If one more person tells me I know nothing about being tired until....

[BlingLoving]

after the baby arrives, I think I will lean over, spit in their face, kick them between the legs and walk away.

That or start screaming like a crazy woman, "I don't give a flying F%%% about how tired you think I will be. At least then I might get some understanding and sympathy and I'll certainly get some help from DH, from DM, from friends etc. Because you know what, I already get up every morning at 6am and that's after waking up at least once every 90 minutes all night and having to get up. And you know what, when I get up at 6 I don't get to stumble around for a bit but have to get dressed, and showered, and make myself look good for the City and then schlepp into the City where I have to perform at peak for 12 hours every day in order to earn the money that DH and I live on before staggering home. So butt out with your cute little suggestions that I should start getting used to waking up early now because just because you haven't had a job since a year before you got pregnant because your DH is a rich banker and can support you, does not mean that the rest of us have that pre-baby luxury."

Rant over.

Deep breath.

Sorry. I am just losing the will to live here today and the "helpful" message from someone suggesting that I'd have to "get used" to waking up early after very little sleep has pushed me over the edge.

Just think 'yeah yeah yeah' and IGNORE. And take comfirt that I was far more tired in my last few weeks of pregnancy than I ever have been since DS was born. It's a whole different type of tired.

OP i kept hearing exactly the same shit as you. The truth is, yes we'll all be exhausted when the babies come but we wont have had a sleepless night, then hauled our heavy arses onto the tube to the city, to work full days where you cannot even have the tiniest lapse in judgement without it costing the company we work for significant £££ and costing us a dent in our professional reputation.

When the babies are here, yes we'll have been up for longer in the night, but we can slob in our tracksuit bottoms/pyjamas, nap when they do, stay home, not answer the phone...in short we're answerable only to ourselves then, and not a boss too!

I am 100% with you.

I don't buy the "sleep when they sleep" line. Especially after having a DS2 who would only really sleep if he was in a sling . Or only sleep 20-30 mins at a time. With DD (my first) there were always so many jobs to do when she napped (washing, tidying up and so on).

I'm with you Bling. I've been getting it for ages too. I don't care if I had 'better get used to it' - that doesn't detract from the fact I'm bloody knackered NOW! Three months to go then I'll find out if pregnancy (and related discomfort/tiny bladder/insomnia) on top of working full time is a breeze compared to dealing with a newborn. But that doesn't alter the fact I'm still tired now (sob).

getting up 4 times a night and then for good at 6 am is pretty much what I do anyway, so I'm struggling to see how it can be that much worse than my current life

Oooh (going to be annoying and get kicked in the crutch but . . . ) yeah it will get worse!

You see at the moment you have broken sleep, once baby is here it will be broken for hours, baby may be awake ALL night, you will look back at your broken sleep and think that is bliss.

During the day it will be much the same.

At the moment you get an occassional bit of peace when you have a bath or sit on the train, that is not going to last!

The tiredness accumulates so that you might feel fine for the first days or weeks and then you start to not even be able to see straight and feel DESPERATE for sleep.

Of course you might have an easy baby.

(Am now going to find something to protect my fanny with)

I was more tired at the end of my pregnancy with DD2 than after delivery BUT, it is the sheer relentless nature of life with small children that is so tiring. At least with work you have the evening, weekends and holidays. None of these exist when you have babies. For years!
It is very annoying that people are saying non helpful stuff to you I know but jesus, it's true! However, it is just a universal parenthood thing and guess what? You cope with it! And come on MN for advice on how to cope with it when you think you can't any longer! Good look hon, we have all survived it and bloody hell, when it's good it's fucking fantastic!

For what its worth, I find pregnancy MUCH more tiring than mothering a new baby.

Aw, sounds like you're having a harder pg than many, so do put your feet up and relax as much as your job allows. I can distinctly remember having to work away for a regular night followed by a long day (organising conferences) when I was in 2nd/3rd trimester, and trying to get home from wherever in UK to my particular bit of London was hideous.

Who knew there were so many steps up and down (and then up and down again) on the tube, with my horrible little overnight wheely case? I moved soooo slowly, and of course all the busy city workers pushed round/through me. But nobody can beat a tired pg lady for a withering stare (ok, maybe a mum with toddler can...).

It will get better when you're on mat leave, as you only have yourself to answer to. I've loved that. And you may be lucky and get an easier baby, who sleeps well.

I will personally be (mentally) kicking the next person who asks how 23mo DS is sleeping (answer: still badly), who follows up with "Well, don't worry, you won't be able to wake them up when they're a teenager, haha".

And breathe .

erm. sorry you feel pushed over edge. but.

I've got two ds, 5 and 2 yrs. I essentially ran london's infectious disease surveillance systems during my childbearing years and since then i've developed a chronic and painful illness that i continue to work through while running the home and doing 80% of the child and home care and I TELL YOU THIS now Do stop ranting about it all of you and start learning to roll with it. There are two really important reasons for this:

1. these platitudes are masking very sound advice. this is your easy slope practice period while you are still the centre of your own universe, and not off balance due to arrival of a new centre of gravity. Practice napping or meditating on your commutes, practise zoning out while looking intelligent in all areas of life, set up your routine shop orders, if you don't already learn to automatically take a good day diary of details at work as you go along because you will forget more and more of the damned detail. Plan in GP appointments to check your haemoglobin and thyroid levels are OK before and after delivery if you are unusually knackered because they wobble like fricking mad around childbirth. Find something useful and calming to do if you can't sleep, don't lie there if you're not really resting, get up and stop fretting, appreciate the quietness of nighttime and your own company. Take a fresh look at your work and start to see what are the arseholey, timewastery bits of it and start managing upwards until you can shift stop them. Practice a whole range of calm and dignified 'back off, moron' statements from now onwards. Start a thread asking for them, I'll spare you some.

2. these platitudes are going to gte far far worse than the tiredness all the way through baby groups and pre school and school etc. Practice a whole range of calm and dignified 'back off, moron' statements from now onwards. Ditto 1.

don't wish away last few weeks of PG because you are tired now. the newborn sympathy soon wears off and you'll hear a whole new range of platitudes about sleep. Practice a whole range of calm and dignified 'back off, moron' statements from now onwards.

Perhaps you could reply "yeah I guess I'll be tired, but I'm used to it from my raving, binge drinking, shagging-around days."

I like it Pip. Might try that!

OP I totally feel your pain

I'm 27 weeks and still vomiting most of the day (at full time work) and can't sleep at night for more than about an hour at a time without needing to pee/adjust pillows/roll over to get blood back into dead leg

The main problem I think is that everyone assumes you will feel the same as them "oh it will get worse when the baby's here", "oh you will be more tired when the baby's here", etc

Just because they did doesn't mean you will, but of course you can't comment without looking like an irrational hormonal pregnant loon. People may actually back slowly away from you

I'm currently severly grisly around anyone who tells me how amazingly good I look at the moment - I want to scream "Really??!! Well I feel like SHIT but as long as I look great well that's ok then! ". But I can't, because really they're only trying to be nice.

I do wish people could just learn to say "oh dear that's really crap, sorry you are going through that" without trying to always put a positive spin on things, because sometimes in the fog you can't always easily see the positive side!

No advice or solutions really but I'm there with you!

completely agree - I've got a daily commute of 1 1/2 hrs each way and a cerebral job. I'm in early PG at the moment, and cannot believe it is possible to be more tired than this, mentally and physically.

Friends with kids have reassured me that although it is as bad as now, you somehow cope better because that little person needs you - here's hoping x

FWIW I found the newborn stage MUCH easier than being pregnant.

Madre - that sounds awful. At least I haven't had any sickness. Small mercies...!

But yes yes yes, on the how good you look thing. It's so irritating. And you know they're just being nice. My boss even said to me at one point that while he believes me when I tell him I don't feel great, it's hard to remember because I constantly look like I'm glowing! arrrgh!

I disagree with others. Personally I found preg so much harder than new born baby stage!

Bah! I had a great pregnancy, and was lucky enough to be able to work from home past the first few months (of commuting 2 hours to London.. on packed carriages, with no opening windows) but still, barring the first couple of weeks while we found our feet (and I healed, and my leg swelling went down) I was way more exhausted when pregnant than with the newborn.

I think the biggest reason was that finally I could sleep well myself - sure I was interrupted ever hour/2 hours, and might not make it to bed until midnight or so but during that hour I was properly asleep rather than uncomfortable with aching hips and probably needing to pee..

And from about 2 months when we started co-sleeping I didn't even need an afternoon nap I was sleeping so well (although still in 2-3 hour bursts)

I think apart from the occasional non-sleeper, people might be thinking about the bad old days when you tried to force your kid to go a certain amount of time between feeds so presumably they spent half their time whinging.

Another one here who found late pregnancy worse tiredness-wise than the newborn stage, and DS was definitely not a good sleeper!

You know it's all rubbish too.

People told me this, but I can honestly say that being up all night with a newborn was nothing on working a 40 hour week and walking 4 miles a day on my commute when 12 weeks pregnant, permanently nauseous and going to bed at 8 pm every night.

I find being off on ML with a baby so relaxing I have considered having a third for this alone. (I am put off by juggling work, childcare for a 1 year old and 2 school aged children when I go back

Agree with other posts immediately below - being pregnant, feeling like death and having to carry on working is way harder than dealing with newborn.

OK you don't get any time to yourself, your sleep is disturbed and its quite intense. However you feel well while you are doing it (I felt so great post pregnancy!) and that is ALL YOU HAVE TO DO! No worries about work or anything, just be with the baby and fit in a bit of housework.

And when they are newborns there is none of the hassle of feeding them and the never ending wiping up of mess and washing of bibs etc! And if you put them on the bed, they stay on the bed! Miracle.

I recommend co-sleeping and bf-ing lying down. It made a big difference for us - yes of course nights were disturbed but I was clearly still getting enough sleep to function pretty well.

And its not as if DD was the easiest baby in the world either - she wouldnt be put down till she was about 8 weeks old and lived in the sling for 2 months. I carried her and pushed the shopping in the pram! Even that said, life with DD as a newborn was so much better than almost any time when I was pregnant with her (save for maybe weeks 17 to 23 or so).

i feel sorry for you :( my friend used to tell me about how she used to come back 7 mnths pregnant with a huge bump, and on the tube noone would even get up for her, and i almost cried about how uncaring people can be!!

i also feel sorry for those mums who go back 2 work at when the baby is 9 mnths and have to spend sleepless nights with teething etc and still wake up and do a whole days work and come back and hear more crying

merryberry that was a fantastic post.

I used to get friends and family saying that to me before I was even talking about having kids. It used to drive me nuts that people seemed to feel it was okay to whinge at me constantly about their lack of sleep and how hard their life was with kids but as soon as I was finding something in my life tough going it was "oh you wait till you have kids, THEN you'll know what having no time is/being tired is......"

Yeah probably they are right but,so because I haven't already spawned a small person I don't deserve to feel anything negative?!??? It annoyed the sh@t out of me then and it annoys the sh@t out of me now I am actually pg.

I think its the fact you're having your very real feelings totally invalidated by someone who actually knows nothing about how you're feeling other than what you've just told them.

Ah you started me off now! Think pg hormones are raging today!

yeah it's crap (especially as it was totally unexpected as I breezed through my first pregnancy) but I'm pretty much used to it now and it's only temporary it's only temporary it's only temporary (repeat mantra whenever neccessary)

I am lucky in that I don't have a long commute though, I don't know how you manage that before and after a full day at work on minimum sleep!