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?

IMoveStars, what did you do please? I am going through this now with my 15-month-old and would appreciate some advise.

The continuum concept is a very interesting book, and makes a lot of sense to me. I read it years ago, (having been given a copy by the author).

However, we need to take into account the western society in which we live, where we don't have the pace of life that is conducive to this kind of child rearing.

Very few parents have the support of extended family, most parents both have to work outside the home, we experience a level of stress that is dangerous to our health and well being most of the time.

We know, that at a basic "biological" level, small children have a different sleep pattern,and in an ideal world we would relax and accommodate it, but we still have to fit in child care/jobs/careers around this. This is where it all falls down a bit IMO.

I am not saying that this is ok, because I think it does contribute to all the problems in society today. I am just not sure how we can fix it.

Feierabend, in the eyes of many, 11mos old is still a very small baby. @learning to sleep' is an interesting phrase. Learning usually denotes a positive thing. Learning to do something which goes against the grain of our human biology may not be a positive thing.

Maybe the word 'conditioning' ought to replace learning. A lot of our conditioning does no harm, some of it oil the wheels of society for example. Conditioning which goes against our biology, however, I don't know.

I agree with what you say, 3frogs. Changing our (short term) expectations of career, sleep patterns, adapting our social lives for a relatively short period of time in our children's lives can readdress some of the stresses you allude to.

I speak as someone who works FT/has a 1yo and 4yo and no family to help. In fact, I have not had a child free night since my first was born. Not a martyr btw. Just muddling along like so many others in order to pay the bills and get some sleep.

Well, I maintain, learning to sleep is a positive thing . And a child of this age may well have been 'conditioned', as you call it, to wake up in the night for milk and cuddles. If the parents are happy and can cope with night wakings for months or even years, fine, but this OP clearly can't. I know I couldn't.

We also had a child like slowreadingprogress.

"....my ds unfortunately didn't realise it only took that time and soldiered on with the crying/screaming/vomiting for aaaages and yes we gave up in the end because I did not want him screaming and vomiting in the night".

We also decided that forcing him to sleep when that's not what he wanted/needed was not in anyone's best interests.

Call it learning, call it conditioning - I can show you two lovely, happy, healthy boys who love to go to sleep because they were taught to. They learnt very early that night time was sleep time and not play/cuddle/eating time. Everything you do contitions your child in one way or another, and if you're happy to condition them to wake up repeatedly through the night then make no mistake they WILL do it. It's like offering a reward for any undesirable behaviour - why would you do that?
There is nothing about sleep which goes against human biology - quite the contrary. We NEED it to function at our best, especially if we are growing fast as babies are and I honestly think that encouraging night waking does babies no favours at all.

the continuum concept is not something that is compatible with most peoples family lives-neither is getting no sleep when actually the children are perfectly able of a ten hour undisturbed sleep.
If all children HAVE to wake to prevent them forgetting to breathe then surely it makes sense that they learn to be able to self settle? for the time that maybe a parent isn't on hand to settle them off?
surely it's kinder to your children to be able to wake up and know that they need to sleep and then put themselves back to sleep?

Well YABU because you chose to have 3 DCs so close together so you have to deal with it.

But she is also being unreasonable because personally I think you shouldn't pander to babies at night and cuddle them to sleep- it's just not a good idea with three young children. I say put them to bed, let them cry for 5 mins at a time and stand outside the door, every 5 mins say something settling like 'it's ok baby, I'm here' from outside the door. They stop crying after a bit. From then on they just gurgle and talk themselves to sleep and they sleep through.

I'm very proud of the way my DS sleeps- he is 18 months and asks to go to bed every night somewhere between 6-6.30. He gives kisses, says night night, goes down with a cup of milk and then sings and chats to sleep. He doesn't often wake in the night and he always wakes up very happy.

We definately went right with him but all babies are different so you have to work out what makes them happy.

Maybe worth trying the 'conditioning' to sleep that people on this thread are talking about. You may be one of the people with a baby/toddler who is amenable to it and becomes 'conditioned' quite quickly. But be aware that some babies/toddlers won't have any of it and the easiest way for everyone to get some sleep is to 'give in' and go for the shortest length of awake time possible. E.g with some of ours this meant getting up with them for an hour and knowing that they would settle after that hour.

SHE IS WAKING A ONCE NIGHT???????????????????

HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THIS IS UNREASONABLE??!!!!

Yes there is a wide variation but once a night is not a problem situation IMO

Mine wake more than that are they are 4 and 7 (this may contribute to my rage)

At 1 they woke around 10 times a night (I kept records for a week with the first and she averaged 17 wakes a night at one point)

Where's my guide dog

MORNING PAPER I DON'T THINK THAT IS HELPING THE OP...IT'S NOT A COMPETITION AS TO 'I HAD TO DEAL WITH THIS AND SO SHOULD YOU IT'S NOT THAT BAD'
these type of threads are like the monty python sketch the yorkshiremen i think it's called...
they are 2-they could be taught to sleep (probably) his wife is not letting him do anything that is likely to make this happen-hence his issue,

she is 11 months, not 2 - VERY different imo

the two year olds also don't sleep (although i guess they must have done at some point to enable the conception of the 11 month old!)
to be fair,mine never slept at that age but many many of her friends did,it is do-able.

Where does it say that the 2 year olds don't sleep?

ANYWAY OP - why not alternate nights with your wife so that one of you do one night and the other do the next?

Or why doesn't SHE just do all the night-wakings if you are opposed to allowing this?

no. very slowly now.

our babies are not conditioned to wake up often and ask for milk. they are biologically programmed to do so. it is a part of our successful genetic makeup as a species. 100 yrs of cultural convenience is not going to change the course much of 2 million years of evolution.

asking a baby of 11 mos (and even older) to sleep 12 hrs on the trot without wanting reassurance (in the form of milk, a cuddle, a touch, hearing you snore) from their parents is an unreasonable expectation. Heck, I stir at least once in the night and snuggle into dh. Why would a baby not want the same?

IN THE OP DOESN'T IT?
AND CAN YOU STOP BLOODY SHOUTING MORNING PAPER-MY BABY'S ASLEEP... [GRIN]

The OP says the twins slept through from the age of a year

I LIKE TO SHOUT BECAUSE I HAVEN'T HAD MUCH SLEEP

Last night I had a four year old screaming about "STOP THE CHRISTMAS NOISES MUMMY" at 3 a.m.

I was so tired I started ACTUALLY WONDERING if Father Christmas had popped in for a visit

justaphase (good name btw)

Night weaning was actually much easier than I thought, and I wish we'd done it earlier.

At 15mo DS was still waking at least twice a night for milk, usually at about 1am and 4:30am.

We started with the 1am feed and gradually, over about 1 week, reduced his feed by about 1/2oz every couple of nights (FF). After a few nights he would sometimes stop waking up for the 1am feed and wake slightly earlier for the next one.

After about 2 weeks we had got rid of the 1am feed and he was consistently waking at 3am. We left it a while to sink in, and then did the same with the other feed.

In heinsite (sp?) I think we could have done it in less time than this.

Trick is to pick a time when your DC is eating well in the day you can get plenty of milk/food into them so they won't miss the milk in the night.

God I waffle sometimes!!!

Aah, my dh feels like you do. Although I am fairly confident his eyes are fine.

I am struggling at the moment with leaving dd in her own room, as we have co-slept since she was 4mo, and my dh currently despairs of me.

It's a very emotional thing for me, y'see, but not so much for him.

I deal with it, I'm the one that she wakes up, so I win.

I'm not suggesting that this approach is correct or fair, or that dh doesn't have an equal say, or that I won't be reaching for the vodka when ds arrives in 8 weeks time. But dh just can't understand how I feel about it.

And that's just the way it is.

Some children sleep better than others, just like adults do. I don't know why this is beyond the imagination of some people.

TBH If my DP said a blanket no on anything about childcare and would not discuss I would find that unreasonable and just as stressful as sleep deprivation itself. maybe if you address her attitude an worked this out as a teamyou'd feel far better.

big hugs

pinkjenny-why is your husband despairing of you if it is you who gets up and deals with it (and as long as you don't witter on about how tired you are-if you aren't willing to do anything to solve the issue/try to solve the issue then there's not really much point in complaining is there?)

There may be an element of truth in that, thesecondcocking. In his eyes, it's a 'problem' that I am not trying hard enough to 'fix'.

But this isn't about me, it's about the OP. I was just letting him know he's not alone in feeling like this. And neither is his DW.

i know what you are saying-i do get a bit pissed off with people who complain about their lot but are unprepared to actually do anything about it...not just re their kids but weight/smoking/work etc etc.
it's a bug bear of mine-you do have my sympathy believe it or not.

Older babies that wake in the night are every bit as normal as those that sleep through from an early age. It's just one of those parenting choices you have to make as to whether you are prepared to live with it or not

My daughter is now 10 months and has been a hellish sleeper from the word go! I always promised myself that I wouldn't do any form of letting her cry to settle herself to sleep ...but it got to the point that I felt her poor sleep was at the detriment of her general wellbeing. She had black marks under her eyes and was tired all the time.

So when she woke in the night we'd go in to her and sit by her cot so that she knew we were there but didn't pick her up. She did grumble a bit but it wasn't distressed crying just a bit naffed off... It has improved her sleeping no end. She'll sleep through occasionally and on other nights will settle with just a quick visit in to the from DH. This was a girl who previously was waking 4-5 times a night and being really difficult to settle.

I kind of feel that we've reached a reasonable middle ground. We're not expecting a perfect sleeper but have acheived much better sleeping habits with very little distress for anyone.

I only mention this because I think with the best will in the world there does come a point when LO's sleep does have to be improved for their own sake....and it doesn't always have to a horrific experience getting there...