How do you cope with tiredness

[PollyPocket245]

Hi all :), I’m a first time parent with a three week old and I was just wondering what others do to cope with tiredness? I had a traumatic birth and have found it really tough to try and recover and come to terms with what happened along side the sleep deprivation. Should I really sleep when baby sleeps? I feel like I’d never have any time to myself or to do housework If I did. How do people share things out between partners or family members? I’ll just mention that my baby has reflux so she is very unsettled and wakes often! Just really looking for some insight to help me muddle through. Thank you! Xx

We split the night i took to 2am feed then slept till OH left for work. OH mostly sorted dinner, washed up after work.
Skipped most other housework for quite a while.

No housework!!! sleep whenever you can, make sure you’re eating well

My baby is 10 weeks now. She is bf and we cosleep, the nights have been so much easier since co sleeping. I do all the nights as a result, DH does the vast majority of housework and dinners because DD doesn't nap much in the day and generally won't unless I hold her. That's fine by me, love the cuddles, but it does make it harder to get things done.

Sleep in shifts!

No housework
Sleep whenever you can.
Take things in turns with DH to.make sure you get sleep.
You have to accept no time to yourself if you want sleep. Sorry.

We slept in shifts until ds was about 10 or 11 weeks old. Dh did most of the housework, but my parents came over to help as well. At weekends we did and still do, a thing where one day I take ds for a long walk and the next day Dh does the same. Baby sleeps, the 'walker' gets fresh air and some space and the one at home does whatever they want - sleeps, reads, games, housework (yeah right!) phone a friend etc.

Its so exhausting OP. Especially with reflux. But it wont be for ever, honestly.
Dont expect too much from yourself regarding housework or cooking.
Cosleeping helped me. At this age baby is probably sleeping a lot in the day so yes, have at least one nap and lots of sofa time.
Find a TV show to make the long days more entertaining. Watch it at night if you're up late soothing baby.
Get some treats in your online shopping.
You will sleep again.

If you can lie down next to your baby in a safe way when they sleep, yes, sleep when the baby sleeps during the day. You may not necessarily even get out of bed until later if that works for you.

Housework doesn't matter. Honestly, it will be a tip for the first couple months and that's absolutely fine. You or your partner can get caught up with the big stuff on the weekends. Ready meals - we ate ready meals pretty much every day or something simple like pasta.

And then go to bed early. With both of ours, from birth, I'd hand dh the baby as soon as I'd done the early evening feed around 7/8pm. Then I got a shower and went to bed. He'd stay up until midnight/1am, bring them to me for a feed as necessary, and then go back downstairs. Watched like all of Game of Thrones at the time on a box set doing circles of the lounge just to keep baby sleeping. This meant that even if the rest of the night was tough, I did get about 4 ish hours of sleep by 1am so that meant I was managing okay (then he went to bed). Similarly, he'd get up around 6am and especially on the weekends, would give me a lie in so I could get an extra hour or two of sleep that morning. And weekend afternoons I'd regularly go and sleep for a few hours too.

This really tough bit doesn't last forever. You'll one day have free time again and the house will be clean (ish) and you'll cook nice meals from scratch and have romantic dinners alone together, but literally you just need to prioritise showering and sleeping and remembering to brush your hair for the first 6-8 weeks, so all that can wait.

My biggest bit of advice is to just accept that you won’t have time to yourself for a long time. Maybe the odd snippet here and there, but no proper time to relax or plan anything.
Forget housework. Just do absolutely vital stuff. And sleep whenever you can, go to bed at 7pm. And just accept that this is how it is. A ‘new normal’. Then it will gradually get better and you will suddenly one day realise it’s better.
I found it much easier when I wasn’t seething with resentment about all the stuff I couldn’t do all the time.

Coffee?!

I just used to go for a nap once a day with baby (sometimes twice) but the big saviour was DH taking over from about 9pm till 1am so I'd go to bed as soon as we'd finished eating - meant I got usually 4-5 hours uninterrupted sleep. Housework can wait - I largely kept on top of the laundry and managed to unpack the dishwasher/sorted bottles but meals were reduced to pasta, stir-fry and oven pizza for a good few weeks and I ate a lot of toast during the day!

Thank you so much for all your replies. Some really helpful ideas, I think I need to lower my expectations in terms of housework, I need to walk around with blinkers on .

At the moment we’re going to bed at 10 and both waking for feeds so both as tired as each other and pretty useless. Split shifts sounds like the best idea I think and taking heart that it won’t last forever xxx

Ah it's so tough trying to heal from birth with a tiny baby. I remember obsessing about catching up on the sleep I had missed during the birth, convinced I'd get a chance once home from hospital. It never happened of course!

My OH took the baby from 5am and so I got a good lie in in the mornings, and he'd take her for a long pram walks in the day so that I could nap.

Slings are great for doing little bits of housework while baby sleeps. Ready meals are a godsend. And tea, all the tea!

I used to do all the night feeds up to 4am (breastfeeding) then DH would take baby from 4-8am with an expressed bottle. Those 4 hours kept me sane.... although poor DH ended up with a 4am wake habit long after it wasn’t needed any more!

Another vote for shifts - getting a 4 hour chunk is a real gamechanger and I found if I was getting that, it was just about survivable. DS is still a bad sleeper at 18 months, but nothing like those early days. Take each day as it comes and to try to get a tiny bit of time to yourself (I found a 15 minute bath each day did great things for my MH and also helped with healing stitches - don't use bubbles but tea tree oil is good).

I'm sorry to hear about your traumatic birth. I had one too, so I know it's not just physical exhaustion but the emotional side too. It will take time to come to terms with.

I expressed/formula fed, my DH did 5-11pm while I slept and then took over when DD woke after that. That worked well.

Batch cook if you can to half the cooking time. Just rest and eat when the baby sleeps. Everything ca wait.

*everything else can wait

Let go of the housework. Do as little as possible. Just rest and enjoy your baby as much as you can. You will eventually settle into a routine and find little pockets of time for yourself throughout the day.

Firstly congratulations to you both

Absolutely sleep when the baby sleeps, even if you are just dozing, it will do you the world of good.

I BF so never needed DH through the night, he slept through so he was fighting fit in the days of a weekend and his leave and later on in an evening on his return from work he would take over.

So he would sleep through, then get up with baby in the morning so I could relax for a couple of hours.

Ah all of this talk of split shifts turns my mind to the horror early weeks of DC2 when DC1 who was 16 months decided to suddenly start waking in the nights and going on a manic screaming crawls!

Good times

No housework apart from the bare minimum- toilet and sinks clean, quick once a week hoover, washing up and laundry, wipe kitchen sides, any essential tidying. I very rarely did more than this for the first 6 months.

Started gradually doing a bit more as he got older. By the time ds was around 15 months or so I was doing an amount of cleaning I was happy with. Your baby is still absolutely tiny and there is no rush, concentrate on your baby & recovery

Go to bed/sleep when baby does.

I started putting baby in a bedtime routine from early on and went to bed at 8pm

You will survive

Sleep as much as possible
Eat well
Do the housework that you are happy with

Thank you all for your kind words and advice! We’ve come up with a sleep schedule and tried it last night. So much better knowing that I will get 4 hours of undisturbed sleep! Xx

That's great Polly

That sounds brilliant! Sleeping in shifts was our strategy too, I found I could just cope with things if I got four hours of sleep. Other than that, try to remember that things will get easier and you won't feel this way forever.

We initially did “shifts” but then tried alternating nights so that one of us gets a full night’s sleep instead of just a few hours at a time.