to wish someone elses kids slept badly?

[TiredMumZzz]

My dc3 who's 1 still doesn't sleep through - not for lack of us trying absolutely everything. Have a friend whose kids sleep really well & always have; obviously thinks it's me & that I'm just whinging about it & doesn't understand how bloody knackered I am...
Is it just me that wishes people like that had to suffer too...

DS is three and has routinely woken up every two hours. Sometimes we can soothe back to sleep with milk, so on a good night dh and I take turns to do this from when we go to bed until about five in the morning. To me, that's like the very newest of newborn stage and it gets better for most people, but we have have done this for three years.

Bad nights one of us has to get up for two-four hours when everyone else is asleep in the early hours.

Very bad nights mean that ds doesn't even go to sleep until ten so we have no evening respite and then he does his being wide awake at night / early rising and doesn't nap in the daytime at all any more.

I'm used to it now, it's the way he is, but for the first year when you are expecting that one day it will happen, it was so depressing. Even in the second year of ds' life I still harboured hope which was dashed time and time again.

At the start of his third year I remember wishing for a minor car accident to happen to me. That sounds very wicked I know, but I just wanted to sleep for maybe one day or two no matter what pain or impairments I may have suffered.

Then I graduated to thoughts of more severe injuries and actually thought that they would be well worth suffering even if they turned out to be permanent.

That's how shite it is. I actually thought how welcome a stroke would be for example.

I got over it because I have absolutely no hope any more and so I survive. It has put paid to any plans of having another child before I am forty but there you go. Ds is loveable enough for two anyway.

My first child was a terror. The sleep deprivation (which went on for nearly three years) was torturous. I was depressed, I gained weight, I couldnt hold down the same level of job I had done previously. I was a mess.

Luckily (I think?) I had a friend who had similar problems. I remember her phoning me from a motorway lay-by in tears, as she had been on her way to a work meeting and had almost fallen asleep at the wheel after yet another night of broken sleep.

We used to have a two-member club which consisted of meeting up, drinking obscene amounts of coffee and actively despising people who had Babies That Slept Through.

Then I had a second baby ad, lo and behold, I had one of those freakydeaky 'sleeps 12 hours at six weeks' kids. Old friend was NOT happy, although she had the good grace to conceal her unhappiness (she had a second baby at the same time...and her second baby was even worse than her first!).

Oh, life is a bitch sometimes. It really is. Can any of your 'my child sleeps so well' friends take your DC off your hands for a few hours now and then so that you can get an afternoon kip?

Ds who is 3 sleeps 7-5 usually but up until he was 2 he took hours and hours to go to sleep and between 1 and 20 months he woke in the night for hours, for no particular reason tbh. I remember thinking if I had 5 minutes on my own I should close my eyes because I was genuinely worried at one stage that my eye muscles would give up the ghost through overuse and Id be left blind or something

I am expecting dc2......please please let it be one of those babies who sleeps 7-7, please?

Fwiw all my nieces and nephews have slept through almost from birth. This is because I am a crappy mother who is 'too lenient' and because I chose to 'make things difficult for myself by breastfeeding' whilst they 'dont give in to their children' and 'bottle feed because its the best thing'

Why don't you book yourself for one night into a hotel locally and leave the children with DH. Just one night of uninteruppted sleep....

Hello OP and everyone else: I feel you pain as they say! In my house 2 DCs and my DH are poor sleepers - there is always somone up and wandering around, or talking in their sleep or of getting up to check their emails, or coming into our bed. This has been going on for 13 years. Sometimes I think I am used to it, but at other times i want to weep with tiredness: like last night for example - DH up til 2am, then DC3 up til about 4, then I drifted off feeling cross, an hour later DC3 was in our bed, and an hour after that my alarm went off. Hey ho. Hope tonight is better.

if its any consoloation i have 2 boys (both of which are currently in my bed 9 nights out of 10) and the youngest one 18mnths still does not sleep through i am currently pregnant too so expecting many more years of sleepless night sbefore i finally sleep through myself!!!

Urgh DS (3) wakes for random things in the night "Where's my best stone?"
and DD (11) stumbles around going for a wee about 5 times a night.

You have my sympathy and understanding!

Why would you want someone else to suffer? I don't want other people to suffer just because I'm having a shit time

Ds slept through at 2yo.

Dd 10 months 3 feeds a night still .

You see, this is what I mean - you always get someone like mumdrivenmad or mingg - I share an office with someone like this, and it's me that feels guilty for wishing broken nights on them. But I do, it's the way they're so bloody smug. They should indeed "share our pain" as Wonderstuff said.
And thanks Trinity you beat me to it...

kittywise I should've been more specific - I just want annoying smug people who gloat about their kids sleeping well and imply that it's cos they're such great parents to suffer. Don't have a prob with anyone else getting some sleep...

DS2 is three and has yet to sleep the night through.

I take comfort from the fact that DS1 does.

Mind you, he's now 19 years old!

Mine were never great sleepers when they were little. I only had one that could be put down for the night at 6pm.

However, those years are short. Once they get into the demands of school, they need their sleep.

And once they become teenagers, they prefer New York time to GMT.

My DD was a poor sleeper too. She was 20 months before she left through the night properly, and even then not every night for a while.

She's 8y now though and sleeps loads better all the time - can be a pain to wake up in a morning though, lol. Mind you, last week when she was jetlagged, it was awful!

Not to piss on your parade, but I was an atrocious sleeper right until my late teens. I would often survive on 3-4 hours of sleep a night and always got up at 5.30am. A look of reminicent horror still passes over my parents' faces when they recall just how badly I slept when I was a child.

I wish I was still like that now - DD is 4 and an awful sleeper. My mum revels in the karma and doesn't even try to hide it. My own mother.

thanks old.. just 18yrs to go then..

Agree with Wonderstuff - people that have easy pregnancies, great deliveries and spookily wonderful sleepers should have the good grace to Keep. Very. Quiet. About. It.

We don't wish ill-will on our friends.... we just don't want them to have it too good, too much of the time

TiredMum - very sorry you think I am smug, really was not my intention and I am not most definitely trying to imply that it is because I am in any way or manner a better parent than someone/anyone else.

My kids aren't big sleepers & as babys never slept like other babies. My dd naps in my arms & I co-sleep. I just accepted it rather than fight it.

Only joyful thing was when others kids stopped their endless naps. My friends complained about being tired- my eldest was had just started an afternoon nap - I had no sympathy for them lol

My DD has slept through since she was about 12 weeks, she is nearly 6 months so its early days yet no guarantee she will continue to do so, i just hope she is like her parents , DH and i love our sleep,

I never ever mention how good a sleeper she is though as i have some new mummy friends with DCs exactly the same age as mine and they get up 3-5 times a night and i usually lie that i have been up a couple of times in the night pathetic i know but i dont want to be the odd one with the baby that sleeps through

Bingtata my father gives absoultly no sympathy to me - in fact if I mention I'm tired because dd is up I get a big grin and a retelling of how many years they went without sleep when I was a babe.

A lot of these "Mine slept through from 4 weeks" folk are bullshitting. It's awfully competitive and people can be ridiculous about it. When questioned about their babies sleep patterns further "sleeping through" can mean 11pm to 4am, only being woken twice, outright lies or sleep "training" methods that for newborns border on child abuse. Sure, some are simply lucky, but I think a lot of people just lie. We worked ever so hard on DD's sleep (am a bitch on wheels without decent kip, it was in her best interests) and only managed a full 12 around 12 months, the earliest you can expect it, IMO. Hang on in there!

If it helps I ahve a non sleeping through 10 year old, 6 year old (both SN) and 2 year old (NT) plus a 9 year old who would sleep through but gets woken.

Un til very recently ds1 had to be checked every 2 hours on top as he had hurt people at night, don't do that now but atm he's not going down until midnight, I sleep close with the door open and wake at a slightest murmur JIC, and ds3 wakes 2 and 6, and ds3 does 10 -- 6.

Feel better LOL?

(And yes of course I am a wreck!)

Dizietsma - my daughter slept through from 3 or 4 months - when I say that, I mean her last feed was about 11.30 and then she'd go through until 7. And there were no 'training methods bordering on child abuse', thanks. But bear with me, OP, as that's not what I am here to say.

I don't take ANY credit for my DD being a good sleeper - and I am really sorry for you, as I think it is TOTAL luck of the draw. I know that's probably no comfort, but I absolutely believe you when you say you have tried everything. Do tell the smuggos to bugger off. I have seen friends go through this and it's awful. I am expecting another baby in Sept and I don't imagine for one minute I will be so lucky again with the sleeping. It's time people stopped patting themselves on the back (or berating themselves) and woke up to the fact that it is basically pot luck. Anyway, just wanted to send some sympathy, really, and a complete absence of criticism!

Second babies sleep if your first was a nightmare though don't they? It has to be some sort of law surely, 1st baby nightmare = 2nd sleeps through from 6 weeks? (v. hopeful, soon to have dc2)