Is motherhood like this for all mothers?

[BeGreenSwan]

Some background info on me: 26, happily married, SAHM and have an 11 month old daughter. None of my siblings, cousins, brothers in law, friends have children yet so I'm unsure if my experience of motherhood is normal.

Firstly, I love motherhood and I love my daughter to much :). I'm happy going to baby groups, going to the park, playing, cooking healthy weaning meals. I don't mind the nappy changes, cooking etc. There's a lot of cleaning but I'm getting used to it! My daughter used to wake up hourly (from 5 months old to 9 months old) but now wakes up 2x per night if she's not teething - we co sleep which makes the night wakes easier.

However - I am extremely tired, have minimal alone time, minimal time with husband or time for hobbies.

My mother asked me if I've been watching a popular TV show on Netflix... I was confused, how would we have the time? Are most women with babies/toddlers actually having evenings where they watch TV? My daughter is low sleep needs so she goes to sleep at 9PM and wakes up at 7AM. After she sleeps, I'm tired and don't want to watch TV. We do chores, shower then go to sleep. My husband helps a lot with chores so there's no issue there!

My mother in Law asked me if I've been going to the gym.... nope. Could I find time, sure but my body is already aching and I'm sleep deprived. Aren't most mothers too tired to go to the gym?

I keep being told how important it is to have date nights. The thought of a date night is exhausting... we went on holiday in the summer which was really nice but I don't want to have to go on date nights when I'm already tired.

Just posting this as I'm confused by other people, especially mothers assuming that my life would be the same as before.

I also watched tons of series and Netflix etc pre moving-baby , once they started moving it was game over for 3 years ! And people saying it gets easier , of course it does if you just have one otherwise you just start from scratch again and again 😂.
Also to their pp whose kids slept 11 hours , some children are like that but many aren’t. I had a mixture of children, we had a great routine , dropped naps were necessary, it’s just luck tbh and if you have more than one child you can see that clearly . One of mine is actually a teenager and still up at the crack of dawn no matter how late a night.

You sound like me Op. My child is low sleep needs too and I simply have hours more time that has to be spent looking after my kid than other parents who have kids that sleep a lot. It is what it is! It does get a lot easier when they start dropping naps as nighttime sleep is less disrupted and you can plan the day easier.

Other ways some parents claw back time and energy for themselves include buying packaged food, allowing their kids to watch tv, having family or babysitters to help, and sleep training. It took me a while to realise how other parents were making different choices that made their lives easier. i'm currently pregnant with my second and might consider sleep training this time around, and am definitely going to be getting a babysitter from time to time as i have no family in this country to help.

Are you still breastfeeding? that drains your energy too.

It's not too late at all

My children woke up a lot at 11mo - we put them to bed around 7 or 8 and had a bit of an evening without them anyway. I did have to go back in every hour or two and resettle them but it didn't take that long, I found this OK and not too exhausting. Then once we went to bed we coslept. I found this gave me the most sleep (I appreciate it doesn't work like that for everyone).

I didn't have a lot of time for hobbies but we did have time to watch TV. It depends what it is though really. Something mindless and silly is more appealing when you're tired than some complicated plot where you forget who everyone is.

It is worth looking into iron, vitamin D and any other vitamins you might be low in because that can drain your energy too.

My experience of Motherhood is exactly the same as yours! Although mine are teens now so have time for gym and tv. But when they were little absolutely no mental or physical capacity for anything but the essentials.

Oh bless you OP that’s so hard. My baby goes to bed at 7pm at the absolute latest (usually half 6) so we have our evenings. I think that’s makes all the difference

People who are a bit distanced from the tiny child stage forget how absolutely bone-achingly knackering it is.

I do think people completely forget how difficult it is having a small child

I do remember in particular a lot of people being surprised by me going to bed at 9pm... You know, after a 6am wake up, 12 hours + with a full on toddler who woke up twice during the night....

Maybe it's because my children slept really well from a very young age but I found that one they had gone to bed at 7, I was free to do anything I pleased (without taking the piss, obvs). My family were, and still are if needed, happy to look after our dc overnight so we've always had time together. It's only now that they're getting older - pre- and early teens - that we're struggling with finding time for ourselves.

@BeGreenSwan my daughter was very much like yours in terms of sleep needs. By 9 months we’d cut down to one nap a day (after lunch, about an hour) to try to maximise night sleep.

Also, we put her to bed a little bit earlier, I think 8pm with the expectation she’d take at least half an hour to go to sleep, and she used to wake at 6.30. That gave us 8pm onwards for our evening (and no chores were done then!).

Another key thing was getting her used to spending time in her cot on her own before sleep and on waking. She had lots of books and toys to play with.

I have a 6yo and a 2yo and I'm a sahm. I can relate to some parts of your OP but not others. My dc go to bed late as they are night owls, but so am I (I'm never in bed before 1am) so I still get time to watch movies, exercise, do projects or read after the dcs bedtime. I do video workouts at home during nap time rather than sort out childcare for the gym. We like having the dcs stay awake with us later - it allows DH and I to have lots of time with them after he gets home from work.

I don't have date nights with DH but that's more about not wanting to use babysitters, not wanting to disrupt their bedtime routines etc. Tiredness isn't the issue. I don't get much alone time with DH but we have quality time doing trips out as a family every weekend, we don't do anything like grocery shopping or chores at weekends.

Just to say, my baby used to go to sleep at around 9pm then wake up at about 8am when they were 11 months. I think they had two naps then. I wondered the same thing, especially about whether they were going to bed too late - but I couldn't get them to sleep earlier if I tried!

At about 13/14 months they dropped a nap and then started sleeping around 7pm. Maybe this will happen to you and you'll get an evening :)

Could’ve written this. 8:30 bed time and 6-6:30 wake. An hour - hour and a half nap in the day if lucky, and hints to suggest this might also be on its way to being dropped (heaven help me).
Energy. Non-stop energy. Little girl is 2 and a half now and been like this for as long as I can remember (give or take the extra naps when younger).
Husband is amazing but we are very much on our own with no support. If he takes toddler off my hands then he’s knackered, if I take her off his hands I’m knackered. So we just accept we are both two tired, frazzled parents and there’s nothing we can really do about it except to laugh hysterically, or cry.

Absolutely adore her to bits, that goes without saying. But bone-crushing exhaustion (mental more than physical) is how I would sum these years up.

Try not to compare to those parents with lower needs children (which can feel like all other parents sometimes, I know…) and forget the pressure of “date nights” if all both of you actually want to do is fall asleep on the sofa and reminisce about how free you used to be pre-children.

Update:

Thanks for the lovely replies, it's nice to know I'm not alone.

My daughter now naps once a day. She's low sleep needs so sleeps for around 10 hours overnight so 8pm bedtime means 6am wakeup. This just means I just need to sleep early as I need 8-9 hrs sleep.

He works until 7PM (sometimes until 8pm) so I cook most meals as he isn't able to as he's working. He helps a lot with chores after work

I agree with you OP! My kiddo also has quite low sleep needs and goes to bed around 10-11pm (which is culturally normal in the country we live in) and so we get very little evening alone time unless we're willing to stay up, and I'm usually pretty tired by then! We do sometimes watch TV on the iPad in bed after DS is sleeping or when he's napping but it means we make very slow progress on getting through a series. We also cook from scratch and like a clean house and it's tiring but we make it work. I think it's fine to prioritise what works for you/is important to you, and if that is having a clean house then that's okay. Most of my exercise is either walking with DS in the stroller or doing a YouTube workout while he's napping but it's only quite recently I've managed to start doing these (he will only nap on me, but I've now mastered the art of shuffling him over without waking him). It sounds like you're doing great, and as pps have said you can make various tweaks to find a rhythm that works for you. I hope the tiredness eases off soon for you.

I'm only 14 weeks in and literally have no life and get no time to myself or with OH, my baby is an awful sleeper in that she has to be rocked to sleep and will only sleep on me a lot of people on MN will say that's completely normal and I dont disagree but it's not sustainable for me she is so bad that if i leave the house she won't sleep at all and then The rest of the day is spent trying to get her to sleep with her screaming because she is so over tired so I stopped leaving the house I can't even watch tv anymore as it wakes her up. I have to go to bed at 8 o'clock every evening with her so I literally never get time with OH and it's making me really sad I feel like my relationship has disappeared as he sleeps in the spare room and I look after baby at night . I'm going to work very hard to break her sleep association with rocking and work on getting her into her next to me to sleep as I really need even an hour or two to myself in the evenings and I need to try help her learn to fall asleep by her self so we can leave the house as it's really not good for my MH or for her either.

Now I will say baby shouldn't be waking up more than once for a feed during the night .. my baby that is or at least that's what my midwife advised so I'm working really hard to space out her bottles during the day appropriately and get her to drink more as she really wasn't taking enough if I can master and she gets enough during the day then she should sleep better at night .

My OH does ALL the house work and cleaning though as I literally don't get time to do it , can your DH not help
Out on that end of this you are only human and can only do so much I think you need more help and to stop trying to do everything yourself x

Mine didn’t need much sleep either, she only slept 12 hours when she was sick and also was waking at least a few times a night untill almost 5 (but often it was something like 3 times a night). First year was a bit like your first year. It does get a bit easier once the night waking reduce but tbh we had multiple times when a “date night” at home had to be abandoned because Dd woke up inconsolable and wouldn’t go back to sleep. We also didn’t have any family around either and had moved so no friends.

The reality is the sleep was so bad that we were both extremely sleep deprived for a few years, the chances of us wanting to do anything more strenuous than trying (and often failing) to watch a bit of tv were zero. It is what it is, it’s a few years then you start getting yourself together a bit once you get more sleep.

I would say try to get some time to do something for yourself, it could be the gym or just getting your nails done or reading, listen to a podcast. Anything that is just for you.