Baby sleep is tearing us apart

[Chachachanges]

I’ve nc for this as I’ve discussed this in detail with a close friend who i know is on here (hi!).

This might be long - apologies in advance. For background, DH and I have been together 13 years, married 4 and have 1 DS who’s 21 months. Let me just say upfront that my DH is a good man and a great father.

Our DS, whilst amazing, has been a truly terrible sleeper from day 1. It’s been hard, I can’t lie. I took the brunt of if for about the first 9 months as I was breastfeeding and only I could settle him in the night. That was hard, however, I think it’s almost gotten harder since DH has also been able to help settle overnight as he doesn’t seem to do very well with little sleep.

DH has been pushing to do controlled crying since DS was 6 months. I’m just totally against it and have refused to agree to that. (I believe every parent does what’s right for them, cc works for some families but it’s just not something I feel I can do).

I should add that I feel we have compromised and we did sleep train, however in a gentle way, removing boob as a sleep prop and doing shush pat etc to get DS falling asleep independently in the cot.

DH has seen a couple of his friend’s babies who’ve done cc and it has appeared to work. He talks about this all the time. I’ve pointed out the other examples of friends of ours who’ve done it where it hasn’t worked quite so well (still waking over night) but he doesn’t acknowledge this.

I get really annoyed by this as the sleep training we’ve done HAS shown results. DS stopped feeding to sleep, falls asleep by himself in the cot etc. But every time he’s sick, teething etc we go back to square one and I just know if we did cc it would be the same thing. I couldn’t stomach doing it over and over again.

DS has gone from waking every 2 hours at 12 months to maybe once a night now in averagr (sleeps through about 50% of the time). DH doesn’t really acknowledge this improvement - if we had 3 nights of sleeping through followed by 1 bad night, DH will immediately be sulky and bad tempered. If I pick him up on this then we end up in the same argument again about cc. We’re at an impasse about a 2nd child as we can’t agree how we’d deal with another poor sleeper.

I do understand DH point of view that I’ve unilaterally taken a decision which means we’ve been more sleep deprived. But, as I’ve referred to above, DS is a tough nut to crack in terms of sleep and I’m not altogether sure cc would be the answer to our problems. That, I think, is time - i.e. DS sleep is naturally improving every month that goes by.

I just don’t know how we resolve this. Before DS we never really argued v much and certainly never with raised voices etc. Sleep deprivation has taken its toll on our marriage for sure.

Not sure what I’m looking for here. Am I being hugely unreasonable? Has anyone else been here?

Jsku the orphanage story above was not intended to claim that anybody does CC to that extent. It followed from another comment about babies giving up. That said, some parents do use CC to an extreme - for whatever reason. I've seen people use the phrase 'gentle cc' to validate the fact that their attempts somehow differ to other people's.
Toddler tantrums are usually done for an audience...the onus being that toddlers usually know somebody is listening. Haven't done the research but i would hazard a guess that even an ignored toddler would, over time, stop using tantrum as a way to get adult attention.

At the end of the day parents do what they feel works. But just because people don't like it doesn't make our views any less relevant than yours

Can you just mentally shrug off the irritable bad night comments? Don’t pull him up on them?

How do you share night wakings now?

Tbh, my DH was not all that involved even after I returned to work because I can function on less sleep than him. This simultaneously made him a bit spoiled, but also meant he couldn’t get involved in the ‘solving’ which suited me because I could never have done CC and if he’d wanted to it would have been an issue. So I sucked up poor sleep so that my principles weren’t compromised because I genuinely believed I was right about not forcing it.

Anecdotal, but my shit sleeper No. 1 was worst from 18-24 months or so. Got much better once out of a bit and in a bed. No 2 was still a shit sleeper but I didn’t care as much - Stockholm Syndrome

Similar to nosquirrels I did the majority of wakings with my first who was up a minimum of 5 times a night until she was 2. She gets night terrors so it still happens now and again still..
If you can manage yourself and it stops the arguments it actually may be easier on you mentally than dealing with his attitude..
I now have a 4 month old who has started to sleep until about 5.30 (touch wood) so not all babies are the same

I think this is in relationships rather than sleep because OP wants views on the relationship side of it.

I gave my approach to what we are doing about this disagreement.

I don’t disagree with CC and if a parents thinks this is the right approach then that is entirely their prerogative. I personally can’t listen to my baby cry - my DH can, he thinks it will work and I think it won’t. Disagree but I don’t think I am right and him wrong - I am just not willing to compromise so I am taking on the consequences of this. What do people think about that as a concept in relationships?

:)

Disagree but I don’t think I am right and him wrong - I am just not willing to compromise so I am taking on the consequences of this. What do people think about that as a concept in relationships?

Well, that’s what I did so I think it’s a perfectly practical approach. (Except that is did think in this issue I’m more right than he is! )

CC is something i personally cannot & would not compromise on because i found it so traumatic with DD. If DP decided it was a route he wanted to try he would be met with a lot of resistance. I compromise on many things but for me CC is a no go. I do all the night wakings with DS therefore in my house, any sleep training is down to me how i feel comfortable doing it. DP accepts this & takes DS when he wakes in the morning unless he's on early shifts. Is this something you could do? The only other option i can think of and personally it would still destroy me is to tell DH that if he is so adament he wants to do CC, then you are spending the nights elsewhere so you don't have to listen to the howling & HE can handle the sleep training

It's simple. Your baby has learned to fall asleep with an adult present. He is unable to self soothe if he wakes up as that adult is not now present. So he cries.
If you're happy with this, then you need to be that adult. Your DH isn't happy and wants to try a different approach. You have the moral high ground. You've got all the power. What you need to remember is that you're not the only parent. He's not expecting you to do anything wrong, just support him in trying to get DS into a better sleep pattern.
What you need to think about is that when your DS gets to school age, if he isn't waking lots in the night it will impact massively on him in school.

Thanks everyone again for your responses. As Chosenbyyou rightly said, I put this in relationships, as it's more for dealing with the fallout of this issue on our marriage that I was seeking help. However, you've all made some good points that I need to think about...

Firstly, I totally take it on the chin that I've unilaterally decided no to CC and I acknowledge that DH is the other parent so it is hard on him.

I think those of you who suggest taking all the night wakings have hit on something - maybe the nub of it is that I can't do all the night wakings because I'm trying to wean off boob at the mo and if I do every waking, it means DS stays up for literally hours trying to paw at me. So I tend to take any waking after 4am (where I'm happy to do a feed) and DH will take one at about midnight (if there is one, not every night). Some nights this is fine, others not so much as he can stay up for a while crying for boobs.

So, I can't take all the pain of night wakings as DS will end up screaming when I won't let him bf all night - hence waking up DH anyway. And as you all probably remember from the early baby years - tempers flare in the middle of the night!

I think I need to just keep talking to DH, hopefully we can come to some sort of agreement on what each of us would be willing to do should we have a second child who is also a terrible sleeper. I wouldn't want to go through this again as our marriage is so important to me.

OP - we didn’t really argue about how to deal with sleep deprivation but just being so exhausted all the time made us argue about lots of other issues. We have no family nearby to help so the first few years of having two children felt like we were really in the weeds and we are only just coming out of that really now my youngest is 4! We have done a lot of simplifying our home and life over that time which has really helped.

I am a bit confused and it’s been a while since mine were small but how does your DC know the difference between no boobs at 12am and boobs at 4am?

I did withdrawal technique with my DC to get them to sleep which worked but there was no way they were getting fed in the night at 21 months old. I endured they had plenty of food during the day and something extra like porridge/weetabix after dinner/before bed. I can only suggest that the feeding situation is probably quite confusing for DC and not helping sleeping through. If enough crying produces a parent and then later a boob I think this is bad habit that may need to be broken.

Mine did wake in the night on and off, I took them back to bed every single time. Sometimes gave water.

I can see why your DH is frustrated as it probably feels like very slow progress