Please prevent me from punching my friend's lights out

[catski]

only everytime I go to my facebook page her status is something along the lines of "X is enjoying a lovely glass of wine whilst Y [her son - one month younger than mine] happily sleeps for another 12 hours".

a) My son (5 months old) wakes up on average 5 times a night and I am wild-eyed with sleep deprivation. b) much as I feel the need to, I can't down the nearest bottle of vodka as am still breastfeeding.

They are coming over for dinner in a couple of weeks and I'm dreading them sitting there and going on about how incredibly lucky they are whilst making 'poor you' noises at me. I can't even lay into the cooking sherry to numb the pain.

Am I just jealous? Too right I am! I'd give anything for a decent night's sleep. Please send tips on how I can keep my simmering resentment at bay. Sob.

catski - have a glass of wine.

I could have written your post 2 months ago. A friends baby slept through at 10 weeks and mine was up all night. She did early weaning and he ate really well. I did blw and lots of food got dropped on the floor. But now at 7 months mine is sleeping through and hers is up all night.

personally I'd fess up. If the question comes up just say 'yeah she's a shite sleeper but not to worry, she'll get there in her own time' and move on. You could tell them you co-sleep too. People either suck in through their teeth at that one or make disapproving noises while looking at you sympathetically.

catski - maybe she's LYING

my 6 month old has been teething for YEARS (well months anyway) and I too would give my right arm for some decent sleep. I'm not asking for much, just 6 hours unbroken would do

everytime I see a Facebook message that involves a baby sleeping I want to cry. and now I have some sort of mastitis problem too grrr

I have waited til 6 months to wean and it's fine (am BLW too) so don't worry about that.

Hurray for all the clever babies!

MrsJC - hope your mastitis clears up soon

She already knows my baby sleeps badly so I think I'll just move on fairly rapidly from the subject when it comes up.

After her barrage of marvellous-sleeping-baby-everything-is-wonderful status updates last week, her facebook page has been mercifully quiet this week.

Thank you for all your support - it's good to chat to others in the same position and I now feel more relaxed about it all and less likely to insert the turkey baster somewhere unmentionable when they come over for dinner. I'll let you know how it goes (although it's not for a couple of weeks) and will be putting my prayers in to the God of Sleep that my son will have one of his rare good nights!

Oooo, I get this a lot too from my cousin, his baby is 5 weeks younger than DD and has slept from 7 till 7 since he was 2 days old or something ridiculous...DD on the other hand is nearly 9 months and still wakes 4-5 times a night. (We co-sleep otherwise I would be delirious by now.)

Anyway, I get the 'poor you' comments all the bloody time - drives me bonkers. The difference is though, they basically left their son to cry right from the beginning as cousin's wife won't let anyone pick up their baby when he cries - she insists he's just 'testing them' .

Oh this is soooo like me at the moment. I've even stopped seeing friends with babies the same age as I can't bear to hear them complain about how their DS falls asleep in the highchair or something.

I'm terribly bitter and horribly jealous!

When I tell people that DD doesn't sleep well they tell me about their friend who is knackered as her DS wakes once every night. But that they fixed it all by bottle feeding and CC.

And then good friends do try to help by suggesting I go to her too quickly, pander to her and that her crying can't be THAT bad.

Grrr............................

Or when you tell people that you're up every 90 mins or so and they say "oh, I'd go insane" or "how are you still standing?" BECAUSE I have no choice but to keep some sanity and keep going.

I hate that too - when people say "Oh, I couldn't do that, me. I need my sleep". Well, what would you do then? Put the baby in a cupboard and go back to bed???

Makes me wanna say something like "Yeeeeesss, you strike me as the type who couldn't cope".

Do the BLW, and then when she is around (preferably not when she's faffing with some puree, she probably won't notice) get someone else to loudly admire your DS's amazingly proficient eating skills. My DH said something like that (unprompted) about my friend's DD, and friend nearly burst with pride. I told him after he had no idea what a right thing he just said.

Well - here's an update from me. They came over for dinner on saturday night and stayed over. My LO was his usual self - went to bed at 9pm then woke up for an hour when we went to bed at 1am, and woke up a couple of times more after that until we got up at 9am. He also discovered a new, and much loved, trick of hurling his dummy out of the cot and then crying for it so we had to put the light on a couple of times to find the damn thing again! Of course their baby slept from 7 till 7 but as they were sleeping in the same room as him they got woken up every hour just by his noisy sleeping so they were knackered the next day too (they moved him into his own room at 3 months). Probably more knackered than me actually as I'm used to it.

Facebook status today? "X is feeling great after a good night's sleep".

Sigh.