Can someone please please please tell me how they expect you to work when you have a baby that doesn’t sleep!!!

[Biosblbay]

I am loosing my mind. My 11 month old (turns 1 nest week) is waking up every 2-3 hours. She already had me up at 1am, ended up bringing her in bed with me, it was just a hour of fidgeting so I put her back in her room at 2am, she is now awake again at 3:30am crying and will not stop. I’ve been down to give her a dummy and it didn’t help. This has been on going now for days. On top of that My 3 year old (4 in September) has been having later nights due to the heat, no sleep because of the baby and has also been up early because of either the baby waking him up or he has been unwell. Because of this he has been home from school, it was closed due to the extreme heat and then the last 2 days I had to pick him up early due to not being himself and being unwell.

I work a full time job, luckily I work from home so there is no commute but concentrating is pretty impossible when you are being woken up so frequently and having late nights and early starts. She has been crying for almost half an hour and I just don’t know what to do! I have no next to me for anymore, she won’t sleep if I put her in bed with me, I am worried she is going to wake my son up in a minute as their rooms are next to each other.

please I am out of ideas. How can any mum be expected to work when you have to go through this. Maternity leave should be 2 years minimum! I also have such a busy weekend ahead of me, including her cake smash photo shoot Sunday, how am I even going to manage that! I am exhausted!!!!!!

and just so you are aware, I have tried doing 1 nap in the day, it makes no difference, I’ve stuck to the two naps, still no difference, shortening both naps, still makes no difference.

what is going wrong!! I am at breaking point. I haven’t slept properly in weeks, in fact haven’t slept properly since she was born but these last few weeks have been extremely challenging, more so being back at work.

We sleep trained at 14 months, I got sent home from work several times for being unable to work (DC would be up 8-10 times a night) and was told unofficially that I needed to sort myself out. Don't know why we didn't do it sooner tbh. Short term pain for long term gain.

Yes that’s what I’d do. You could at least get a couple of weekend nights to reset. It’s the relentlessness that kills you. If you could afford it maybe once in a while you could go away for a Friday night and get a proper rest. It’s not sustainable to live without sleep long term.

Another possibility is if you had a family member who might just do the odd night to help out? I would in in this situation.

What on earth is a 'cake smash photo shoot'?

You’re not mentioning childcare. Who’s looking after them while you’re WFH full time?

I feel your pain. Looking back, I don’t know how I functioned, and i had to go into the office 3 days a week.
Best of luck.

Hire a sleep consultant.

Ok deep breath. Sleep is essential for our bodies to function, in the same way oxygen/food/water are. You are not being selfish, it’s not that you want to sleep, it’s that you need to sleep to survive.

there are some practical steps you can try here:

1. White noise machine for your older child - this will drown out the sounds of your baby crying and mean they are far less likely to wake up. You then won’t be worrying about them waking up and can focus on dealing with the frequent baby wakes more pragmatically. You can buy a white noise machine on Amazon nice and cheaply.
2. Speak to a sleep consultant. I know the idea of sleep training is horrifying for some people because they think it just means leaving your baby to cry hysterically, but this fundamentally is not true. I’d recommend following JustChillMama on Instagram and go from there. They have free resources, cheaper self help guides, or the option of consultations. Changing baby sleep can take a week or two, so you’ll need to persevere (think about how long it takes you to adjust after a long haul flight and jet lag - it’s the same concept for a baby learning to sleep in different ways at different times). Forget what has or hasn’t happened in the past when they were younger and go in with an open mind.
3. Unless your husband is a brain surgeon, pilot, or works in another job where there is a high likelihood of mass death if he’s a bit tired, you need to distribute the night wakes between you. This should be a non negotiable. Even if you’re BF, you can do the feed then hand the baby over to him to settle while you go back to sleep. If he claims he won’t wake up, he sleeps with the monitor switched on next to his pillow. If he claims the baby won’t settle for him, then tough he needs to work through it and persevere and find something that works rather than giving in to weaponised incompetence. Clearly the baby also isn’t settling easily for you otherwise you wouldn’t be in this situation, so it’s time for him to step up. You can always split the shifts so he does any wake up until 1am then you do anything after that. You can then go to bed at 9, get a block of uninterrupted sleep, and he then gets a block of uninterrupted sleep between 1am and his alarm. There’s always a way.

We did sleep training at this age because I was commuting to work 5 days a week and nearly crashed the car on more than one occasion. I might as well have been driving after a bottle of wine, I was so tired. I decided a few tears before bed was better than my child having no mum, and it worked well.

Look into it to see what works best for you, but we did gradual retreat (I think it was called that) so DS was never upset for long but it worked.

Also ditch the photoshoot if it's stressing you out, there's absolutely no need!

You need to sleep train. I wasn't strict in many ways as a parent but I was over bedtimes as DH was a waste of space and it all fell on me. And don't co-sleep - no one sleeps well and it's the worst habit to get them back out of. At 11 months, your baby doesn't need feeds overnight - just offer them water, no conversation or interaction, just basic soothing. It takes a few nights (of utter horror, I won't lie) but you'll get there and the trade off is ongoing sleep.

I haven't got time to read the full thread so apologies if it's already been suggested but could a bottle of milk once when your DD first wakes help? I remember my DD still needed one bottle in the night to settle back till morning (after she'd turned one) - and that was after we'd sleep trained. Might be worth a go if you haven't already.

Edited for clarity

@OneWarmHazelQuail this is absolutely not true. Many many babies don’t sleep through the night at 11 months. If they all went to the GP, there’d be no appointments for anyone else!

He might need the sleep for his job, but, the strategy I took with first (not second, ex couldn't be bothered by then) was he took DS in the evenings so I could get to bed early and at least get some time in then.

Some evenings they had a 2 hour bath together, just to keep DS from fussing so I could get a solid chunk of sleep in (ha.. considering 2 hours to be a solid chunk.. that's how bad it was when DS was little!)

I read that your husband needs more sleep but could you even share it a little and one of you goes to be early like 8pm and you aren't in duty til 1am and the other does 1am to 6am and that way you are both guaranteed 5hrs each or at the very least you do the week and your husband does the weekend so you have 2 nights to try and catch up.

I completely understand. And agree about maternity leave being 2 years! What I will say is that it does pass. It's a hard phase. My little one was exactly the same at the time I went back to work. I did what I could and didn't stress.
Are you in a position to explain to your boss?

So babies sleep doesn't actually settle down until 2 years of age. They are very frequent wakers until then!
Now it sounds like you are unusual in that both your children were unwell. But for the majority of people, frequent wake ups are the norm.

Waking every 2 to 3 hours represents frequent waking. I did not go to the GP promptly and as a result my mental health suffered, my children’s health suffered.

I dont think that any individual should be advising parents who have concerns not to take their children to the GP because of capacity. It is comments like yours that are damaging - it leads to reluctance to engage in health services which can have awful consequences. The poster sounds completely overwhelmed. In all likelihood, I imagine that you have not experienced the circumstance and are therefore unable to empathise.

Waking in the night is normal for a baby. I co slept and breastfed mine back to sleep until she was 2.5 years old when she started sleeping through. Take a break from work go and see your GP and get signed off for exhaustion. Prioritise your sleep above all else.

It is the worst and there’s not much you can do apart from muddle through unfortunately.
Your partner can help too, your sleep needs are as important as his. It might be that he helps by doing bedtime some nights so you can go to bed early, or letting you sleep in on a weekend.
Do you have a spare room? Maybe you could sleep there one night on the weekend and have your DD in with your DH?

Is the busy weekend a one off or do you regularly have them? I tried to do at least one quiet weekend a month when mine were little, and having an afternoon nap on a weekend is good too.

Is there any option to reduce your hours at work? It wouldn’t give you much more sleep but you would have a bit more time to recharge

So what happens of you end up with a 3/4/5 year old who sleeps badly, as many parents do? Life can’t be one long holiday.

It is tough OP. One day you will need to sleep train. Once you have found the cause of why he is unsettled (teething, reflux etc)

Does it matter that the cake will be out of date! No one is going to eat any of it surely.

My solution- and I know its not for everyone- was to cosleep. It was just me and the little one in a king sized bed- my husband slept in the next room. I designated their sleep space with pool noodles under the top sheet. I used a duvet cover without any duvet in it to sleep under, slept naked, and rolled the duvet around me like a sleep sack. The little one was in their own light sleep sack. When they woke I would push the pool noodle down, feed with us both laid there, and restore the pool noodle when they were done. I think having me so close - and sometimes we'd sleep with them cuddled around my arm- really helped them not wake looking for me.

The other thing we did when needed was my husband would take the kids around 8pm and I would go to bed until 12, so I'd get a solid few hours before he went to bed and I would take baby duty.

Lots of advice that I hope is useful. I don’t really have any advice, just solidarity. DD didn’t sleep through u til she was 2.5. H was useless, we separated during that period so I was working full time and commuting and carrying it myself. I really can’t remember much of that time, it’s all a bit of a blur. But, I kept my job, though admittedly I coasted, and she eventually slept. It won’t be like this forever, the plus side is I can survive on little sleep even now if I need to, think it’s a bit like muscle memory. DD was eventually diagnosed with ADHD and is now being tested for autism and is on a heavy dose of melatonin. This is not to dismiss how you’re feeling, it’s awful, lack of sleep is torture.

We did sleep training at around 13 months when I went back to work. Only took a couple of nights and the bonus was a much happier baby.

It is absolute torture no two ways about it. My mental health was at its worst when I went back to work and had a 3.5 year old and 1 year old. All my nursery friend mums experienced similar. There was a lot of crying in the car park about how hard it was.

A few things struck me: 1. Do you have any childcare? If you don't you need it, you can't look after a baby full time and work full time. 2. Your partner NEEDS to step up. He cannot use the excuse of a long commute to not share the nights. You need a shift system so you get at least some 4 hour blocks of time.

I agree the lack of village, but you are in a house with another capable adult who appears to be ignoring that you are slowly losing your mind. A huge good luck, it does get easier I promise.

Just to offer support and sympathy as I pretty much lost the plot trying to work (part time!) with a non-sleeper, there really should be more acceptance of how physically and mentally debilitating it can be (even if it is 'temporary', temporary is a long time when it lasts years). Some seem to have the attitude that it's just something you should suck up and get on with but it's the impact on concentration and decision-making that I found hard to navigate, it's ridiculous really to expect everything of mothers - wake up frequently every single night, relentlessly for months on end and then perform at work as though you're well-rested.

It's a structural, societal issue and not one that individuals can solve on their own. Definitely ditch anything that you know not to matter in the great scheme of things, go into self-preservation mode and focus on the essentials only (don't give any mental energy to anything else).