Help me help my friend...In what way is it hard with a newborn to 2 year old

[EynidB]

NC. My friend is on here. She has a 6 month old and had a complete meltdown the other night. Her dp was at work. When on FaceTime the baby was asleep, she’d ordered take away. She doesn’t need to work...I was struggling to see what was so hard. She was very upset and kept saying she hadn’t slept and even when she does sleep, itwas all relentless.

I tried to be supportive and understanding but I have no clue what she’s dealing with. She said it’s not going to get easier for the next two years (I said after 6 months sleeping should get better...apparently I am wrong). Just feeling a bit useless really and would like to help her but I admit I did think you’ve got a curry on the way, it’s only 7pm and baby asleep...she also has DP helping most days from 4pm and all night! I realise I dont know the ins and outs. What can I do to help or is she being dramatic?!

I had a 2 non sleepers back to back.

I didn't sleep a night through for 4.5 years. Neither did DH as he was a light sleeper. He helped a lot but the disruption is horrendous. You literally dread the nights and then dread the days too. There is no switching off. None.

You may be sure I had post natal depression and was on tablets. Looking back at least half of it was chronic sleep deprivation.

She hasn't slept in 6 months. Longer, most lilely as you don't sleep well in pregnancy. She is clinging onto sanity by her fingernails. She may lose it, like I did.

I had takeaways. I had wine. It didn't make any difference to the sickening dread of the night to come. And there's nothing you can do. I read all the books, had a routine like iron.... they were just light sleepers and none of it made any difference.

I’m going to give a serious answer but part of me wonders if this is serious as I’m not sure how you could miss everything that is written everywhere about how hard it is having a baby.
Sleep deprivation is a killer and no it doesn’t always get better after 6 months; it can continue for years. Even when the baby is asleep you can’t really relax as they could easily wake up and you’re looking ahead at a night of not knowing how much sleep you’ll have. The sense of responsibility and how much your life has changed is overwhelming to the extreme and it is relentless; you don’t get time off. It takes months to physically recover from pregnancy and childbirth too. It’s also doubly harder during this pandemic as you can’t see people and get that social support.

I’m not sure it gets easier to be honest but you get used to the way your life has changed and you start to get more back as their personalities develop.

I don’t think anyone realises how much their life changes completely until they have a baby. It’s a shock. She’s right it is relentless and lack of sleep is a killer.
If you want to help I’d suggest letting her know that and asking what she needs. Give her a few suggestions. It sounds to me like maybe she wants adult company. Not sure where you live but are you able to visit in the evening if her DP is at work? Go for walks together?

I’d also keep an eye on her. She may gave PND. You could gently suggest she see her gp or consider returning to work.

It's not hard. Babies are notoriously easy to care for and barely impact your life at all. People regularly talk about how they frequently forget they even have a baby as they just quietly slot in to your life with next to no demands at all.
It's basically a bit easy than having a cat, yeah?

Do you have children OP?

It may be many things - lack of sleep or the constant stress of the responsibility of keeping two small children alive - most of us who have had young kids can relate to the feeling of being totally overwhelmed. If I were you I would try not to judge and just be there for her.

It could also potentially be due to post natal depression. If you are worried about this I would suggest you talk to her husband to see if he has any concerns about her.

If you ever have children and as babies / toddlers that don’t sleep at all you will only really understand then.

My second and my third were abysmal sleepers as babies and to some degree as toddlers. My three year old is still hit and miss.

Just imagine not getting more than two hours of sleep in a row for over four years and having to be on the ball all day with a baby plus other children for fifteen hours at least.

Save your incredulity for here and for god sake don’t express this to her.

Sleep deprivation does enormous mental as well as physical damage and with a baby there is no escape. The buck stops with you. And the dad if he’s around and even then mostly the mother.

She's not being dramatic she is being sleep deprived and that honestly does crazy things to you.

There could also be the possibility that she has post natal depression.
I had a baby who only slept in 45 minute sections for 5 months he would wake up want a BF but then had to be kept upright for 15 mins due to reflux. I would get him back into his cot and would get about 15 minutes sleep before he would wake up again. I cannot even describe the mental challenges this caused me. I felt unsafe to do anything let alone care for a baby!

Support her and suggest she looks into ways of adjusting to get rest. My husband would keep my son downstairs from 9pm til 11pm/midnight and give him a bit of expressed milk this meant I could get a few hours of sleep before nightmare night. He also would then get up with baby at 6 and have him downstairs for 2 hours before having to leave for work again so I could get a chunk of sleep.

We also used the Lucy Wolfe sleep book which helped a lot.
If you are nearby can you take the baby out for a walk whilst she gets some sleep etc?

Do you have a kid?
If not I dont think you can understand what it's like.

@ElspethFlashman

“You may be sure I had post natal depression and was on tablets. Looking back at least half of it was chronic sleep deprivation. “

I think this is very true and an important observation.
If on the odd occasion I actually got a bit of sleep in the day or they were all asleep by 8pm and I could have a bath/ eat/ watch some tv I felt like a different person

I sense PND is offered as the reason behind lots of things which are just grinding and the cause fo tiredness, bad moods etc not actual PND. But I accept the lines are blurred ......

Because it's exhausting in a way you can't quite imagine unless you've had a newborn. Or potentially been an A&E doctor on a double shift or in the Army

If you want to help, make some meals she can reheat quickly and easily, and if she's ready for it, offer to take the baby out for a walk for an hour (in a mask and all that).

[quote Cleverpolly3]@ElspethFlashman

“You may be sure I had post natal depression and was on tablets. Looking back at least half of it was chronic sleep deprivation. “

I think this is very true and an important observation.
If on the odd occasion I actually got a bit of sleep in the day or they were all asleep by 8pm and I could have a bath/ eat/ watch some tv I felt like a different person

I sense PND is offered as the reason behind lots of things which are just grinding and the cause fo tiredness, bad moods etc not actual PND. But I accept the lines are blurred ......[/quote]
Most definitely!

I was assessed for PND and my HV was concerned. My Dr was absolutely amazing and also a mum she asked very different questions and said nope your exhausted and sleep deprived. She then explained there is a reason sleep deprivation is used as a torture device.

She gave me a load of coping suggestions and saw me each month to just check in. I honestly think if I had seen a different Dr I would have been put on tablets and sent away. My Dr was 100% right I was fully sleep deprived.

Relentless is exactly how I felt about the first 6 years with two small children. It just didn’t stop. Constant. I was chronically sleep deprived which caused severe depression.

Do you actually like your friend? Because your op isn't coming across like you do.

Hopefully she has some other people around her who are more supportive.

The best way to help her is by NOT posting her private business and confidences here on MN where she 'll see them and recognise the details. But I'm sure "helping" her isn't your real agenda, is it? Some "friend".

The good news is, now she knows who and what you are.

Relentless and draining. Especially when it takes almost 4 years for the child to start sleeping through..

I found after 12 months baby slept so much better. 17 months now sleeps 12-13 hours a night (unless poorly).

First 12 months was very hard. Lack of sleep & a very clingy baby. Very hard work. Though I found once crawling, then walking. So much easier.

Broken sleep night after night makes everything miserable.

Even if she’s got a sleeping baby and a takeaway on the way, it will be hard to enjoy it if she knows she’s got a night of getting up multiple times ahead of her... she’s probably thinking she ought to get an early night, but then she won’t see DP.

DP helping from 4pm and in the nights should help a lot but it depends how much he can/will do. For example if she is breastfeeding then tbh the night wakings are probably mostly down to her no matter how much he may want to help, so she still won’t ever get a full night’s sleep.

This. All of this.

@Cleverpolly3

If you ever have children and as babies / toddlers that don’t sleep at all you will only really understand then.

My second and my third were abysmal sleepers as babies and to some degree as toddlers. My three year old is still hit and miss.

Just imagine not getting more than two hours of sleep in a row for over four years and having to be on the ball all day with a baby plus other children for fifteen hours at least.

Save your incredulity for here and for god sake don’t express this to her.

Sleep deprivation does enormous mental as well as physical damage and with a baby there is no escape. The buck stops with you. And the dad if he’s around and even then mostly the mother.

This. All of this!

There is normal sleep deprivation with a baby who physically is dependent on mum and wakes every four hours (that's pretty normal) which is tough enough.

Then you have bad sleepers, and I didn't appreciate how bad it could get until a colleague confided what was happening at home when she returned from maternity leave. She was grey, her skin had this very odd scaliness, her hair was brittle (pre leave she looked glowing), she kept making basic mistakes and was slurring - she wasn't being taken seriously by health visitor s about how little the child was sleeping, and the banging the baby was making when left in the cot.

Her husband slept at his parents so he could go to work and function, she was coming to work for some relief.

I had a naive belief that it was just a phase, but it was a clinical problem - her parents poo pohed her problems until they babysat for one night - they didn't do it again. I had never seen a person more at the end of her rope.

I’m guessing / hoping from your post you don’t have children, as if you do I expect you wouldn’t be asking, so I would probably start by not telling her when sleep will get better! This is her second so she knows what it’s like.

I’m not sure how her having a takeaway on the way makes any difference to her being exhausted and possibly depressed. I have twins so it’s slightly different but when you have two young children it can often mean no proper sleep - mine rarely ever slept at the same time and even when they do you can’t rest properly because you are waiting for one to wake up. It’s a constant slog of nappy changes, feeding, calming down two crying kids, one is two so will be running around, getting into everything while she’s trying to care for the baby. And just because she has a partner doesn’t mean he’s useful in the night. She has constant demands on her all the time.

I can honestly barely remember the first year of my twins life, I was beyond exhausted - I was hallucinating at times. It’s impossible to explain.

And often the time it really hits you is when both kids are asleep and you sit down in the quiet, for maybe the first time all day.

Does it really matter anyway if you don’t think she has it hard enough to be so distressed? This is how she feels, a good friend is supportive. On paper I have it much harder than a lot of my friends (both my twins are disabled and I have health issues myself), but that doesn’t mean my friends aren’t ever allowed to complain to me about how hard things are - it would never cross my mind to think they shouldn’t be struggling! I think this is more about you and having some empathy even if you don’t understand.

Sleep deprivation is shit...
DS1 had colic... Screamed 7 till 10 like clockwork, woke up hourly all night and got up at 5.30am... Age 2 he dropped to only twice a night waking and finally Age 3 he slept through occasionally. I also worked Full Time and at points was literally losing the plot.

DS2 has always only been up twice a night and is in bed 7pm... But his twice a night is in hour long stints. So yes I could have takeaway and wine then however some nights I go to bed early to counteract the awake in the night hours.

Everyone is different in their ways of coping and how much they can take in terms of lack of sleep.

I didn’t know what ‘on my knees with exhaustion’ properly meant until I reached the 6-7 month mark with DS. It was like all my reserves were used up. He slept from 7-11 and then woke up at least every 45 minutes all night long. So I basically didn’t sleep past 11pm as by the time I’d dropped off again, he woke up again. I remember the sickening dread of the night ahead. And then obviously the night was over, I had to care for a small child all day with no chance to rest because he’d only nap on me.

We finally sleep trained when DH got home one day and thought I was drunk because I was so tired I was slurring my words.

I also had PND and the sleep deprivation contributed to it massively.

Sounds like your friend is reaching out for help?

So having a Friday night takeaway means she must be having an easy life does it 😒 I've regularly decided to do the same after a long, hard week since DS was born because I physically have no effort left to cook. He might have gone down to sleep at 7, but would then wake every 20 minutes to an hour for the rest of the night and I lived like that for the first 14 months of his life. It's not much better now and he's almost 2, so your advice to your friend about sleep improving after 6 months was an unhelpful platitude which definitely doesn't apply to all babies.

She may be suffering from mental health issues.

Also being exhausted is fucking hard. So hard. Especially if you have a baby and toddler and you’re literally “on” all the time.

I wouldn’t question what she’s telling you. Accept that that is her reality and her experience and offer a sympathetic ear. Don’t try and “solve it”. Worse approach IMO.