Be honest with me - how bad is the sleep deprivation?

[Prettylittlelady]

This is the part of having a newborn that is terrifying me the most. I’ve read so many stories about people not sleeping for years and babies only sleeping for 45 minutes at a time and you hallucinating etc
I love my sleep and I know thy my life is about to change but is the extreme lack of sleep the same for absolutely everyone? So newborns every sleep in stretches for longer than 1-2 hours?
I could cry thinking about how worried I am about it.

It really does entirely depend on the child. I wondered what all the fuss was about with DS1 - yes, I was a bit tired from giving birth for the first couple of weeks, but he was an easy baby and a good sleeper so I felt great after the first couple of weeks.

I won't mention 8yo DS2, who still wakes me frequently at night

It really depends on the baby. My first was an absolute dream. He slept amazingly night and day, really calm and sleepy baby. My 2nd, well he is 17 months and still hardly naps and doesn't sleep through! Complete opposites, the first lulled me into a false sense of security. I wish I'd slept more when I was pregnant 2nd time around.

Really bad. There is a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture, and I personally find it to be the hardest element of motherhood. It's a million times worth it though. It doesn't last forever and being a mum is ace

I add, the 2nd for the forst 8 months practically woke every hour! The first slepy through the night from 6 weeks and even before that only woke once.

Ime newborns sleep a lot. Problems start around 8 weeks in! I’ve also found that babies tend to be like their parents. I’m a crap sleeper, so is one child. My friend loves her sleep, so does her baby. It will pass.

Every baby is different and none come with any clue of what you’d like them to do, sadly. I have two that were polar opposites.

DD was fairly bad for 6 weeks. She had reflux. I paced the kitchen in the long dark winter nights pushing her pram and shushing her in a sling. Then at 6 weeks something happened - bloody hell knows what. And she slept through for 8 hours. And pretty much since that day there can be Armageddon going on and she’s just a girl who loves and needs her sleep.

DS played me for a fool and slept well for his first couple of weeks then turned into a demon who didn’t sleep for 2 years. But I coped...you just find what works for you. With him I BF more confidently and by week 6 I was expressing a full feed in between daytime feeds. We’d eat our evening meal, feed him, I’d be in bed and asleep at 8pm latest. DH would cope with dummies and the expressed feed and get him down at 10, by which point he’d maybe go 3 hours. But by then I’d had a run of 5 hour myself so didn’t feel like a zombie. I had a side cot so I’d scoot him over, feed him lying down in his grobag, put him back and by daylight at 4/5am I’d had my quota of sleep and we’d just snooze after another feed till the toddler got up at 6/7am. By the time he was 9 months I was doing this and working FT too, so although it’s tough it’s just about adapting your ‘normal’ and it’s all just a dim memory eventually.

It totally varies.

DD slept 6 hours straight by 6 weeks, 8 hours straight by 8 weeks. By 6 months she was regularly doing 12 hours solid.
Obviously there have been bad patches for teething / sickness.

She was never much of a daytime napper and naps were maximum 30 minutes until she reached 14 months and went down to one nap per day.

On the other hand my friend’s baby woke every 45 minutes and now at almost 2 only sleeps a maximum of 5 hours straight. (She has refused to do any kind of sleep training)

It was tough but you just muddle through!

I did see my fitbit sleep record from when my son was 2 months and it made me laugh.

My son started sleeping through at 12 months. So I've been well rested since then I'd say.

The good thing in the early days is you don't need to do anything except from sit on sofa and be in the house, maybe a few gentle pram walks. For me it was harder as my son got older and wanted to be active but I was still sleep deprived and working from home.

And you never know you might have one of those miracle babies that just sleeps really well!

I sleep so badly in pregnancy that having the baby meant I got more sleep. H was up for a ten min feed every two hours for a couple of months, really management. Then just got better from there. But depends on the kid

single mum here with 2nd one, did it with a newborn and beyond.

its so fucking hard. really hard. some days i cried through tiredness. Never cried because of the situation though!

you will be fine. It isnt forever. Mine slept 3/4 hours at any stretch as smallies

best of luck!

single mum here with 2nd one, did it with a newborn and beyond.

its so fucking hard. really hard. some days i cried through tiredness. Never cried because of the situation though!

you will be fine. It isnt forever. Mine slept 3/4 hours at any stretch as smallies

best of luck!

single mum here with 2nd one, did it with a newborn and beyond.

its so fucking hard. really hard. some days i cried through tiredness. Never cried because of the situation though!

you will be fine. It isnt forever. Mine slept 3/4 hours at any stretch as smallies

best of luck!

For me, fucking horrendous both times. I was a shell of emptiness. But it improves. It’s up and down, not a linear line. Don’t listen to others asking if baby is good and sleep,ms, just go with it and do whatever works

The sleep deprivation has been so hard for me. DS is almost 14 months and is yet to sleep through the night. There are some good nights. A good night for us is when we get a couple of two hour blocks where he wakes, takes his milk and goes back to sleep.

We still had bad nights where he can be awake every 20-30 minutes. It's so hard. It takes me a while to fall back asleep so sometimes it feels like I haven't slept at all. Then I have to work.

Having a support network around me was the most helpful thing. My mum is amazing and on her days off, she'd pick him up and take him for a walk so I could get a few hours' sleep.

Even now, I sleep when he does at a weekend to catch-up.

People say it doesn't last forever so I'm hopeful it'll pass. My mum said I was the exact same until 2.5 years old.

I got the short straw and ended up with a shite sleeper despite trying everything. I'm 18 months in and on a good night it's 2-3 wakings, on a bad night 5-8.

Not going to lie my mental health suffered big time a while ago, I could think or function as a human being and was signed off work.

However I know of a friend who put her baby in her own room at six weeks (not advisable) and has slept through ever since.

Ever baby is different

It’s bad.

Really bad.

At one point l was in the kitchen wanting a cup of coffee and had absolutely no clue how to make one. I couldn’t remember.

Then I put hot water on my breakfast cereal. My brain couldn’t work out how that was wrong.

It’s not being tired, it’s something else. It’s horrendous.

BUT, I managed a year without sleep. An hour and a half sleep was enough to keep me going for the next 24 hr period.

There are sleep clinics only a phone call away if it all goes wrong. I recommend Millpond Sleep clinic. It saved my sanity.

I was also terrified of sleep deprivation, then got a really good sleeper (at night. Naps were another story). I think he did his first 5/6 hour stretch before 6 weeks old and The doctor made me set an alarm in the middle of the night so I'd wake him up And feed him . He was furious with me, hated it, and would refuse to feed and just go back to sleep.

The 4 moth sleep regression coincided with a cold and was an absolute bitch. But he's been generally great since then, bar the odd teething related rough night.

I suppose what I'm saying is not every baby is a nightmare sleeper! Some love their sleep.

So I can't remember awful nights..... So it wasn't that bad and I'm on baby 4...... My first slept through the night quite quickly, and I also adopted dream feeds which worked for me.... I'm convinced that also not turning the lights on and making a big deal of the getting up actually made a difference to how they all sleep/slept.

Totally depends on child. First baby, slept through at 10 months after being up every 3-4 hours previously. Second baby I'm still struggling with at 2.5 years. He woke up every hour between 6 months and 18 months. But he is a gorgeous character and absolutely worth it.

What I will say is, while some of these stories may sound horrendous, in my case I definitely got used to having much less sleep. I felt very very sleep deprived with both at first to the extent I didn't trust myself to drive etc but then my body just adapted. Now I can easily get by on 5 hours where pre kids I would have said I needed at least 8!

In my experience, as a first time mum, unimaginable!!

I had a baby sleeping no longer than 1.5 hrs at a time for the first 12 weeks. It is very hard but you just get through it somehow. I never hallucinated but sometimes I felt nauseous and once I slept through the crying but generally it's ok.

I wouldn't have replied to this except your title did say "be honest with me"... my DS is now 32 months (nearly 3), has never slept through the night, always wakes at least twice and often 4 or 5 times... he was worse when he was smaller...
(Sorry! Hope you don't get one of these...)

Thank you everyone for your honesty - it’s what I wanted. While some of the responses have put so much fear into me, I can see that it’s not the same for everyone.
For those that have asked - I will have support - I do have a partner but he travels abroad for work frequently for long stretches which is why I am so worried but I will be staying with my mum for the first month which she has offered and she is going to help me as much as she can - probably not during the night but she has said she will do all she can in the day so I can get some rest - before I go back home.

It can be awful. With my DD, we had all manner of trouble with sleep, eventually resulting in her needing surgery to correct severe obstructive sleep apnoea when she was 2. 2 years of accute sleep deprivation was unbelievably hard and affected every part of my life. BUT she was absolutely at the worst possible end of the scale, and we survived. Now she’s 3, honestly the difficulty of those days has faded, and I can enjoy my lovely daughter (who, incidentally, sleeps very well these days!)

Accept help. If your DMum/MIL offers to take the baby in the pram so you can nap for an hour, say yes! Take the hard times in shifts - even if your DH can’t do nights (mine couldn’t, he was nearly falling asleep at the wheel as it was), they CAN do chunks of weekend so that you can get a LONG nap and have some time to yourself as well.

You get through it. And then you have a wonderful child that you can enjoy for years to come. That’s from the perspective of the worst possible scenario, most babies sleep far better than mine, so you may not have much deprivation at all with a bit of luck.

It’s not that bad. My first was a terrible sleeper but I think I read somewhere that in the first few months new mothers have this adrenaline or something that gets them through the constant wake ups etc. I guess when there’s no choice but to get up and stay up, you just do it.

Luckily my second one was a great sleeper almost from birth!

Saying that, they are both sick right now and waking up every 20 minutes or so crying because they’ve got blocked noses. They’ve been doing this every night for 2 weeks so my sleep has been very disrupted. Once or twice I have been tearful with exhaustion but mostly I’m fine.