Feeling like all I do is survive

[Dillybear]

I have a 7mo DD. She is my world. She is a gorgeous, happy, curious baby. She is developing really well. She brings me joy every day.

But. Her sleep is really tough. Just as it seems to get better, it gets worse again. In the last month we’ve had a period of teething (oh, the screaming) followed by illness, followed by waking in the night for two hours, and now she’s waking early (I say early because she’s upset) from naps, and therefore waking and crying after she’s gone to sleep in the evening. Today she woke up from her nap at 2.30 and even though she was tired and wanted to go back to sleep, she hasn’t gone back down for another nap (though she’s been in the car and breastfeeds etc). She’s still perfectly happy at the moment, but she won’t be by bedtime. I am torturing myself with the question of should I try a late nap and a later bedtime, or should I go for an early bedtime? I feel paralysed and I don’t know what to do. Every bad night seems to knock my confidence, because it feels like it’s my fault. I keep feeling as though if I just get it right things will improve, though I can see objectively that it doesn’t seem to make a difference what I do.

I feel like I am just about holding on. Every day I try so hard to make sure she gets the sleep she needs, in the hope that the nights will be better. Most days I feel like I fail. It feels as though I’m just clinging on until one day, maybe, I’ll realise I’m less exhausted? Or I’ll be able to go and do something for myself? I’ll feel like more of a whole person? At the moment I am someone who is singularly obsessed with my baby’s sleep and I feel suffocated with anxiety all evening about how bad the night is going to be.

I see other mums enjoying their maternity leave and being so much more relaxed with their babies. Their babies all sleep through the night, of course. They tell me how sorry they feel for me that the nights are still so tough and can’t believe that my baby still wakes for feeds. It just makes me feel worse and even more like I’m failing.

This isn’t really a post about how my baby sleeps. It’s about how I feel about her sleep and how I’m coping with sleep deprivation. I just want to enjoy taking care of her more than I am. I love looking after her, but sleep and naps just feel like they dominate my whole existence and it’s been this way most of her life.

Can anyone relate to this? Or do you have any advice? I’m not looking for sleep advice, more advice about how to cope with the way I’m feeling and her bad sleep. I don’t really have close friends with babies, and pretty much all the other mums I know have babies who sleep through the night. So I don’t have anyone I can talk to about how I’m feeling who would understand. Thanks in advance if you’ve read all the way to the end.

Hi OP,

I have a ‘thing’ about my 6month olds sleep. It preoccupies our entire day and everything is planned around her sleeps. I haven’t really been able to do anything with her or enjoy my maternity leave very much. Getting her to sleep and to stay asleep is my number 1 concern and I get very stressed if it doesn’t work, or she wakes up. As soon as she goes to sleep I do too for fear of getting as much as I can before she wakes up again.
I don’t have any helpful advice or insights, sorry, but I just wanted to share so you didn’t feel you were the only one having these struggles

I have had phases of obsession about sleep as well so I understand how draining it is. I’m also blessed with a baby who has never slept brilliantly and I have had days and nights where I’ve been constantly in tears because I feel like I’m failing. I feel a bit easier about it at the moment, in part because I’ve stopped reading books/blogs about what my baby should be doing. So at the moment he only naps for 30 mins at a time - ideally I’d like it to be longer but there’s no point battling him over it. I just put him down again when he next seems tired, even if it’s only an hour later. Nights are rubbish atm with teething but I try and tell myself that it will pass - the main thing is that I’m there for him and trying my best. I know it’s easier said than done but try to be kinder to yourself. Every baby is different and you are doing a brilliant job with yours.

ah the first year (s) is terrible. i basically spent every morning waking to check my vitals aka how bad is my headache (not whether i have one that was guaranteed), how do the rest of my limbs feel and can i still feel them.....sleep deprivation is the worst and whilst lots of women obviously do have PND - so much of it is also linked with sleep deprivation.

i am sorry, it will get better - we had a terrible sleeper but it got better. the first year was quite a blur and not in a nice way. my one abiding memory from my kid's first year was picking them up extra early from the nursery all anxious about whether they've had any sleep, rushing on the bus home and bouncing them in a carrier in a dark room so they'd get a bit more sleep or it would be hell for the rest of the evening.....

you are a lovely mum, but babies' first year can be really hard. it does get better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OP my baby is 10 months and still wakes every 1-2 hours overnight. It was unbearable until I learned how to breastfeed lying down. Now we bedshare, and I don't have to fully wake each time he does; I just sleepily stick a boob in his mouth and we both drift back off to sleep. It's not for everyone but it allows me to function during the day - I could totally relate prior to that to what you're saying about mat leave not feeling enjoyable.
The other things I found helpful were a couple of FB groups, one called Desperately Seeking Sleep, and one called the Beyond Sleep Training Project. I got so much reassurance and also lots of practical advice from them.

@SallyTheSloth @Alovelycupoftea88 I’m sorry you are both having similar difficulties. It really is so hard. It’s really comforting to me to hear that I’m not completely mad, that I’m not alone in this, so thank you for sharing. I keep thinking - it’ll be better in a month... and then a month goes by in a blur and it’s not really improved and I feel like I’m still waiting for things to feel better and to feel like I’m more on top of things.

Hey @Dillybear I’d love to know how things are for you now 13 months later? I can relate to a lot of what you are saying.

You know it’s so weird, this came up on active threads and I clicked on it and was over half way through reading this and thinking ‘oh my goodness this poor woman I can relate to this post so well!’… before realising that I had written it!

Things are so much better now. DD is 20m and has slept through the night on and off in phases since she was 8 months when I did sleep training. Her bad phases have always coincided with her having too much sleep in the daytime, which I know is unusual. I’ve found if she starts waking overnight and I cut her nap she will go back to sleeping through.

She’s been sleeping through (7.30 - 7/7.30) for around four months now. Who knows how long this phase will last, but I am enjoying it while it does!

I’m sorry it’s really rough for you now. It’s so hard but for us it has gotten a lot better. What’s going on for you?

I 100% relate to this... my baby is a similar age and has been a serial cat napper since about 4 weeks old and the anxiety I feel about making sure she gets enough day sleep on half an hour at a time is unreal. I totally understand those feelings of failure or not getting it right, even though objectively I can see that it is probably just the way she is wired. I wish I had some advice for you on how to handle it but just wanted you to know you’re not alone.

Oh only just realised this is an old thread! Thanks for the update @Dillybear this gives me a lot of hope. Glad things have improved for you and hope you’re feeling less anxious now x

Thanks for your reply @Dillybear. So funny about not realising it was your own post haha.. Just the sort of thing I would do (esp when deeply deeply sleep deprived..)

Great to know things improved for you & so rapidly after you wrote the original post too! What method of sleep training worked for you?

My 12MO is just not a sleeper, has never slept through. 4 wakings a night is a good night and naps are unpredictable.. and like you had I just have so much anxiety over the whole thing. I wish I could just accept that I wasn’t blessed with a sleeper & move on but I find myself obsessing over sleep blogs, stressing that she’s overtired or undertired and that I’m missing some key piece of the puzzle that would make things all click into place. Honestly I drive myself mad with it. And like you, although the sleep is BAD the anxiety is worse.. but then a few good nights sleep definitely wouldn’t hurt my mental health so it’s all a bit chicken & egg. Did your anxiety settle down when your sleep improved?

Really interesting to know that in your babe’s case it was often under tiredness. I think the internet in general has us anxious types terrified of overtiredness..

Solidarity @EmmaInParis. Things will get better!

Thanks @Wrigglepud, hope you’re holding up ok! Know what you mean about the fear of overtiredness. Naps never seem to have a huge effect on night sleep for us... my baby isn’t sleeping through yet but things got a lot better with some gentle sleep training (similar to the Lucy Wolfe stay and support approach). Naps remain crap though! So I’m not convinced sleep begets sleep as much as the books and blogs like to have us believe

At seven months DD1 was going to bed happily but waking several times a night for various reasons and up for the day at 4.30am. Would only have two naps of 28 minutes each, no matter what we did.

I am a primary teacher and used to being the one setting the routine, so it drove me NUTS that she wouldn’t nap like she was ‘supposed to’ and spent most of my maternity leave trying desperately to extend naps in the hope that sleep begets sleep. For us it didn’t - she started sleeping 12 hours straight in the same week as learning to walk and dropping to one (28 minute) nap per day. So the standard rules of sleep clearly didn’t apply to her.

DD2 is a similarly shitty napper, but at 11 weeks is sleeping ok at night (touching ALL the wood). I’ve realised that it doesn’t matter what I do in the day, she will still cat nap and be grumpy, so I’ve focused by perfectionist tendencies onto perfecting a bedtime routine instead.

I sometimes think that having access to all this information about baby sleep online causes anxiety in those of us predisposed to trying to do everything ‘right’. Our parents in the 70s/80s probably just did what they had to do to survive and hoped for the best…

@EmmaInParis no worries! I am much less anxious now, a very happy mum. I need my sleep to be that way though haha. I hope it gets better for you soon.

@Wrigglepud at eight months we did controlled crying. She could already go to sleep by herself at bedtime but would wake up in the night for hours and nothing apart from waiting for two hours would get her back to sleep. Once she started to sleep through, her naps immediately shortened, and I realised that my efforts to get her to nap the ‘right’ amount were probably making the nights so much worse! Totally agree that ‘sleep begets sleep’ really wasn’t accurate for us.

Being totally honest, I hated doing the controlled crying. I felt horrible. I didn’t believe it would harm our relationship or that she would feel abandoned (I know quite a bit about this stuff), but I didn’t like hearing her distressed without holding her. However…. being on the other side of it, I would definitely try it with a second child if I needed to. I would still hate it, but I know that we are all happier because of it.

Since my daughter’s sleep improved my anxiety has hugely reduced. It took quite a while before I could sleep reasonably well and not feel really on edge, but I knew it would come back as long as I wasn’t being constantly woken, and it has. Getting more sleep has hugely improved my mental health. I am such a happy, loving mum. My marriage is much better. My DD is thriving. I just (understandably) wasn’t coping on such poor sleep.

I don’t know how you’ve made it to 12 months being woken four times a night! You are a hero. I do honestly believe it will get better by itself. I found that at 12m and 18m my DD’s sleep just seemed to mature and I feel pretty confident in her ability to sleep well now. But, I couldn’t cope indefinitely and chose to sleep train and I have no regrets.

@EmmaInParis yes absolutely! Same here.. we can have good nights after bad napping days, bad nights after good naps, periods where naps & nights are both good & of course phases where everything is awful (EVERYTHING haha). One of my friends night weaned with an approach similar to stay & support & had a lot of success. I’ll have to look into it.

@Timeturnerplease laughing at the 28 minute naps! Must have been maddening! Totally agree that in our parents baby raising days things must have been totally different, although all the Victorian discipline ideas were still very much around so I suppose they had their own issues to navigate. The internet is definitely a mixed blessing for perfectionist leaning parents though.

Incidentally your name reminds me regrettably of The Cursed Child haha.. and now I will go back to pretending it was never written. I’m sure your name was inspired by Prisoner of Azkaban anyway so excuse my Cursed Child grumbling.. Also congratulations on your new baby! Hope all is going really well.

@Dillybear thanks for sharing your experience with controlled crying. It sounds like it had a really positive effect on your experience of motherhood. I’m really happy for you that you love being a mum now! I think that’s one thing that I’m hoping for.. that when sleep sorts itself out things will slot into place somewhat in terms of my own rest & time for myself & my husband. So reading about your experience really gives me optimism!

My daughter is 18 months old and her sleep is still all over the place but we do have better days and nights. After obsessing about her sleep for months I stopped and I switched to thinking about what we do when she is awake.
Her sleep isn't always great but I'm happier and I think she is too.

@Wrigglepud 100% Azkaban - Cursed Child should be burnt!

Oh mumma I have been there. I have cried. And cried more. My soul crumbled up like a burnt cornflake. I became someone I didn't know. Nights were just full of dread. I remember one night listening to wake up AGAIN and I was just sobbing to myself saying GO AWAY.

And then in the days when she was nothing but a dream I'd feel absolutely awful and so guilty I was so unable to cope last night. But it's accumulative. Night after night after night of not sleeping. You physically cope because you have to. Some how your body gets you through.

Mentally though...it's just falling apart.

Id cut cleaning my teeth short rather than two mins just because that extra minute felt like a dream.

My advice

• babies are puzzles and change so much.
• even when you think you have it sorted they change.
• there's probably absolutely no reason. Nothing you can do to change them. They just are.

How I got through...
Friends didn't help. Screw them with their annoying babies that alway slept through. mine was waking every 45 mins at her worst. Feeding or cuddles. Who knows. I had her sleep on or with me to get through.

She's now 10months. I had to sleep train her to make it work but it only took two nights and she stopped night feeding. I think she'd forgotten how to self settle though and yu don't have that problem.

I just saw it as extra time with her. And there'll be an end and one day it'll just be a good night that's normal. It may be a while. Or it may be tonight!!!

I found keeping busy in days was better than moping feeling tired and sorry for myself. And then hearing ofy friends babies who were perfect sleepers then hit 3 or whatever and became shit also made me feel good haha.

Hang in there. It's cliche but you're doing great. I did my fair share of dying inside and letting off steam to mum'snet crew!