Husband says he can't cope getting up at night

[Lights22]

We have two children (4 and just turned 1). Neither have ever slept through the night although the 4 year old improved significantly when we started to cosleep. I don't remember what we did with the eldest when she was younger and before cosleeping but this time round I'm struggling with the night feeds and full time work. It wasn't easy on mat leave but at least I didn't have any responsibilities towards anyone else during the day and bub and I could muddle through. For reference he was waking up up to 17 times a night, is now about 6. Sometimes it's a cuddle and back to sleep, other times it's both boobs and back to sleep.

It dawned on me shortly after going back to work that it was silly and not exactly fair that I was still doing all the night wakings despite now being back at work full time so spoke with husband about it and he now gets up when I tell him to.

I've noticed though a change in his behaviour for being more tired in the days. Much shorter with the eldest in particular. Some other things too but mainly affecting his relationships with us in the family. Over dinner tonight I said I've been thinking about nights and maybe it's not working him getting up because of the impact it is having, and he replied saying he can't cope with it.

I was kind of stumped. I've not had a single solid night's sleep for 5 years now (rubbish pregnancy with eldest). And I mean: Not. A. Single. Night. I'm now grey, wrinkled, fat, finding being the ever-accommodating manager who has complex conversations at work very tricky, to say the very least. Does he think I can cope? I guess technically I've not had a meltdown (well I did get unwell during the second pregnancy and started meds and got help etc, but potentially that was hormonal... Jury is still out). Technically I'm still alive and functioning and adore my family. But he can't cope. What an odd word. What an odd thing to say to me!

I'm not here for you to slag off my husband, he's a kind and loving man, but I'm perplexed. Like, what would happen if I said that? How do I carry on doing all the nights and the full time job? I don't really get it. And no, part time is not an option 🤷🏻‍♀️

For me it's just the reality of where we are in our life now and bub will improve too as he gets older.

Yet your husband has explained he's struggling to cope, your 4yo hasn't improved so what do you think will change?

You can't be annoyed at your husband being honest.

Well if you won't sleep train and your husband is shit when he is tired then I guess you just need to muddle on.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand these posts. There isn't a magic <anything> that will make your husband better able to deal with night wakings or you for that matter.

Personally I would sleep train. I've got no idea what gentle parenting is tbh but my version of sleep training didn't involve leaving my kid for hours to cry or telling them off for it.

Anyway, good luck whatever you decide.

Please note my earlier post about my son with a diagnosed sleep disorder and autism - I’m saying this kindly -

When your 4 year old comes into bed with you, you put them back. Again and again and again. 200 times a night if necessary. You don’t say anything to them, except maybe “it’s time for sleep” and repeat and honestly just keep leading them back to their bed. If they have autism they’ll need you to be utterly consistent with it, young children with autism are often very black and white about things and if you’re letting them come into your bed you’re letting them think that’s okay, that’s what you do; that’s the rule. You need to change the norm, change the rule.

(I’ve spent many a night sitting on the floor by the sons bed, silently just sitting there until he fell asleep, because I needed him to learn his bed was for sleeping, not ours, at one point we had an extra tall stair gate across his bedroom door so he couldn’t even get to the point of walking out into our room, he’d cry and we knew he was awake and we’d go to him and say it’s time for sleep and keep encouraging him to go back to bed, often he would be awake for hours but we would just sit there silently so he knew we were there but we would just wait until he recognised it was time to sleep).

You really are making life hard for yourselves with this. And if your one year old is eating really well during the day they don’t need feeding overnight. I would wonder if perhaps they are also showing signs of autism if they are waking that much. (Our son was very similar at that age). I would only offer water when they wake so there is no reward for them waking.

Ultimately if they do have additional needs you may not be able to completely “cure” the sleep issue but I would definitely try this and see if it helps.

I can sympathise with your 4 year old - I have a 5 year old with ASD and although she sleeps well, I get that parenting techniques that work with typical children aren’t magic bullets with kids like her!

Having said that, it doesn’t sound like you’ve made any meaningful changes to your sleeping arrangements which will result in a better rest for everyone.

I actually admire your husband’s honestly- being able to say “if you want to carry on waking up six times every night knock yourself out, but that shit isn’t for me.” I don’t think that’s unreasonable, as long as he’s onboard with a solution.

Few thoughts here

To all those suggesting 'just sleep train', for many it's not that easy, and it often isn't a silver bullet. Sleep 'problems' can exist in 4+ year olds without and ASD diagnosis so if that turns out not to be the issue @Lights22 I don't think you should see your daughters behaviour as something that needs immediate 'fixing'. I mean obviously you'd rather she didn't wake in the night & come into you but thinking that omg I must fix her sleep on top of that is gonna add to the stress you're already under. My younger child still goes wandering into our bed half the week. She's 8. No ASD. I have sought lots of advice and overall concluded that (1) it's more normal than I realised (2) when I try to fix it I get more stressed and we all sleep worse!

This will rile up the sleep trainers, but for more sleep I'd bring your one year old back into your bed. Means you can comfort at night without waking up so much. You can do night weaning after a bit (or maybe now, basically whenever you have the energy) while still co-sleeping. 'Dr jay Gordon night waning method' (just google it, no need to buy a book) proved the most effective thing for getting my eldest to sleep through the night. It's sleep training I suppose, just a bit softer.

I kind of agree with those saying some cope easier on less sleep, but I don't think it's actually this . . . Basically some people (or some people at some times) find it much easier to go back to sleep when woken, so end up getting more sleep. I found broken nights much harder when combined with basically insomnia on my part, after first waking I couldn't go back to sleep. It was most crippling when my daughter was 8/9 months, and I went to the GP & got prescribed something to help. Game changer. Children still not sleeping through but I got enough sleep so coped. I wonder if your husband finds it harder to go back to sleep @Lights22? Related to above point re cosleeping, i also found that helped with being able to get back to sleep. If you can turn over and comfort a baby/toddler rather than get up and into another room you don't wake up as much so can get back to sleep sooner

@Xrays she's absolutely catatonic though. If she wakes really early in the evening we can get her back to sleep in her bed once, but after that she's inconsolable. We don't mind her coming in, it means she doesn't wake anymore and she feels safe. And she gets decent sleep. That's ok with us and tbh has far less of an impact on us than bub. Thank you for your kindness

It’s very hard. I do understand. I have bad nights with Ds when I literally felt it was never going to end. He’s now nearly 11 and with the melatonin- which you should ask about if you get the chance during the assessments/ appointments etc - he does sleep a lot better than he did. He still wakes 2/3 times a night. We have reached the point now though where he can stay on his iPad quietly for a while so we can sleep though!

@breadwidow we would definitely cosleep with the 1yo if we didn't have the 4yo in lol. On nights he won't settle we'll bring him in but he has to go back when his sister comes in, she can't cope with him being there. And you're right, our children don't need fixing, but my husband and I do need to find a sustainable way of getting through until baby's sleep is better 😊

Hi

I recommended Millpond earlier but just caught up with your latest posts -
search Cerebra sleep training service, it’s free!

I commend your DH for being honest. When my DS was waking 6 times a night I was absolutely not coping. I was exhausted and frustrated and grumpy with everything and everyone. "Just cope better" isn't always possible and it's really important to recognise our hard limits rather than trying to make something work that just doesn't.

For me, we found a holistic sleep consultant who helped us make some changes to our daily routine and sleep practices that fairly quickly reduced night wakes from 6+ to 3 with minimal crying and no leaving to cry / CIO at all.

I appreciate that your DS is sleeping better than he was already, so doing nothing and waiting for things to improve is an option. But at the same time, what if there were some small changes you could make which let you all get more sleep?

@Lights22 could a short term solution just to get you rest is have you sleep with 1 year old, and husband with 4 year old? We did this for a while (though kids a bit closer in age), meant we all got more sleep.

Some strong messages here. I'm too tired to know the right answer - I co sleep with a 4 year old who rarely sleeps through, but is no trouble anymore (he helps himself to sippy cups of calorie fortified milk - seeking arfid diagnosis - and the potty), and a 14 month old who helps herself to breastfeeding once or twice but barely wakes me to do so. I'm a lot better rested than when ds was little with allergies and reflux and didn't sleep for more than 45 minutes in every 4 hours overnight.

My dh also could not cope, temper wise, with being woken by our eldest overnight when baby number 2 came. Hence ds was back in with me and the baby very soon. DH does now get up at 6.30, brings me tea, and takes the eldest to play in the living room while me and baby sleep in a little before nursery (we both work full time compressed hours over 4.5 days).

I presume you're the same as me, going to bed early (usually) and leaving the housework to DH, since he's well rested and has more baby free time? If your preference is against sleep training then - for us - it's key to divide and conquer the basics needed to keep life going in these early years.

Could you sleep separately, one of you in with the 4yo and the 1yo in with (probably) you?

That's what we do with our 3&5yo's.

Mn is very keen on sleep training, but you aren't as alone as it seems with this. Many of my eldest (y1) friends don't sleep through, or only sleep with a parent in the bed. It's not ideal, but it's the norm for a lot of people.

@Somuchgoo just suggested same thing!

I was wondering about divide and conquer. As you know, babies seek bf mums out for comfort, pain relief, teething etc as well as milk and it's really common to still want a night feed at one. So can you sleep in the room with one year old (co-sleeping?) leaving your husband to the older child?

I hired a sleep consultant who was very supportive of breastfeeding when I was struggling with so many wake ups for so long. She suggested environmental changes and routine changes and we did nothing different in terms of how we responded to baby. It all definitely helped. So for instance our baby settled quicker with brown or pink noise, patting not rocking and putting the temp up to 18.5.

Can you adjust the pattern? By this I mean i was always better on the late shift, so OH would go to sleep at 9.30ish and then get about 5 hours. If baby woke after then, he would take over and I would sleep from 2-7ish. I found it much more manageable if I had one good unbroken stretch of 4 hours.

But yes, he needs to find a way to cope- but you both need to find a way through this together.

Also - have you claimed dla for your 4 year old? You don’t need a diagnosis; they just need to have more care needs than an average child of the same age and the sleep issues form part of that. We were given high rate care for Ds aged 2.5 before he was formally diagnosed with autism - he had just been referred to the diagnostic pathway at that stage and wasn’t formally diagnosed until 3.5. Google the cerebra dla guide, it’s very helpful. It just occurred to me that might make a difference financially in terms of needing to work etc perhaps or work less and might be worth exploring if you haven’t already.

I think one of you with each is a good idea during the week so you can both get more sleep. I only have the limited experience of my own two children, but they didn’t wake as frequently at 1 year, I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be. 💐

I would struggle to cope with that as well tbh.
There’s plenty of sleep training methods you can employ that don’t leave you with a crying baby, are quite simple, and usually work in a couple of nights.

But he can't cope.

What does that actually mean? He's tired? Who isn't. He doesnt like it? Who does? He is acting like it is optional to parent your child. FFS. He needs to grow the fuck up.

Is your DH truly still on board with not sleep training? I agree with a PP that he is telling you very clearly that something needs to change. "Not coping" has a very different meaning to "struggling to cope" or "struggling to adjust". It sounds like you are at a point when the detrimental effects of not training far outweighs the negative effects of going back on idealised principles.

We also were in the 'no to sleep training' camp with non-sleeping DC1 (now diagnosed with ASD and ADHD) until she massively regressed again at 12mo, waking every 30 mins. We were all 3 of us broken, nobody was functioning, it was downright dangerous (driving, work, and just generally being the carers of a small toddler), so ultimately we decided the lack of sleep for DC and our sheer exhaustion was far more detrimental to her wellbeing than sleep training. She needed more sleep to grow and thrive, and we needed more to function and care for her. It wasn't a magic bullet, but it did make a huge improvement (she started sleeping for 4hr stints, which was manageable).

I agree night weaning would be the best bet initially though. We did it by reducing the night feeds by one, then spacing the remainder evenly through the night. If she woke before that we would cuddle and rock etc to soothe, but strictly no milk until the time we'd chosen. After a week, DC had adjusted and was waking at/after our new 'set' time, so we made the gaps a little longer, then repeated each week. It felt pretty gentle.

The other thing that helped was discovering she likes to spread out when she sleeps, and adjust her temperature by sticking legs out from under the covers when needed. She hated the sleeping bags that restricted her movement and made her too hot (this was discovered later at 16mo completely by accident). I know you discovered your DC prefers to be warmer than average, but there might be other factors at play also?

Hey don't you put a double bed in your 4yr ilds bedroom and one of you sleep with her the other co sleeps with baby?
Our DC3 has ASD among other medical needs and we take turns co sleeping because nothing else works and sleep is important.

Hey = why.

I said I've been thinking about nights and maybe it's not working him getting up because of the impact it is having, and he replied saying he can't cope with it.

Why did you say that to him, if you didn’t want him to tell you the truth? What did you expect him to say? You obviously know he’s not coping with it, otherwise you wouldn’t have said this to him.

You need to find a solution to this that works for you both. I have no idea what that is, as both of you working full time and looking after two night wakers must be exhausting.

The most important thing is that you communicate and listen to each other. Surely he’s aloud to say if he can’t cope with something, and so are you.
I often have a meltdown and tell my dh I can’t cope, and just talking about stuff, even if there isn’t a real solution is helpful.

Further to my earlier post, our DS is also awaiting a ASD diagnosis. I think this explains why it took nearly one year of us having to sleep with him in his new big boy bed and new bedroom when we moved house when he was 3. He finds comfort in his routines and often gets upset when his routine changes. He was also a Velcro baby who would only sleep on my chest for the first few weeks.

Sleep training doesn’t always necessarily mean leaving your child to cry themselves to sleep. We never did that with any of our 3 DC.