I can give you a father's perspective on this although I'm not sure I can help much. I can, however, completely sympathise with regard to the brutal nature of sleep deprivation.
My wife and I have 2 girls, a 5yo and a 1yo. I think I can honestly say I have not had anything more than the odd night of unbroken sleep in the last 5 years. I actually have no clue what an ordinary, average nights sleep is when you have kids.
DD#1 started with colic as an infant then we had a few months of pretty good sleeping. Then from about 9 months onward we started to get a more and more broken sleep pattern, especially when she slept on her back. She would wake up a few times during the evening and night. As time went on the restlessness got worse. We had one of those movement monitors and it used to go off occasionally meaning she must have stopped breathing. She had a constantly snotty nose and watery eyes. Between 1 and 2 years old we took her to the doc endlessly as we knew something wasn't right...all to no avail.
By about 1 and 3/4 we knew she seemed to have issues breathing at night. The pattern of sleep was waking 4 or 5 times during the evening then usually around midnight or 1 am she would be awake proper and very unhappy. It seemed she was desperately trying to settle but every time she dropped off something would wake her up. At its worst, I remember one night where she woke up for a final time around 1 am and it was 5am by the time I got her to sleep again. By this time I had educated myself into a pattern where I went to be around midnight as I could not function if I went to bed earlier then had to drag myself up out of deep sleep in order to deal with DD.
God knows how many times the docs saw her and even and ENT consultant. By 2 years of age it was clear that she would just stop breathing at night...we watched it happen when she was sleeping on the bed between us. Her body would then react by waking her...hence the restlessness during the night.
Nothing was offered as an explanation though. In the end, she used to do this when she fell asleep in a car seat....we video'd it out of desperation at one point to show to the doctor. Finally, when she was around 2 and a bit we saw a consultant who took one look down her throat and said she had tonsils the size of golf balls which were meeting in the middle. No wonder she had sleep apnoea! As her tonsils clearly hadn't just grown that big over night, god knows what all the other docs were doing!
When she was 2.5 yrs old she had her tonsils out and the night after the op was the first time I had ever seen her sleep on her back for several hours without waking.
Unfortunately though, the damage was done in terms of her sleep patter...that combined with an awful hospital experience for her. She never slept properly after that...it was better but she was still wakeful and would often just wake up in a complete state. Only in the past year has DD#1 started sleeping through the night although we still have to sit with her while she goes to sleep.
Now DD#2 seems to be taking over from DD#1. For example, last night, the wife and I both went to bed at 9.30pm as we are so knackered. By 12.30am DD#2 had woken up 5 times and DD#1 once. DD#2 eventually had to go on the bed next to my wife as she clearly couldn't sleep for more than 20mins in the cot and we couldn't face getting out of bed yet again. Some sleep was had thereafter but DD#2 kept waking up at various times through the early hours.
DD#2 seems to be exhibiting the same symptoms as DD#1 had....desperately trying to sleep but she is very snuffly/snorty and keeps waking up. She doesn't have a cold atm but to hear her breathing at night you'd think she had a very snotty nose. I am dreading the prospect of going through all of it again.
The worst thing about all this is the effect on my relationship with the kids and my wife. I have always been the person who deals with the kids in the evening and at night (in the main) mainly because we found out early on that DD#1 would settle much quicker with me dealing with her at night. At times though I have found myself irrational with rage at the unfairness of it all...fortunately I am not violent in the least but even I have found myself almost blaming the child for waking me up and so probably been a bit short when dealing with them. You enter a state of "surviving" the next day/night and that's it. There is no husband/wife time really....you're too damn tired to contemplate much more than eating supper and crashing in front of the telly for an hour before starting the dreaded night.
I have to say I find it difficult to understand dads who sleep the night away expecting their wives to deal with it "because I have work the next day". I certainly couldn't do that to my wife. When the soft and smelly is constantly hitting the fan you have to share the load or things will fly apart under the strain. It really does become a game of survival and the only way to do that is together.
All I can say is it does get better at some point. We are just unlucky it seems with DD#2 possibly having the same issue. If she didn't, we would finally be getting a proper night's sleep at last now DD#1 is sleeping through the night 90% of the time!
Sorry for the wall of text but guess I have been spleen venting a bit too...lol! It helps :-)