Children’s sleep ruining my life

[Beehavewillyou]

Baby wakes up anytime between 4-5am if he hasn’t woken up screaming in the middle of the night for milk, which we are weaning him off. Toddler wakes up screaming or wakes up at 5am after you’ve spent two hours settling the baby.

DH helps 50/50 with it all but it’s just so depressing. I just need sleep and a break and it’s ruining my life. When does it get better?

IME when they start school...nothing o tried worked

(Single mum of twin toddlers here and a primary ager)

No advice, just solidarity. Sleep is hard! I’ve heard “it’s a season” and this is the only thing that keeps us going. I’ve also got a cleaner because I’m too tired to clean (thought I know we’re lucky in that respect). Keep going!

Thank you 🙏🏻 it’s just so hard! Honestly if they just always slept through I would have 20 of them! The sleep deprivation is so hard!

last night our 3.5 year old and 10 month old slept through the night (an absolute rarity, I am utterly sleep deprived), and our dog decided that he needed to throw up at 2 and 4 am. I could have cried.

Oh god @madeleine85 you couldn’t make it up could you

It got better for me at around age 3. Of course when the eldest was 3 I then had a newborn. So it's taken almost 6 years to get a full night's sleep again. Christ it's hard work.

How old are baby and todddler?

It does get better. Honestly. But it's flipping hard in the meantime. I've had one that had severe obstructive sleep apnoea (god that was hideous) and one of my twins has eczema that wakes him up when the weather is hot (DREADING the next heat wave).

Survival mode. Go to bed early as often as you can. It means not having an "evening", but it's not forever. You could deliberately stay up 3 night's and get 4 night's when you go to sleep at the same time as the kids. I've found that to be an ok balance. Let housework slide. Again, it's irritating but it's not forever. You know if you don't vacuum.... once you do it'll still look exactly the same! Minimum requirements for hygiene only.

Make sure that you do get a decent break. Sometimes you juggle both and DH gets a rest, sometimes he juggles both and you get a rest. Sometimes you take one each so they are getting individual attention. Do you have family that will do an afternoon so you and DH can have a lunch date? (Much easier to organise than evening dinner in my experience)