Worst sleeper in the world competition

[user40816]

(This is a facetious post because I have no idea how else to cope with our situation any more)

I'm almost positive I've spawned the worst sleeping child on the planet and I'm willing to be challenged by anyone else who thinks their DC will trump mine. Give me your horror stories/realities...

Mine were up between 3-5 times every night until the eldest went to school. I remember researching and contacting sleep Nannys . They all said after an initial consultation they offered ongoing support by phone or email (in office hours). I said ‘I wantsomeone who comes to my house and stays at my house until my children learn to sleep’. Nobody offered that.

My child is 7 now but until he was about 18 month we would put him to bed at 7pm, he would fall asleep fairly soundly. Sleep until about 11pm then wake, after that he would wake every hour or so . It took about 30 min to settle him so at best I'd get half hour until he was up again. This would last until about 6am when he would wake for the day. I went to bed at 7pm every night, gh would stay up til 12 or 1 so I could get a decent block of sleep before the night shift. It did improve gradually from when he was about a year old. But even once he started sleeping through he went the other way and started not falling asleep until 9/10 pm!! So we barely got a break, that lasted until he was about 3 (when nap was dropped) Then he started sleeping 7-7.

We tried everything he was diagnosed with cmpa so i cut dairy from my diet. He was on meds for it. We tilted the cot. Got blackout blinds. Played white noise. Taught him to go down awake. Had a strict bedtime routine that we would not alter. The only two things that helped were stopped bf in night (around 10 months) and stopping dummy (around 18 months)

Btw you may feel worse depending on how old your child is. When I would say to friends "he was great by 3 years" they would look at me in horror!!

I used to think my dd was a bad sleeper. Woke hourly until 18 months, then 3-5 times a night until she finally slept through at 3.

Then I had the terror that is DS. He's nearly 4 and does not sleep longer than an hour. We are investigating medical issues now as he responds to no intervention at all.

I can believe she will be one of those where I'll eventually get a solid night's sleep in another 2-3 years.

She's currently 10 months. I've been awake since 0430 after the 10th time she's wanted the boob since her 9pm bedtime, and for the "I've lost count of how many times this has happened now" night in a row I can't get back to sleep. 🙃

My first baby was a Velcro baby, at the slightest noise she would wake up. So many times I was nap trapped under her for hours.

The early years she was up every hour, rarely slept during the day. I used to nap in my car at work on my lunch break.

For some utterly odd reason. I got pregnant again and I lived in fear that there would be two children who don't sleep in the house. Luckily DS sleeps well 😵‍💫

For my Dd we had to get melatonin in the end and now she crashes for block hours.

It's bloody awful

my worst sleeper in the world was regularly up 8-10 times a night til he was 1. Every two hours or so 2-4, every three hours or so since 4. When he was five he slept through occasionally and at nearly seven he’s sleeping through perhaps half of the time. On one plus though, he goes to sleep really well - within 5 minutes usually. He just doesn’t stay asleep and all the sleep training stuff is all about going to sleep, not sleeping deeper.

Sleep training (and I used it on his elder sibling) did not work. Even crying it out, the night I lost my shit and said “just leave him” it took, well, I’m not going to say because it was an awful number of hours.

Ds is almost 3 years. He’s never slept through. He only sleeps around 9 hrs in 24hrs. So bedtime at 8pm will be 5am wake. He still wakes 2-3 times per night and ends up in our bed. Stopping breastfeeding at night around 1 year made 0 difference. When we tried leaving him to settle himself, he holds his breathe and passes out.

My second as a newborn just wouldn't sleep AT ALL. For her first week she was awake almost the entire time. Eventually she took to the sling and slept in that but night time sleep was still a struggle. When she turned 5 months she suddenly would only sleep in my arms during the night, for a month. I'm pretty sure I probably had about an hour of sleep a night for a month. I remember looking at people in the street and vehemently hating them as they had sleep and I didn't.

I think his record at around 10 months was waking every 20 mins, and still being awake most the night in between with naps only happening on long walks. I was walking about 10 miles a day just to get him to nap 30 mins. Lost so much weight I was only about 45kg due to no time to cook, eat or sleep and massive amounts of walking

Mine is 2 & at the "holding hands" stage. I say stage like this hasn't been going on since he was a newborn.

I'm often found at midnight, sitting on the floor, holding hands trying to gently remove my hand, finger by finger, by this time my arm has slightly swollen & is stuck in the cot bars, so have to yank my dead swollen fat arm out of the cot bars & creep out. Usually get caught & have to go back in and start again.

He only wakes up twice but one of the times he wants a bottle too. Everyone told me this would stop at 6 months but nope.

They also told me he'd grow out of waking up 2/3 times per night "soon". Reading these other stories has made me think this was a blatant lie

I hope you get a better night's sleep soon. I am starting to think I'll have to wait until I retire to sleep. (Not that I'm being dramatic )

OP, I opened mumsnet this morning to post this exact topic. You read my cognitively impaired through lack of sleep mind.

Another one with a terrible sleeper. He’s been up maybe 8 times overnight. I lost count.

I genuinely think that my mind doesn’t operate like it did before I had him. It’s like I’ve lost some of my brainpower. Half the time, I can’t think of the word I want to say.

Is anyone else having to go to work now?

My 8yo is still not a good sleeper. He was awful as a baby and at around the 10 month mark, having basically hardly slept since he was born, I brought him into my bed, which was a game changer.

I think temperature is part of it as they both go through a period in spring/autumn where they sleep better only to have it scuppered when it gets really hot/cold.

@Mondayblues23 Yes! The handhold through the cot thing!

Sometimes when I’m in that position I fantasise that he’ll jump awkwardly on my arm and break it so that I can stop work for six weeks.

I had an incident recently where I’d put my arm too far through the cot as he was lying on the side nearer the wall but still wanted to hold my hand. I was in up to my elbow.

He fell asleep and when I went to remove my arm, could I get it through those bars?

I had visions of having to phone the fire brigade to saw one of the bars off and free me. 🤕

I will enter mine. Until she was 4 she just did not sleep through the night. Only waking up 5 times was a good night. I was a zombie.

She also hated napping, from the day she was born. She dropped them all together at 16 months.

She was very bright and energetic. I do not understand how. She must have been defying some law of biology.

We only have the one child...

My 11 year old has a diagnosed sleep disorder. If he's not medicated he can go 48 hours without sleep, if he's medicated he gets around 3-4 hours sleep a night been the same since he was a baby his brain doesn't produce enough melatonin.

My 3 year old got up at 1.30 this morning, didn't go back to sleep until 5 a.m. I couldn't get back to sleep at 5, so I've been up since 1.30 and now I'm off to work. This happens regularly. She used to have night terrors. She grew out of that and now just has multiple bog-standard nightmares every night.

She has slept through the night a couple of times.

Luckily my current job is a piece of piss. I had to leave my much-loved, better-paid one because I just couldn't do it on 3 hours sleep.

Are you sure this is going to make you feel better, OP?

I know this definitely might not help or be what you want to hear but both my children started sleeping waaaaaay better once I stopped breastfeeding them. That said, I completely understand why we do it.

My first woke every 45 minutes to scream for a few hours, vomit and refuse milk (cmpa, feeding aversion etc). Then back to sleep for 45, berore the vomit/scream cycle restarted. By 2 he started to wake maybe every couple of hours, although still only for 10 hours a night. He just turned 4. Is still cosleeping with me (for everyone's sake), wakes up 1-3x a night but only for a wee or to have milk (barista oat and fortified as he possibly also has arfid so doesnt eat enough to maintain his weight), which he does by himself quietly (we're fully set up in our room lol). He's slept through maybe 10 times ever?

My second is (for me) a dream. She's 13 months, doesn't yet sleep through, but does 12-13 hours a night with 1 wake for side lying breastfeeding (excluding teething...). She's also co sleeping with me, and I sleep topless so she would just help herself and not wake me properly even when she was feeding a lot at night.

My take home is that it's not us, it's the individual baby. It's very easy to blame yourself in the depths of nausea and dizziness that comes with extreme sleep deprivation long term.

I stopped counting how many times a night mine woke.
HV asked me to keep a sleep diary, it was in excess of 20 times most nights for a week.
HV sighed and stated “hmm not much can be done with that”. That was it. She had absolutely nothing to offer.
It was pretty much continuous all night every night until he was 5 years old and at full time school.
Most days he woke between 4-4.30am and was up for the day. As was I.
Never slept or napped in the day either.

Throw in the fact that he did EVERYTHING to extreme, including climbing, throwing, he was a bolter too, escaped from every restraint (car seats, high chairs, supermarket child seats in trolleys, could dismantle stair gates bolt by bolt in minutes) destructive behaviours all at 100 miles an hour.

So he was 10 before had another child because I knew I couldn’t cope with another like him.

Luckily child 2 was a better sleeper.

It’s a miserable existence.

Mine slept through the night consistently when he was 12 😂

To be fair he had medical issues as a baby so was tube fed every 3 hours around the clock until he was 3 years old. I think that just created a bad habit for us all! He then co-slept until 12 - from around 6/7 years he would start the night in his own bed but always ended up with us by about 1am.

It feels awful but you survive!

Honestly I'm actually really glad I posted this. Even amongst the "help my infant/toddler still wakes 3 times a night" they were still making me think "3 times would be a bloody dream, why is no one experiencing over 8 every. single. night!?". So as god awful as all these experiences are/were for people, they help in terms of not making me feel like I've completely fucked up somewhere. 😬

Op it certainly isn't that you have fucked up.

The social narrative as I see it is that mothers can "fix" a bad sleeper if they just work hard enough.

Well I call bullshit on that as sleep or sleeping patterns are more chemical/hormones thing than a mother or dad can do frankly.

You have probably come across smug people (I call them Betty's) who are like oh my child slept since she came out the womb, you just have to let them to self sooth 🙄 if your kid is a good sleeper it's fucking luck. I can say that as my first I thought at one point I was going mad (just hadn't slept in 4 days straight) or maybe a odd hour at lunch.
Son comes along did nothing different and he sleeps like the dead. Thank god.

Letting a baby or child with not enough melatonin self sooth and assuming they will sleep is ridiculous as it is dumb.

I have little advice but it's hard and you aren't alone. No matter what the Betty's of this world will tell you.

Mine woke 3 times a night for first 5 weeks.

Then every 45 minutes for the next year. Really.

Then every two hours, until age three when she began to occasionally sleep through the night.

I am not the same person that I was. I think I used to be able to remember things and plan stuff.

@hourbyhour101 totally agree that having a ‘good sleeper’ is luck. I hate the Bettys and their patronising advice.

My friend has four children, treated them all the same, but the third child was one who woke constantly. She was very apologetic when she realised that the great sleep of her first two was luck and not fab parenting.