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?

starlight-in our situation what would you do?
i have a 13 year age gap,would you recommend leaving her down stairs? or me going to bed hours before dp and leaving him downstairs with her (he's her step dad?) or all of us going to bed at 7.30?
you are in a lucky situation to be able to sleep during the day lenin and to relax with another adult to help you out.
i needed more than two hours kip,an hour pissing around,another couple of hours,half an hour messing about-then 3 hours and then up with dd1 to make her breakfast/packed lunches.
also.i like to see my partner and spend time with him just being me,where i am not 'mum' this doesn't make me a bad person,it makes me Sarah,which is who i have always been-and as i spend all day at home with my daughter i like to do other stuff when she's asleep.

I definitely agree about wanting time to myself, that being important to me & a priority. NOT a bigger priority than my DS's needs, I stress, just one of my priorities.

Starlight, I appreciate you said this was your belief. Fine. You do realize though that when you say that (on such an emotive subject) people are bound to ask you why you say it?

I have no cut-off point for newborn. I don't know, 3 months? why do you ask? I would never recommend sleep training before 6 months (or even a bit later tbh) & certainly not letting a baby go hungry. Only for sleep associations e.g. in our case it was needing a dummy to sleep (and waking every time it fell out of his mouth).

hijack
cote,and tell me to sling my hook here but was it you who was panicking about your labour? have you had the baby and how did you get on?

Starlight, almost everything a child does involves some (social) learning. Language. Toilet training. Even walking (I would suggest). Sleep too. That's called socialization. People do this in many different ways. But certainly children can be taught all sorts of different things about sleep e.g.:

--it feels nice to sleep with mummy, cosy & warm
--it feels nice & calm to sleep in my own cot, cosy & warm & quiet
--it feels wonderful to drink milk at night many times, cosy & warm
--it feels lovely to sleep all night & wake up to see mummy & say hello again & have my milk.

All perfectly valid. All different experiences based on different family settings.

(When I say social learning, I don't mean behaviourism btw. I just mean living in society / in a family).

Yes Cote how did it go?

Ah, this thread is bringing back some memories... DaddyJ, Cote, Maria, Starlight...

we debated controlled crying to death

here

IIRC we came to the conclusion that controlled crying is an excellent method of sleep training, working for more than 90% of babies, and there is no proof of any long-term damage

OP, YANBU about sleep - most children can be 'taught' to sleep. It takes around three nights. An 11mo is not going to remember being left to cry for an hour or so for a few nights. She is probably waking due to habit. I would not recommend bringing her into your bed. As long as she is loved and nurtured (which I am sure she is), I don't believe there can be long-term damage. My Dts know they are loved, they get cuddles and kisses and my attention all the time, during the day, but at night they don't - they sleep. If it does cause long-term damage, society is storing up a lot of problems for itself because I would guess at least 75% of parents use CC eventually. Just go on any postnatal thread on MN and ask who has used it - by the time the babies are 18mo I bet most have (they did on my thread anyway).

I have a friend from work whose 6mo was waking five or six times a night (breastfed). My friend was exhausted to the point where she had rung the HV cos she was worried about how much she was beginning to resent her DD. I talked her through cc, told her to put her down, leave her to cry, go in every 5, 10, 20 minutes to reassure or pick up/put down. The first night she cried for 90mins. She woke five times during the night but each time only cried for 5 mins before settling herself back to sleep. Three nights later she was slept 10pm till 6am .

CC is a big no-no on MN, but I have used it. And I would recommend it to anyone. My DTs sleep 12-13 hours a night and have done since they were about 8mo.

Flame away

No, I did not prioritise my needs! I prioritised my DS's needs equally! As I've said before, he was waking every 1 hour crying (sobbing) for his dummy. We went to his room. Plugged it in. Went out again. 1 hour later- the same. Around 11 pm invariably every night we brought him to our bed. The same would go on in our bed. How on earth was it prioritising his needs going along with this situation?!

And how is a newborn different from a 1 year old? Should I really have to say that? is it not obvious? Well anyway (if I have to) a newborn needs milk many times a night. Gradually needs less milk. Gradually no milk at all. At 1 year certainly doesn't need milk in the night. May want milk in the night (if they've grown accustomed to it). Not the same as needing it. Very very big difference. Which was why I talked about the needs of babies. Not sure how plugging in a dummy every hour was prioritising his needs over mine...

The poor OP must be overwhelmed by now with all this debating

maria, did you manage to get rid of the dummy in the end?

Is this the same Maria I think it is, your DS's name begins with L?

One year olds should not need milk in the night. They will have it if it is offered, but there is no reason why a normal 1yo cannot have enough food/drink during the day to go through the night without.

I'd say that about an 8mo in fact. I stopped BFing mine in the night at 8mo because my instincts told me they were only waking out of habit. I was right because 3 nights after stopping BFing them in the night (using CC instead) they slept through.

I think Maria has been proved right, that her DS did not need milk - because when she used sleep-training methods, he stopped waking up.

Yes Neenz it's me, hi . Hope your twins are ok!

And starlight as to your question: I made sure ds was having enough to eat/drink in the day before even thinking of taking away his dummy. Also, in the 3-4 nights the sleep training lasted (which in our case meant going cold turkey on the dummy) we did use extra milk to settle him. He still started sleeping through pretty much after 4 nights. And has done so ever since (he's now 15 months) with ups & downs when he's ill etc.

Totsdad it is tough i miss sleep too... But it is normal, as uv read... Best of luck to u, hope everyone gets a good nights sleep...

I haven't read all of the thread but I don't think most babies need feeds overnight once they are 6+ months old. So if they wake it's more from habit than hunger, and this can be sorted with a bit of determination and resolve! Not all babies are the same but most respond well to some gentle sleep training which does involve a small amount of crying for the first couple of nights as they re-learn how to soothe themselves, but then they will resettle themselves when they wake up, which is perfectly normal, everyone wakes up several times in the night,it's just we know how to go back to sleep when we wake. Babies need helping to learn this skill.

Personally I think you're doing your child a huge favour if you teach them from an early age how to soothe themselves back to sleep during the night. If your baby sleeps well then so do you and life is always a wee bit easier if you're not knackered the entire time! There's a reason sleep deprivation is used as torture.