"Just accept that you're never going to sleep again!"

[Gennz]

If I had a dollar for the amount of times that this has been said to me with a gleeful expression I would be a millionaire. Does anyone else find it really annoying? (it's mainly the sleep thing that winds me up, but also they "you won't be able to shower for days/put the baby down/lose the last 5kg" blah blah blah..)

I'm 26 weeks pregnant, expecting our first child. Last night we had two of DH's friends over to watch the rugby - one has a 2.5 year old, one has a 9 month old. I said innocently to the father of the 2.5 year old "Does DD sleep through the night?" He responded with a meaningful laugh and said "oh no, she wakes up 2 - 3 times a night" and then "just accept that you'll never sleep again and it's not so hard." Whereupon the father of the 9 month old said "yes DW is up with DD at 11, 2 and 5am because she needs to be fed, you just get used to it." Then they harped on about "never sleeping again" and "how it's so much harder for the woman because she is the one who is up all night".

I am probably being an unreasonable b*itch - I know their hearts were in the right places. But I also know that their partners' approach to things is quite different to mine - I'm not taking my full maternity leave, having an ELCS, am v much in favour of putting a routine in place as early as possible, getting the baby to take a bottle; whereas I know they are more baby-led routine, go with the flow, natural birth. I'm not saying I'm right & they're wrong - just that I think our preferred approach will work better for my and DH's personalities.

I'm also not enough of an idiot to say out loud "well WE won't be doing that, I'm putting a routine in place, I need my sleep" having never had a child... I can only imagine how gleeful the reminders would be in 6 months when I haven't had a shower all day and the baby hasn't slept in days and I'm cursing the author of every routine based book ever published...

Anyway (this has turned into a far longer rant than I planned) - are any other first time parents else finding the "tips" from other parents slightly annoying/enraging? I guess my biggest bugbear is that, apart from responding "oh really? thanks for the heads up..." you can't really say anything (e.g "it won't be like that for me") without sounding like a delusional, pompous git and/or insulting the other person's parenting.

Ahhhhhhh good to get that off my chest...

I have seen those stats too. And of course those 8 hours are not the same 8 you want to sleep a lot of the time. If your baby goes to bed at 8...

I think... Everything you think will happen, may very well go out the window when the baby is here.

You can plan all you like for a routine but it may not happen.

Penguins - I think those stats specifically used 8 hours 10pm-6am as the definition of "sleeping through" rather than the rather pointless any 5/6/7/8 hours.

Ah, fair enough. I am just an old cynic when I see things like '8 hours'. Anything less than 10 or 11 ain't sleeping through in my book.

You're totally right Penguins - if I had a 2.5 year old who was up 3x in the night I would (a) tell people when asked and (b) want to complain about it!

I totally agree that while we are planning for a routine I have no idea what might happen (which is why I am biting my tongue IRL - I don't want to say anything that will be repeated back to me in a year's time as I complain about not sleeping! Plus there's nothing worse than know-it-all non-parents). My sister has 2 kids and said she was absolutely clueless with the first - kept him up too long in the day so he was over-tired, probably didn't feed him enough etc etc. She reckons that a bit of a routine worked wonders with #2 hence my touching faith in routines but then he is a totally chilled baby, so who knows if it's causation or correlation.

There's a possibility that I may need to go back to work early-ish (4 months rather than 9) - which is my choice - but i think this is why I'm obsessing over the sleep thing.

Anyway, maybe I will cope better with broken sleep than I anticipate - was up about 6 times last night either going to the loo or b/c the baby was practicing his kickboxing moves...

You're totally right Penguins - if I had a 2.5 year old who was up 3x in the night I would (a) tell people when asked and (b) want to complain about it!

I totally agree that while we are planning for a routine I have no idea what might happen (which is why I am biting my tongue IRL - I don't want to say anything that will be repeated back to me in a year's time as I complain about not sleeping! Plus there's nothing worse than know-it-all non-parents). My sister has 2 kids and said she was absolutely clueless with the first - kept him up too long in the day so he was over-tired, probably didn't feed him enough etc etc. She reckons that a bit of a routine worked wonders with #2 hence my touching faith in routines but then he is a totally chilled baby, so who knows if it's causation or correlation.

There's a possibility that I may need to go back to work early-ish (4 months rather than 9) - which is my choice - but i think this is why I'm obsessing over the sleep thing.

Anyway, maybe I will cope better with broken sleep than I anticipate - was up about 6 times last night either going to the loo or b/c the baby was practicing his kickboxing moves...

Oops double post, sorry.

Um...a routine is just a schedule that you follow wrt to when you feed them and put them down for naps.

It's not magic sleeping dust.

I think you'll find that in reality many people talk euphemistically about 'routines' when what they mean is that if they have fed and changed their babies and they are still crying they will close the door and leave them to it, or at least use some variant of controlled crying.

People with shit sleepers haven't 'chosen' it as such. They just can't bear the leaving their helpless babies to sob themselves to sleep and would rather be sleep deprived for a couple of years.

The tidy house thing and shower thing are up to you and your priorities. The sleeping thing is unfortunately out of your control. I'm in a group if many mums and we all have 19 mth olds. Some sleep, some are simply up every nnight. Most if the non sleepers too have tried every tactic under the sun. It seems to be just luck. Mine was a bad sleeper to 9 mts and then suddenly BOOM an amazing one. I'd say he's had us up twice in 9 mts.

OP, I went back to work at 3 mts. Due my 2nd in a few days and will go back at 18th. I can honestly tell you that although I was a bit tired at times it was no major issue. In fact, being tired in work is a lot easier than being tired and having baby all day long in my experience. Best of luck but it will all be fine.

18th = 1 month. Stupid phone.

Right now wildrover I am intellectually very in favour of using some form of controlled crying to get sleeping sorted.

However I am v aware that what sounds sensible to me now as a non-parent might be completely off the table once I am actually listening to said small baby crying.

Controlled crying didn't work for DS1, because he would go back to sleep the first time you went in. And then wake up 2 or 3 hours later and go back to sleep again. There was no opportunity to leave him for increasing time intervals.

I suppose I could have just completely ignored him in the night and never gone in to him at all but I think very few parents are prepared to actually traumatise their children

I had 2 good sleepers and one bad one. Even the 'good' sleepers were hard work though- they still need feeding through the night for several weeks, and still need you if they do wake, even once a routine is established. I try not to be negative to new-parents-to-be, but it's hard not to moan when something's getting you down.

With good friends, however, I make sure to give them the negatives, because when I had my first baby you can't imagine the guilt I felt for being stressed and unhappy. I was supposed to have this overwhelming maternal instinct, and enjoy this 'magical' time, but I was depressed and miserable. So for my good friends, I tell them...I can't describe how awful it is, but I can't describe how amazing it is either.

And for a nicer twist on what your friends have been saying...you think you know how much you're going to love that baby? You have no idea. Just you wait.

Controlled crying isn't recommended for young babies. Not till at least six months.

The one piece of advice that I think is worthwhile is the bit "it's not so hard". Regardless of whether your routine works, how DC sleeps etc you will find a way to make it work.

If I'd been told how little sleep I'd get whilst working full time I would have been ! DD didn't sleep through until 2.5 during which time I went back to work full time, changed jobs to a much more senior role and am now pg with DC2. It's not been like I had expected. It has been absolutely fine.

Oh, and when I told people I was going back full time I was told how hard it would be to leave DD, I would be more upset than her etc... Never happened. Great nursery, have every confidence in them, and love my job too!

Hi Gennz
I could have written your post myself when I was pregnant with DD. Like you I'm a professional career-driven woman who had poured over all the baby books and was preparing for being a new mum in the same way that I'd prepare for a new project at work!
My only advice from reading your posts is not to put too much pressure on yourself. If your baby doesn't immediately fall into a routine, sleep long stretches, take a bottle or any of the other things that you had envisaged, be kind to yourself. Don't feel that there's something you're doing wrong and please don't compare yourself to other mums or your baby to other babies. Both of you will get there in your own time and if things get desperate there's always good red wine, cake and night nannies

Thanks MrsH!! I am totally guilty of preparing for this baby like a work project. I am also desperate for TWO large glasses of wine (have had one small one here and there but what's the point of one glass ofwine?)

Don't be guilty Gennz! Treating it like a project definitely saved my sanity, particularly in the early days! There's nothing wrong with that. The only difference was that my work projects tend to go swimmingly and this one was slightly trickier, threw me curve balls at unexpected moments and hadn't read Gina Ford herself it would appear

Be careful though, if you do get an easy baby who sleeps well, don't smugly talk about it to your friends as if it was your 'approach' that worked - implying that they were the authors of their own destruction. You might find it comes to bite you on the arse if you have a second. The words 'I'm lucky, she's such an easy baby' are the only appropriate ones if you want to avoid being killed by the sleep deprived

I read all the books and said all the things you're saying with my first OP. He still doesn't sleep through consistently and he's three. If people ask, I laugh wryly and wish them luck. I'm genuinely pleased for them when they get more sleep than I do but I want to bash them over the head with a hardback copy of Contented Little Baby if they suggest this is a result of their (vs my!) parenting rather than luck.

I've literally just had ds2 and I'm hopeful, but realistic, about what the next few years may hold. A friend who had ds1 at the same time as me and thought she was supermum when he slept through from six weeks assumed her second dc, born almost a year ago , would do the same. I have to admit to stifling the laughs when I see her fb statuses now. Sadly her daughter has not read the same books about sleep as she has...

Good luck op. I genuinely hope you get a sleeper.

Right now wildrover I am intellectually very in favour of using some form of controlled crying to get sleeping sorted.

I understand this. I was too, before DC1. Very much so. Also strongly considered putting her in her own room from Day 1. And actually those intellectual feelings didn't really ever change! The reality of it was a bit different. I didn't suddenly change personality into an embrace-the-chaos earth-mother type, but just on a practical level being strict Did Not Work with my baby. Like Penguin, I too did the frantic scanning thing for the small text about how exactly this putting a baby down before they were asleep business was actually supposed to work. The thing is that for some babies it just doesn't work.

I am a professional independent woman who likes her space and I am not into 'baby-led' (horrible term) stuff at all in theory; but, if you have a high maintenance baby, there comes a time when trying to fight to 'cure' it becomes farcical, and that's also the point at which you realise trying to fight it has made you very very angry. The good news is that everything becomes easier if you give yourself a break.

By the way, I went back to work (PT) when my DD was 4 months old and it was great. She was at the height of her sleep regression, so it didn't make a lot of sense, but the few hours' of work everyday was actually a total break and made me a much nicer mother.

Finally (sorry to go on), I have to agree with the others who've said your friends' comments could be a case of dad foot-in-mouth. Sometimes I overhear DH telling people the greatest rubbish with the greatest authority and I have to rush over and intervene...

Y y to the work project thing. I did that with no. 1.

Identify potential issue - research options- choose preferred option - apply. Then collapse sobbing when it didn't work.

Once I remembered that I was giving birth to tiny people with big personalities life got a lot easier.

I would really give yourself 3-4 months to just take it as it comes, with no pressure to get the baby into a routine or sleeping through, and just enjoy it a bit. Newborns aren't made for routines so you're fighting nature at that point, whereas after that point it is so, so much easier to instigate a routine between 3-6 months. Don't worry about spoiling the baby or making a rod for your back or anything like that, in the first three months the baby can't learn habits, good or bad. Give yourself permission to hold your baby, rock them to sleep, take them to bed with you, sit on the sofa all day and feed and watch TV and recover a bit before tackling "The Routine".

I agree Penguins. I was going to approach it like a work project where I'd have different options depending on different outcomes. Except it didn't really work like that. It was only when I actually relaxed and started to go with the flow (very very much against my personality) that I found it easier. I was constantly worried during 'strict routine' that we couldn't go too far in case she needed to feed/sleep and worried about us going out in case it coincided with a big routine time (nap etc).

I also was keen to do controlled crying if/when DD didn't sleep at night. Luckily I haven't had to because she's a good sleeper but I know from other times I've had to listen to her cry that it's definitely not something I could do. You can't really know how the hormones and connectiveness with your child might change your attitude when they're born.

Good luck with it all. :)

I find this really annoying as well.

It might be true but don't say it with so much glee in your voice.