months I don't think there is much you can do about sleep, so at that age I just went with it...

I'm Italian and we don't have bedtimes set in stone like the UK. Which is nice, as in the summer we can enjoy the evenings together. But we still like our sleep at some stage!

Children are needy. They keep being needy for yrs. That's why it is not unreasonable to want a few hrs of peace and quiet during the night , imho.

I just can't believe this thread is still going on??? Honestly, it does seem to me like some people spend most of their time on Mumsnet prowling around for threads on which to berate other people for their choices around sleep. To a relative newbie it just seems bizarre. I would be interested to learn if anyone has ever really changed their thoughts on sleep after reading one of these threads?

It seems most people follow common sense - write off the first 6 months and either cross your fingers for luck (which seems to work for most), 'train' or go with the flow afterwards. Nothing wrong with any of these IMO (am part of a 7-6.30, bedtime routine, hot bath, milk and story household here but each to their owen) but do find it strange how persistent and insistent the 'go with the flow'-ers can be....

we have a routine but that works well for us because we both need our sleep badly every single night (DH sleep disorder and I thryoid disorder) so we have no choice but to make sure DS goes to bed at a set time.
the newborn stage was a living hell for me because I wanted sleep so badly and I was depressed because of it, whereas other mothers I saw seemed to be getting on fabulously with everything and I was falling to bits. Thankfully we are well and truly past that stage now and life is more predictable for us all.

Half of me would love to do it all again but the other part of me thinks no way, and the feeling of utter dread kicks in at the thought of nights and nights of broken sleep.

Lenin, you seem lovely and I have no doubt you are doing the best for your kids, but you seem to be saying that one of the reasons you won't sleep train is because it would mean that after going back to work you wouldn't see them.

You want them to be up late and in the night because it will fit in with your going back to work - how can this be best for the child?

Does AP parenting even fit with being a WOHM? Not trying to be inflammatory about WOHM - I work part-time myself, but I wish I didn't, I would rather be looking after my own kids and they feel the same I am sure.

All I am saying is that the AP theory that you should rush to your child whenever they want you does not fit with going back to work, but that is OK, whereas sleep training is not?

What really angers me- and not about all AP parents but about some- is the smugness & self-satisfaction with their choices. The lack of compassion is unbelievable for people who are supposed to believe in being sensitive to others' needs. Or is this sensitivity only meant for the immediate family?

.

Let me spell it out. Sleep training (of any kind) is not pleasant. It's for most people not the first choice. It's a choice of necessity, of depression, of sleep deprivation, of limits being reached. It's particularly annoying when others (who for whatever reason haven't reached those limits or are not feeling depressed or feel they can cope) come & tell us how guilty we should feel, how bad our choices are etc. OK so yes I did feel guilty during the few nights of sleep training (and I'm sure DS didn't enjoy it one bit either) but I could not see & still cannot see any other choice to get myself & my family to a better place than the one we were at. So leave me alone, won't you, with all your 'easier' and 'more natural' solutions. Come & let me know what they are. You still haven't said. The idea of not doing ANYTHING else apart from waiting for DS to sleep so that I can sleep too is NOT a solution btw, Starlight. It's a joke. And anyway, my own DS didn't sleep- before the sleep training- more than 1-2 hour stretches at a time. To me sleeping for 1 hour, then being jolted awake, then sleep again is not sleep, it's torture.

SO enough already with all this pseudo-sensitivity & pseudo-compassion for others. As I said, you're saving all your 'compassion' for your kids & have no room for anyone doubting your perfect parent solutions or for anyone not managing to do things in your way (or not wanting to). You know what? I'm not a perfect mum. Never have been. Never will be. Don't aim to be actually.