How do you maintain a decent level of happiness in your life when sleep deprived & other coping strategies?

[Bobsmyaunty]

My DD is 8 months old and has always been a crappy sleeper, and anything (cold, teething, cough etc) makes her even worse for a bit. I'm trying all sorts to improve the situation and I am soooo tired - as I know many of you are too!

I find some days it can really really get me down and I am desperate to not let it. So whilst I work on improving her sleeping does any one want to share what they do to keep their own mental/wellness state up?

So far I've been trying to

• eat really nutritious (easy to make) food
• do some mini bursts of exercise, like a 10 minute run when I can - any more woud kill me
• remind myself that you're all out there too struggling with sleep, I'm not the only one
• tune out to those lucky blighters who's babies have 'slept through from 5 weeks'. It just makes me feel violent.

Would love to hear anyone else's coping strategies to maintain sanity through sleep deprivation...!

[highheelsandequations]

Chocolate, and biscuits, and cake. And lots of things others have suggested like getting out, cosleeping (I feel better if I have at least been in bed all night) and acceptance.

DD1 is 2y3mo, DD2 is 5 weeks. DD1 has slept through the night 5 times in her life. I am very tired!

[LongStory]

With such busy days I actually quite liked those night time feeds and time to settle the babies. They were kindof weirdly peaceful/powerful ... starting with two screaming twins and then 20 mins later all calm again. Almost the best part of mothering. I miss those days now .

[cerealqueen]

This was me a year ago. By Thursday, I'd hate the world and everybody in it. I was so angry.

Coped through long sleeps at the weekend courtesy of DP.
Fresh air in the mornings, lots of tea and sits down in the day. Nice food, chocolate. Coming onto mumsnet. Praying for a miracle - praying didn't work but sleep training did.

[laughingeyes2013]

I find that I am putting everything on hold - "I will do xyz one day in the future when the children are finally sleeping through the night".

I save my (limited) energy as much as I can, and recommend doing one or two housework jobs each day rather than a whole house blitz. That way I feel bizarrely more in some sort of control over it all, rather than overwhelmed all the time. Better still pay someone to do it for you!

I don't iron anymore, except if I go to a party or a wedding. I bought a robot hoover when my last one died, best purchase from Amazon ever

I also do far more online shopping than I ever used to, for an easy life and to be kind to my poor tired body!

I sleep as much as I can when the baby does. I climb into my 3 year old's single bed for a cuddle until he's back to sleep when he wakes up having nightmares. It makes nights easier because no sooner have I returned to bed, he will start up again. Saves the up/down all night nonsense which is exhausting! He's rarely slept a whole night since being born and I'm thinking any day now we'll get lucky.

I do as much as I can to be organised which helps conserve energy, even if its only thinking power. Someone once said "a job done at night it 3 times faster than a job left til the morning." That's true for me and so I apply it to getting the table laid up (the night before) for breakfast and preschool bag sorted etc.

I really really wanted this little second baby, and for a long time we thought we'd never be able to have a second child, so in the dark of night I remind myself how much of a gift he is, and how that one day this awful torturous sleep deprivation will be a distant memory.

Meanwhile I am we all are in survival mode and living as simple a life as possible. For the moment.

[laughingeyes2013]

Bot children are a gift obviously! I just mentioned the newborn because he is up much more in the night than the 3 year old, so responsible for most of our sleep deprivation (just in case anyone offers to adopt my firstborn)!!!

[Sunnysummer]

I also like remind myself several times a night that I am AWESOME

We are managing to keep tiny clueless human beings alive under harder conditions than those weakling Marines use outside actual interrogation rooms. That is pretty amazing, all things considered, whether or not we manage to get the washing hung up or do a hairstyle other than rumpled ponytail.

Slightly lighthearted, but seriously I did start to feel so much better when I started to remind myself that DH, DS and I are all doing a great job in difficult circumstances. If you don't do that, then I find that the guilt is crushing (not sleep training is bad! But cc will scar them for life! But feeding to sleep is a rod for your own back! And why haven't you baked amazing cakes like your own mum managed?) and while acceptance is also absolutely necessary it feels a bit meek and resigned as a way to get through what might be several months (please god not years) of our lives. Good luck!

[ImagineJL]

Cat-naps are handy. I was never able to do the "sleep while your baby sleeps" thing because I always had too much to do, but a 10 minute nap can really help.

Also, I read somewhere (at least I think it did, although I may have imagined it, in a sleepy haze) that poor-sleeping babies have very active minds. So I told myself that my two kids would be geniuses, while the perfect-sleeping kids would be average! Probably rubbish but it gave me a small comfort.

[Muvvaluv]

Hi Bobsmyaunty!

I soooo relate to what you're talking about (sounds like we all do)... we ended up going to sleep school. SUPER INTENSE but SUPER HELPFUL. I live in Australia and we have three of these centres in my city (Melbourne). I'm guessing there might be something similar over there??
I've blogged about our experiences here:
muvvablog.wordpress.com/2013/06/

(Don't mean to plug the blog, just hoping it might help)

[JoandMax]

My 3.5 year old still wakes at night, it was hard going until about 2 but since then its only one or two wake ups a night. And the last few months he just comes into our bed about 12ish then sleeps til morning so we're nearly there!!

Acceptance definitely is the key, once you stop trying to work out why or how or what is keeping them awake the weight is lifted off your shoulders. Some babies and children are just crap sleepers, its nothing to do with not eating enough or being stimulated or having a set bedtime routine (which I've always done), they just don't sleep!! DH and I feel its part of DS2s personality, its not his fault, he's not doing it on purpose and there's no point getting angry so we just get by. We have a brilliant sleeper in DS1 so its not our parenting!!

In the early days I did the minimum at home, we ate easy meals, wore clothes that didn't need ironing, went to bed at 8pm etc

And I secretly like to believe the stories of poor sleepers = very intelligent so when he's older he'll make a fortune and buy me a huge house and luxury lifestyle to make u for these years!!

[laughingeyes2013]

Muvvaluv I read your blog, very interesting. Can you explain further the but about "learning the signed of tiredness" and "settling techniques"?

Don't live in Oz and they don't offer sleep clinics for frazzled parents here , so ANYTHING would be really interesting and probably more helpful than you could know!!!

[bearsmum123]

I can really recommend the book French children dont throw food by Pamela Druckerman for explaining about sleep cycles and self soothing in tinies. (It's really not as smug as the title makes it sound)
Skip to chapter 3 if your too knackered for the rest.

[VisualiseAHorse]

A bed in the babies room so we can cosleep without disturbing dad.

Sleep training at five months (Sounds harsh, but I was having psychotic episodes due to lack of sleep). We did the method where you leave them for increasing amounts of time, no more than 7 minutes went by without a check and a cuddle and lullaby.

And my favourite, from my midwife... Don't stand if you can sit, don't sit if you can lie down, and don't stay awake if you can sleep.

[itsonlysubterfuge]

I find eating sugar works for me when I'm so exhasted it gives me a temporary boost, but eating healthy is probably a much better plan!

I would like to point out I'm not eating handfuls from the sugar bowl , but something like fruited tea loaf, doughnut, muffin, candy bar, etc. My favorite at the moment is toasted marshmallows.

[WetGrass]

Actually - WATER, WATER .

I find I get perniciously dehydrated by the combination of being awake longer & the caffeine.

Litres and Litres of water make me feel much better.

Also Floradix for postnatal iron.

And TV box sets keep me in a semi-awake state at night (I turn on tv rather than light) - which disrupts my sleep cycles less.

[noblegiraffe]

My 9 month old can self settle and still wake every hour or two screaming for attention.

People who tell you that self-settling is the key to sorting night sleep problems are big fat liars misguided.

[WetGrass]

P.s. my non-sleeping babies are both ( smug alert ) very smart and alert little kids now.

DD1 still sleeps 30% less than her peers - but now invests the time into reading - including Dickens, Harry Potter in a day etc etc.

DS1 teacher says 'I haven't yet managed to give him a maths problem he couldn't do'.

(but they still barely freaking sleep).

[Quangle]

laughingeyes also makes a really good point. We are blessed to have these babies who destroy our sleep and make us feel so desperate. It's hard to remember that sometimes when you are barely making it.

Feeling a bit like that today having heard a report on the radio about Syrian families fleeing the war and taking overnight trains to anywhere and fetching up in utterly foreign cities with three young children and a suitcase to their names. And watching DIY SOS last night. I wonder what the hell I did to get so lucky. Sorry for sanctimonious post - I'm not really that person but feeling a bit like that today.

[CinammonGirl]

This has been a really helpful thread for me - DD 2.7 has pretty much slept through the night since about 5 months - until the last couple of months! Recent days have seen us all awake since 4am and I have to admit to actually sitting on the stairs outside her room crying with desperation and tiredness :( Reading this thread yesterday something clicked for me and I've just accepted this is a phase and will pass and I'm not alone. Last night was a little better and I don't know if maybe she picked up on a calmer more relaxed mummy? !

I've saved my sanity by taking my wonderful mum and lovely mil up on their kind offers of childcare - she's having a sleepover at granny's tomorrow night so DH and i can have some time to ourselves and a bit of a lie in - I suffered terribly with pnd and anxiety and couldn't leave her with anyone until quite recently. I've come through the other side though and now realise it doesn't make me a terrible mother for needing a break!

God that was longer than I meant, sorry!

[Clarella]

we are very blessed indeed by these babies.

another thing that has just helped the coping is hearing that 1. SIL and BILls lo who has 'slept through' from tiny is now definitely not at 7 months (we've had 10 months of extremely disturbed nights which has led to acceptance and cosleeping) and 2. dhs best mate living on the other side of world and has japanese wife has coslept from birth. (as they do in Japan) they never actually told dh that (who's struggled with the acceptance thing till just a couple of weeks ago) though they did say/moan how badly their son slept. (though great now at 15 months!) that extra info would have helped A LOT a few months ago!

my dh has often wanted to 'fix' things looking to BIL and SIL s example - though that baby has always slept freakishly lots. (teeth have started) my mum (who's always right of course) has spent many phone calls reassuring me 'it will come'. I'm following her advice

[Muvvaluv]

Hi laughingeyes,

Sorry to hear there aren't any sleep schools in the UK. Ours are run through early parenting centres and were recommended by the GP. I know that there are some private practitioners who can come out to your home, though they can cost a bit. I really would recommend speaking to your GP or maternal health nurse as they should be able to recommend some service like this. Ours was covered by Medicare too, the equivalent of your NHS.

I'm not sure how old your baby is but here are some of the tired cues for babies 3-6 months (info from Tweddle, the parenting centre we attended).

www.tweddle.org.au/File.axd?id=2f9981ea-94b8-4db5-9a7c-d5417e69afa7

Most of them seem pretty obvious...I guess the thing with my baby was that she would be up for an hour and show the tired cues and then I'd think "how can you POSSIBLY be tired??! Let's keep you up for another hour!!" At that time, I should have been trying to get her into bed. So the point I'm trying to make is that I was watching the clock instead of watching her and what she was trying to tell me.

The settling techniques are a bit more difficult to tell you about over the Interwebs without showing you in person.

There's a bunch of audio and visual resources below, which have been put together by the sleep centre at the Queen Elizabeth family centre.

www.qec.org.au/families/audio-and-video

In essence, I found all of the sleep info, coming from so many people, really, really overwhelming especially when I was sooooo tired my eyes were falling out of my head. So it was good to go somewhere and have someone show me what to do and support me as a lot of it was about building confidence. So if you can have someone come out to your home I'd really recommend this.

[laughingeyes2013]

Good info, thanks for that! I will look it up

[emeraldgirl1]

Reading this thread has almost made me cry with relief that there are others out there!!!

I get the rage and frustration too and it has helped to read that acceptance is a good strategy... I am always deluding myself that tonight will be better and then get miserable when it isn't... Better to accept it I think!!

I also feel murderous towards the mums (every other mum in my nct group...) who have peacefully sleeping babies. I feel it is SO UNFAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does it get better...?

Promise??????

[CinammonGirl]

Changing my mindset and accepting she's just not going to sleep well at the moment has worked wonders for me emeraldgirl - the last few nights I've just resolved myself that it's going to happen and when it has, I've just gotten up, calmly seen to her and then sat outside her room and read my kindle til she's fallen asleep again which has been taking her all of five minutes - no screaming, no crying, no fuss - it's almost like she's picking up that I'm calmer and I feel so much better now I'm not fretting about it all the time and trying to work out what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it! It's just a phase and as they say, this too shall pass! In the meantime, we know we're not alone!

[Clarella]

emerald - I felt the same about both my SIL/BILS baby and other nct babies who were 'sleeping perfectly' - all are now not, but through accepting and choosing my route I am certainly coping better and I need the predictability of my night's - he may sometimes wake a little more with me, (though I know he sleeps better and doesn't fully wake with me as evidenced by his activity in the day!) but my strategies are the same no matter what, fever, teeth, wind etc.

at 7 - 8 - 9 months I was asking the same (well actually 1-9 months) but I have noticed it getting better definitely. (several times recently I've woken in the night and he hasn't!) I'm realistic though as I know we'll go through rough times in the future. what is also getting better is my ability to cope - it does pass honestly!

[Bobsmyaunty]

This thread has been AMAZING. I really love the suggestion of reminding myself we're doing an awesome job under difficult circumstances when it's 3am and I'm up again and dead dead tired.

I also had a massive chat with DP and said, basically, that I felt whenever we hit a rough sleep patch it was assumed and never questioned that I would take the full brunt of the hit and it didn't matter how much my quality of life took a nosedive. I wanted to feel more of a team and that my life mattered too. He's been so much better since then...managing wake ups up to midnight (I go to bed at 8 in bad patches), giving me lie ins and working from home when he can. Just knowing someone's got my back has made the world of difference. And also that you're all out there too!

Totally doing the travel lodge suggestion too - brilliant.