I'm sleep deprived, bitter, resentful..

[IcouldstillbeJoseph]

I need to vent.

I'm on my second non-sleeping baby who is now 5 months (DS is 2.5 and poorly and therefore hard work) I haven't had sex with DH in over a year thanks to an awful pregnancy and now I'm too exhausted. We are bickering like a couple of children.

A friend has just had her first baby a few weeks ago and I've just had to endure a sickening converstsuon about what a fucking 'pro' she is at motherhood. How she's fucking ironing muslins, making cakes and cant believe how well her baby sleeps. OH FUCK OFF.

I'm a flabby, haggard old frump. I want to be pleased for her. I would like some decent sleep.

I know I'm a vile person for feeling this way.
Agh.

Thank heaven for being able to post anonymously on here.

Don't worry - I had months ( years?!) of this - in particular that 'yeah, but I am so chilled out I guess the baby had to be too' implication re; it's your own fault for being stressed - wait until the 2nd one comes along - I'm not too proud to admit to very unsisterly schadenfreude when Facebook has revealed the pain of previously said 'chilled out' parents suffering with their 2nd!

Hey I feel fat, frazzled & frumpy too Got bloody lovely babies though even if the beasties seem to think that if they snooze they lose!
It'll get better (please God it'll get better).

I reckon your friend is a big liar, no ones life is that perfect & frankly if she's ironing muslins she needs to get out more.

and hope that you get a good night sometime soon.

So nice to sit reading these replies when I'm on the second bloody night feed already....

I'm with you too op am on non sleeper number 2 and just waiting for him to wake up again find ive retreated from people this time, safer than losing it with them completely when they tell me how much bloody sleep they're getting

She'll hit a sleep regression sooner or later. ...
I have an 8 month old non napper and sleeper. Generally sleep regressions are when I get an hours kip rather than three. My friend who's baby slept through from 8 weeks has just hit the 6 month mark and doesn'tknow what hit her. She came round a right frazzled mess as I was someone who would understand how awful it is. She tearfully said she realised it wasn't her parenting that made the baby sleep before he just did and how she was sorry I'd dealt with it for months when she was falling apart after a week of it.
I did feel sorry for her!
When the sleep deprivation times come to your friend you can be there for her. Chances are she'll be at her wits end

She might never hit a sleep regression. I'm on baby number 3, and have never experienced one.

I think it's just because I'm such a calm and chilled out person... :o

No, it's because I totally lucked out that my babies take after DH's side of the family, full of children who ask to go to bed at 6.30.

And they didn't get my pain in the arse, barely sleeps, one short nap and is awake all night genes. (My parents' long anticipated chance to see me suffer as they did cruelly denied them.)

They have their drawbacks (crap eaters, just terrible) but at least I am well rested, and that makes my life so much easier than people who got different kinds of sleep patterns in their kids.

Just because it's easy for her doesn't mean she's judging you.

It might be hard to understand exactly how shit you feel after years of broken sleep.

But it's easy to know that it must be hard and that people going through it could do with a break.

I was you a couple of months ago with dc2. At risk of hurting anyone who told me they had 'a sleeper'. I do find it astonishing that people are either so ignorant or so smug as to bang on about it when they KNOW you are having a rough time.

It's like saying to someone with poor health 'oh it's so great to be so well all the time, still I guess I'm just lucky!'

My theory is that months 4-6 with a baby are the hardest, on so many levels. Chances are your friend will find that too. If she doesn't, it'll be some other stage that is hard. If she really is 100% smug throughout her dc's childhood- which is unlikely- well, nobody is handing out awards (apart from her, to herself, anyway).

At 5 months my ds' sleep was fucking awful. Now at nearly 8 months we generally have on night feed and 1-2 other wakings per night. Which feels like bliss by comparison.

So take heart. It will pass. And I bet you are way funnier than your friend. Which is something.

Been their I had exactly the same thing, my ds was a horrible sleeper, in fact I think you could almost say he never slept. My 'friend' laughed down the phone saying its easy and she has no idea what I've been complying about

I have a friend exactly like this except she gl

I have a friend exactly like this except she gloated on Facebook statuses... Boy did I feel good when it bit her in the arse and baby transformed into a non sleeping horror lesson of the day: kids in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Just grit your teeth and punch her in hers smile and nod.

How bored/boring would I need to be to iron muslins I wonder?

My ds is 5 and still wakes up 4 nights a week. He woke up 4 times a night till he was 3. He had colic, he was a very frustrated loud, big, crying baby! He teethed from 8 weeks and didn't get a tooth till 11 months. However he is now a great funny little personality (with one hell of a temper). My friends baby's were sleeping through, some from birth . Their time came.

Her time will also come! Smug parents of newborns are usually smacked hard around the face at some point.

Get some sleep op. Stuff everything else and at nap time go to bed. Have early nights and begin to feel human again.

I've barely touched the iron, my baking equipment or DH since non sleeping DS arrived 11 months ago. Miraculously, the house hasn't fallen down around us. More fool her for ironing muslins instead of getting her feet up with a packet of hob nobs! I console myself with the fact that one day he WILL sleep through, and all I've got to do is keep us all alive till then.

As for your friend, I suggest a simple aversion exercise. Every time she starts banging on about it, arrange the fingers of your right hand in the "V for victory" position, poke her in the eyes with them and then flick then at her as you walk away. She'll stop in no time, I promise :)

Why not out-smug her? Ie 'my little one doesn't sleep, but as a mother I feel privileged to share those precious night time moments. I can't imagine why people are so obsessed with babies sleeping well- I am just SO IN LOVE with my baby that I don't care about getting up with him .'

Pack of lies, of course. But might shut her up.

So good to hear this! Just went to get the 2 month vaccines for DS and got a lecture from the nurse about how he is not actually suffering from reflux, but from Spoiled First Baby Syndrome, and how her three babies all slept through from 3 months. I mumbled something about the paediatrician thinking differently, but sadly failed dismally to either defend our honour or to jab her with a pertussis needle.

Poor you, and just wait until your pro friend meets her tantruming toddler, or terrible tween, or angry adolescent.

Another one who feels your pain too. We've had a few patches of ok sleeping, but mostly not and the last six months have been hell (23 m.o. DD). My sister had a baby who never cries, sleeps through, it's all been la-di-da for her so she doesn't get it and things I'm making a big deal about sleep deprivation over nothing.

Like others have said, her time will come OP. I have some smug friends too and am just waiting for them to have their battles.

It is unexplainabley hard when little ones don't sleep- try not to listen too much to people congratulating themselves on their sleepers

You're not vile in the slightest...not at all...but feeling this way dies you no good. Is said friend aware that things are pretty tough for you atm? If she is then she's pretty bloody insensitive.

I feel your pain - DC 1 had horrific reflex that wasn't diagnosed for quite some time; I tough t Id go insane with the constant insomnia and hours upon hours if violent screaming episodes. I was a completely burnt out wreck at 6 months.

Here are some for you and I hope things settle down soon for you

Having read this thread i now have to admit that I do iron muslin!!! Then neatly fold then into piles of white and pink!!! Oh god, I really am a crazy OCD women!

Why the blazes would you iron muslins??? I fold mine into neat piles, but when you are grabbing one to mop up sick, are you really worried about creases?!

Op my dd decided that she was going to be up for that day at 4.30 this morning. 4 bloody 30. It's the middle of the night! That's after she was on the 24 hr milkshake bar all last night.

& then I went for a walk & my bloody flip flop broke.

Sorry, completely detailed your thread there

I was that woman with DC1. Although I never posted Facebook statuses abut her sleeping, and would rather have died than ironed muslins. I don't iron anything, waste of my life!

DC2, otoh, is killing me. She's quite good until about 2am, at which point she's awake & playing/yelling till about 7am. Which is when DC1 gets up...

DH doesn't get it. He sleeps through most of it. I could cry.

DS2 was piss easy when he was a newborn, all he did was sleep and coo. Now he's 7 months and refuses to be put down. Muslin kroner ought not to count her chickens!

My DP and I rarely have sex and bicker too, we also play the competitive tiredness game. It will pass! Xx

That should be Muslin IRONER not kroner (Danish currency if I'm not mistaken? Why would iPhone autocorrect to that??)

Ironing muslins? Why? Doesn't sound very healthy to me.

I always had a bit of an adrenalin fuelled high after having a baby for a few weeks, before a huge slump after no sleep for a few months. I hate to say this, but she's probably going to feel like she's been hit by a bus shortly.

I thought everyone bickered when they first had babies.

Do you remember Sheila katzinger the midwife who wrote all those books years ago about babies and how to have them?
Remember she always said put your baby down after feeding, and then have an hour or two to catch up with housework?

How I laughed when she had her fifth and final baby and it was the Baby From Hell.

Suddenly she was SO apologetic to all those mums who's babies didn't want to be put down and who didn't want to sleep quietly for an hour or two.

She said it made her realise what she had been saying for years was Bumkum, and she was just lucky with her first four.

I suppose what I'm saying is that, some babies want to go to sleep and some don't.

I had a dd who never slept- she would nod off for 20 minutes round the clock for hourly feeds. I was crazy: it was official!

But my dd turned into the most amazing toddler, and never had a tantrum.
All my pals who were oh so smug had their second babies and how crazy were they then when baby number two was not the sleeper baby number one had been.
I did laugh a bit as they had told me I wasn't doing it right as my dd wouldn't sleep, but then they had a non sleeper and realised that it had Nothing To Do With Them or their Superior Parenting, and they had a baby who was hell along with a toddler who was the devil incarnate too!

Hope you can get some sleep soon, and we can all leave off ironing forever!

Look forward to seeing you in the toddler threads bragging relentlessly!