What’s the hardest part of nights with a baby?

[Poojmat]

Hi all,
I’m not looking for advice — just listening.

I’ve realised that nights with a baby aren’t just about sleep, but the emotional side of it: the anticipation before bedtime, the uncertainty, the exhaustion that starts before the night even begins.

I’m curious — what’s been the hardest part of nights for you recently?

Thank you 🤍

You sound like a journalist

Fair question — I’m not a journalist.
I’m a mum myself and this is something I’ve been thinking about after a run of rough nights.
Not writing anything, just genuinely interested in how others experience nights too.

Never being able to predict how a night would go.
And in the very early days discovering that babies didn’t always go back to sleep once they’d been fed!

I just hated the silence that comes with the night .
Up doing night feeds & you’d hear a pin drop .

Gosh I totally feel that and it’s like the unknown makes it feel worse! Thank you so much for sharing. @RidingMyBike

@Missj25 gosh yes 100%! It’s like eerily quiet1 I found keeping my headphones in and listening to something helped sometimes but mostly I was so tired and doing everything in a sleepy daze!

Not so much with my second baby because I think having the experience under my belt I knew everything was just a phase and would pass, but with my first the worst part wasn’t even through the night it was the evening before the night. When it started getting dark and everything in your body and brain wants to wind down, relax, prepare for sleep and you are just left wondering how the night will go!

When they wake as soon as you get into bed or when you’ve been asleep for just a few minutes.

The night rage. DH was on eggshells around me because he never knew how I would react, bless him. He really is a saint.

Hearing the dawn chorus and realising you’re going to spend another day running on empty…

Hi journo. It’s the lack of sleep and how it builds up and gradually drives you insane.

When they just won't stay asleep. So they wake, you get them back to sleep but 10 min later they are awake again and you have to start over. On and on all night.

When you never get a full sleep cycle because they wake so often. And being repeatedly woken just as you are falling asleep. The absolute despair of it nearly drove me mad.

I was so naive with my first. I actually thought that when people talked about sleepless nights that they were just referring to a baby waking to feed, I really did not realise that some babies do not sleep AT ALL. My first woke up every 45 minutes until the age of four months, then until a year old they would fall asleep at 7.30 but be awake ready to start their day at 4. I remember people talking about the four months regression and thinking what could they possibly regress from, they don't sleep to begin with. Even now at the age of 2 they still don't particularly like to sleep 😂. DC 2 is currently 5 months and has been an absolute dream sleeping 8 hours straight from 3 months. With DC 1 it wasn't the nights themselves, it was almost as though my body would get a bolt of adrenaline to get through it. It was seeing the light starting to come through the curtains and being filled with a sense of dread wandering how I was going to manage the day. Yet, I loved them so much I forgot it all and when on to have another...

The best tip I was ever given in the early weeks and months, was to never look at the clock during the night when you’re up with the baby.
Its way more soul destroying to know exactly how long you’ve been asleep between wake up 🫠🫠🫠
I’d look at the time on my phone only when I noticed daylight peaking around the curtains

The total uncertainty as you are going to bed, you have no idea if you will get 30 minutes sleep or 3 hours and that used to give me quite bad anxiety. Also that dead time of night which for me was 2-4am, it felt as if I was the only one awake in the entire world and it was lonely. Once the sun started to come up it was the start of a new day and the rest of the house would start to wake, I felt like I could cope then which I definitely didn’t feel like I could at 3am!

My babies were pretty good overnight. Very few issues. One thing though - I found that 2amish feed always got my bowels moving! Amount of times I had to rush to the toilet mid feed!