11 months without a full night sleep

[Lammveg]

Hi all

As the title really. My DD is 11 months and hasn't ever slept through. I'm up at least 3 times a night, and she's EBF so I'm the only one who can do the nights really. She will sometimes settle for DH but will just wake again a bit later to feed. She also still won't sleep in her cot or even a next to me as she wants to be touching me all of the time at night so we co sleep. She refuses bottles and dummies.

I've been ill now for 7 days, have never been so ill in my life..headache, fatigue, gastro issues, sneezing etc and while usually I cope well with the nights I'm just so so exhausted. DH also struggles with the intensity of DD in the day so I feel guilty that I'm not so active with DD at the minute.

Not sure what I'm asking for really. Just needed to vent.

I feel your pain. I'm at 3 years and I have probably slept through the night 20 times as my daughter still wakes multiple times a night. Some of the nights have been when I have been in hospital and been away for work.

When she was 4 months she was in my arms for about 23h a day and I was utterly exhausted and totally touched out. My partner started taking her in the mornings which he still does. He used to bring her back when she needed a feed or settling. There were a few nights when I slept in the spare room and my partner brought her too me for each feed and then took her for setting. I rarely lasted the full night but the every hour or so helped especially when run down or ill.

It didn't help with the sleep but the rest and "off time" helped with the touched out. I started having regular baths to have that little time when I couldn't be the first responder to my daughters needs even though I was only in the next room. I didn't have the concentration for grown up books so started reading children's books borrowed from the library

Isn't that just the way of it with EBF. Have you considered introducing formula? Do you plan to switch to cows milk at 1 year? I'm not trying to start a bf debate but I would have thought this is a pretty obvious candidate for the reason your daughter wakes up at night. Assuming you feed her when she wakes?

My daughter woke just as much on formula as she did breastfeeding and now she doesn't have anything overnight and still wakes up. There's a long list of things that do wake her up that aren't related to what she drinks. I was promised by so many people that switching to formula would stop her waking up or allow my partner to do the nights. Neither happened!

Sounds quite normal. My eldest didn’t sleep through until over a year and my youngest was 3.
It was hell at the time and I have very few memories of the first 3 years of my youngests life as I think I was too exhausted to process anything.
It does pass eventually

I was the same up to 15 months. I had to give up breast feeding because I just couldn't deal with the lack of sleep any more. It took a lot of work and it wasn't fun. I stopped feeding in the day completely. And then we eventually cracked it when I had to be away for 2 nights for work.

It does get better.

My eldest will be 6 in February and my youngest is 2.5, I've not had a full night's sleep in almost 6 years. It does get better but a breastfed baby under a year old is unlikely to sleep through. Recently I've only been up once or twice a night but that's also taking into account my eldest with ADHD who doesn't sleep until 11pm so it's up twice in the 6 hours I have available to sleep .

At the point you're at I thought I might actually die. I'm still alive but there have been ramifications to my health. I couldn't have a third because I couldn't do 2 years of hourly wakes again which is what both mine did. Eldest was definitely worst and always a nightmare to get to sleep and to get back to sleep on waking.

Anyway, it's shit, you probably won't die. It's still shit.

God I love them though and wouldn't change a hair on their heads otherwise

Did you breastfeed? I combi fed my eldest so he had formula and was the worst sleeper of the 2 by far.

Solidarity. Mine just turned one. The best night of his life is 4 wakes.

Thanks all for the replies. I'm not looking to stop BF yet. I'm not convinced it will solve the issue and i don't want to have to add making bottles to my to do list lol

I know it's normal for them to wake up this often, I think I just am down about it at the minute because I'm so unwell...although feeling slightly better this evening. I'm usually the first to tell people on MN that it's normal for babies/infants to wake through the night!

Very glad to hear other people's experiences and that it is hard but will pass. You've made me feel much less alone.

It can be normal AND utterly shit and terrible and horrible to get through. There are many aspects of parenting that are normal AND awful, lack of sleep, kids getting sick and the worry that comes with it, seeing them upset by something you can't fix for them, the impact the first year of nursery and associated illness has on your career... All my least favourite things.

It's ok to moan about it, it's ok to find it hard, it's ok to get frustrated and need a cry or to hand the child to your partner and close yourself in the bathroom for a bubble bath. You're human, you're allowed to be human. You're allowed to not be perfect.

You're also allowed to moan about breastfeeding, to find it hard, yet to continue doing it for your child and because it feels right even though it's hard. I'm just saying, parenting can be hard even when it's normal, even when it's expected, just like anything else. Looking forward around that to make life easier like planning down time where your partner takes over, like paid childcare, like taking up yoga and protecting half an hour a day for it, whatever helps you personally to remain feeling human is how we all manage through.

Take care

Yeah I think I agree with this.

It's anecdotal and. I dont mean to be a Debbie downer but this was the experience of all my friends who EBF..

One didn't get sleep a full night until her baby was 20m 🥴 and even that was because she was forced to give up BF due to medical reasons. She was devastated and so upset about stopping but simultaneously also destroyed by sleep deprivation as she wouldn't try any alternatives that would give her a break (eg combi or expressed milk / dropping a feed or restricted feeding times) she also wouldnt sleep train as it was "cruel" (i sleep trained 😬 #noregrets)

It's just so hard.
Being a mum is just really fucking hard....
All you can do is make the best choices you can and then be confident in those decisions.

Also being sick with small kids is THE worst. I have cried bitter tears this winter 😅😅😅 so have NOTHING but sympathy....

You are clear you want to keep breastfeeding so you have to try and go with it and nap where / when you can.

DH also struggles with the intensity of DD in the day so I feel guilty that I'm not so active with DD at the minute.

Going to put this rather bluntly but this is the problem. Your DH needs to stop copping out and you need to stop feeling guilty when you're ill.

What does struggles with the intensity of DD in the day even mean??! Every parent has to learn to deal with this, whatever it looks like for their particular child. This sounds like laziness. I'd be cross if someone tried to leave all the parenting to me.

Hi OP, it's probably an unpopular opinion but you need to sleep train. I this when my son was 7 months old. He woke every hour and I was so run down and unwell. We followed a paid for course by a sleep consultant (not sure if I'm allowed to "advertise" which one on here). Essentially we night weaned off the boob with the help of my husband, and he slept through. He's been an excellent sleeper since. It was transformational for both of us, it doesn't have to be this way, it's actual torture to not get enough sleep 💐

@Lammveg I can assure you that giving up BF is not the magic solution that lots seem to be suggesting 😊 I had to stop BF at 10 months for medical reasons (my own) and switched to formula. DS is now 3 and has still never slept through the night 😂 If I manage a 3hour uninterrupted stretch of sleep in a night then it’s considered successful 😅

Sorry you’re feeling so poorly. We’ve had covid, really heavy colds and Norovirus in our house during December so I really do feel your pain on that one. It makes everything feel so much harder too.

My DH as hands on as he can be but works at sea for weeks at a time so I’m solo during that time. When he’s home it’s great but DS will just not settle for him at night at all (he will let him put him to bed no problem, but when he wakes during the night DH can’t resettle him) so it doesn’t even improve then. He just gets so upset when DH goes in during the night and I end up lying awake having to listen to him getting so worked up and upset so for me it’s not worth it - I’d rather just do it myself, he settles much faster and with no fuss and everyone can get back to sleep quicker!

I did very gentle sleep training at 8 months and she's slept through ever since. If you're up for it, it's worth considering. My baby was miserable before from lack of sleep and would scream all day. After sleep training she was much happier and able to cope with the world. Seeing the day and night difference in her ability to cope made it worth it.

It's tough with a higher needs baby. DC1 didn't sleep through until just after her second birthday which was tough but then I had DC2 who was a whole different ballgame as, like yours, he needed to be on me all of the time. DC1 would be fed in the night which I understood as being part of the "deal" but could then be put down again awake and would self soothe back to sleep. DC2 just had to be attached to me and I spent months asleep in a semi upright position with him asleep on my chest. Totally against any safe sleeping guidance but it was the only way to get any sleep.
Anyway, dealing with your situation - the most important thing for now is that you get better. The only way you can do this is by resting yourself, something you're unable to do at the moment. Is there anywhere you can go for at least a night, if not two, and just sleep. A hotel if you can afford it? Your parents or in-laws or a siblings or a friends if any of them have a spare room & a quietish house? Don't rule out childfree friends and think they won't be understanding.
Your DH will find it tough but he needs to step up. It can be really easy for you to step in and do much of the entertaining during the day as you're used to it and the expert but it creates a two tier system where you are expected to be the main parent and, having established that role, it is really hard to reverse. My DC are a teen and a tween and they still start 90% of their questions with "mummy" rather than "daddy" and, other than on maternity leave, I have worked at least 0.6 since they were born and have been 0.8 for the past 7 years.

17 months on and the the best has been only one night wake-up and she is formula fed

Currently in the middle of a sleep regression and last night was 4 wakeups one of which was a split night wake and up for close to two hours , then awake 2 hours later again!!!

I’m hoping one day to sleep again 💤

You do feel like you will never sleep again.

We had 1 wake up a night until she slept through consistently at 18 months. What i will say though is as a formula fed baby, she was less sickly than her breastfed counterparts. We swapped to cows milk at aged 1

That sounds really tough. I think it is definitely possible to have her sleeping through the night by her age - my 6mo either doesn't wake or wakes once and she is not some kind of unicorn super easy baby.

It sounds like you are feeding to sleep, so she is unable to self settle. Copied and pasted from The Sleep Store website:

"Once all babies are around 5 months old, their sleep cycles will change considerably. Rather than drift in and out of light sleep throughout the night, babies start to wake fully between sleep cycles. So ALL babies start waking 4-6 times, or more, each night.
"So babies over 5 months don't actually 'sleep through' - if they can self-settle, they can go back to sleep 4-6 times during the night without your help.
"But if your baby can't fall asleep without your help at bedtime, he is likely to need your help to go back to sleep each time he wakes in the night. Generally babies want or need the same settling technique during the night that they rely on at bedtime to get to sleep. So if you feed your baby to sleep at bedtime, it will seem that nothing apart from feeding to sleep will settle them in the night!"

I think some form of sleep training is the answer. There are gentle ways to do it (e.g. spaced soothing) if that is what you are comfortable with. I know some people are anti-sleep training because it typically involves some amount of crying, but just think of all the future crying that will be avoided once she is able to settle herself and sleep through the night.

Finally, I would note that there is a chance that your baby is genuinely hungry during at least one of her wakes. But at her age it will be because she is not getting enough calories during the day - and that will be because she is feeding so much at night, so a bit of a vicious circle iyswim.

I thought the point of switching to formula / cows milk / no night feeds is not that the baby will magically sleep through - it’s that it no longer has to be the OP dealing with it every night!

Not getting enough sleep, especially when ill, is the worst OP. I hope you get the rest you need soon.

She doesn't NEED to sleep train. It may have been your choice but many people prefer to ride it out, continue to feed, accept that it'll be tough but pass rather than pass that trauma to a child by forcing them not to seek comfort at night.

She may CHOOSE to sleep train because the situation is untenable which is again a perfectly reasonable choice if it feels the only way forward but she doesn't NEED to unless she feels it's the best thing.

You're suggesting formula makes a child LESS likely to get ill? Despite all evidence to the contrary? Despite breastmilk having proven immunity benefits?

people prefer to ride it out, continue to feed, accept that it'll be tough but pass rather than pass that trauma to a child by forcing them not to seek comfort at night.

Thank you for this I could never find the right words to explain why I am not sleep training but this is 100% the reason