I am the lucky and knackered mother of two insomniacs!!!!

[EstroGena]

Last night was classic! Both DD's flat out at 7pm as per. DD2 (11 months) wakes twice by 10pm, soothed and goes back to sleep. Wakes at 11.30pm crying loudly (shares room with DD1 (3yrs) so is brought in with us. 2am and DD1 up and crying for me. I go in to settle her and DD2 wakes.

3.30am I am downatairs with both after a FAILED hour and half tryin to get back to sleep.

Peppa Pig and Mr Tumble til 5am when DH gets up to take over. DD1 falls asleep. I cant get to sleep. DD2 zonks at 6am! DH off to work at 7am DD2 up.

DD1 wakes at 8am and says "Mummy, I had a really nice sleep!"

DD1 at preschool, DD2 trashing my lounge having had a 2 second nap at 10am.

Tried EVERYTHING!!!! I have a zillion books on the subject!

PLEASE tell me I am not alone!!!

Your not alone my dd is up most nights for 2-4 hours.It drives us mad as she goes back to sleep when its time to get up.
I am getting so moody as its been going on for years she is 4.3 some days I slur my words im so tired.
She has got worse as when she was a baby I could at least give her some milk or rock her back to sleep, but now she is just wide awake and jumping up and down on our bed.
Hope you get some sleep soon must be really hard with 2 dc to sort out.

Oh my goodness, much respect to you two ladies for coping with so little sleep.

Wow, that is pretty crazy. I think it's more common that you realise, but I don't think you should have to put up with this - you can't be giving your kids 100% during the day if you have been up half the night with them.

We have a sleep clinic near us, which is part of the Health Visitor service provided by the NHS. Can you check if you have one too? They don't deal with the common baby sleep problems that so many of us have but instead focus on children over 1 (I think ) who have ongoing sleep issues - I'd say you definitely qualify!

I probably can't give you any advice that your books haven't offered but sometimes I think you can read too many books and get a bit overwhelmed by all the advice/try too many techniques in too short a space of time and this tends to backfire. If you don't want to go to the sleep clinic/don't have one, can you take a step back from the situation and realise how unsustainable this is? I know you'll try anything when you're knackered but think t.v at 3am could almost encourage the kids to wake up because it's kind of a reward or they get in to the habit of it.

Believe me, I'm not having a go. We've had all sorts of problems with DS's sleep and I read so many books on the subject and tried so many tricks/measures to correct it. In the end we had to be cruel to be kind because nothing was working. It was a case of close the door and let DS cry himself to sleep because nothing else worked.

I think I will find out about a sleep clinic but dont think theres much they can do as dd has s/n. So I think its part of it. She really cant help waking up and being hypoactive at night. It gets me down but I dont really want to give her anything to make her sleep.
She goes to bed so well and sleeps lovely for the first few hours,just doesnt need much sleep I guess.
Must admit we do go down and watch tv just so everyone else can get some sleep.
Just to say I have 2 older children that used to wake at night but I could go to them give a cuddle and they would go back to sleep.
Dds night waking is very different.