Is all baby sleep advice complete rubbish or am I just grumpy due to lack of sleep?

[Anonnewbie]

I have a 9 week old and am so sick of all the advice out there!
It seems to fall into a few categories:

1. "They're a newborn, it's normal to only sleep an hour at a time and only sleep on you and take 30+mins to get to sleep and need rocking etc". Fine it's normal but if you don't live in a tribal communities full of family taking shifts and it's basically you alone with a bit of evening/weekend back up from partner, it can be almost physically impossible. For example, my baby will often only sleep if I'm bouncing on a yoga ball holding him but this absolutely kills my back - I just physically can't keep it up.
2. Variations on 'they need to learn good habits - put them down awake so they learn to sleep' (or don't feed to sleep/don't rock etc etc). Ok but that always fails and we are then in the realms of overtiredness and screaming and then back to rocking except it takes even longer, more painful on my back and both of us are more upset.
3. The common assumption that night awakenings are due to hunger and can be fixed through the feeding pattern. Mine wakes up between every sleep cycle like clockwork - it's not hunger!
4. People saying just do what it takes, put them in a pram or whatever. Mine doesn't sleep in the pram, he only sleeps using methods which cause me physical pain!
5. People saying it will pass. Ok this is true but you only have to look at the sleep threads on here to know it could last for years!!

I don't even have the most difficult baby I think - he will be put down once asleep usually so I can have 30 mins without him on me (running the risk of him waking and it all starting again but worse though...)

My DD is 3 and didn't sleep through until she was 2. At all, not even once. She wouldn't nap for more than 30 mins unless in the car apart from a brief spell around 18 months when she started napping for 3 hours then gave it up all together!
We.tried.everything. All the advice we were given, all the gadgets and methods and lights and different bedding, noise, no noise, none of it made the slightest bit of difference. She basically just grew into sleeping but it took years. She went through different phases, sometimes things were better for a week or two, sometimes worse. We ended up co sleeping and taking turns to do a night each with her just to survive but it was really hard. In hindsight I think approaching it like a problem that could be fixed if only we did/bought X thing was an error. It does often feel like it's somehow your fault when your baby won't sleep and everyone else's seems to but they are all different, some sleep some don't . I found this article recently quite reassuring www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/28/baby-sleep-parenting-competence-shame?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

You probably don’t want for advice but try a sling. Only thing which worked for us.

Mine didn’t sleep through until 2 and second until 3. That’s year. A few years down the line and it’s still not guaranteed.

Sleep deprivation is torture. I hear your pain.

I hear you OP. I keep it quiet normally because you get judged, but with my bad sleeper the only thing that worked was sleep training (when they were old enough, approx a year old and I don’t mean cry it out.) Until then it was a case of survival and nothing else worked. They were waking out of habit.

Anyway, no advice but solidarity from me.

It's not necessarily rubbish but all babies are different and what works for one most definitely work for another. Unfortunately, if you have a good sleeper, you don't necessarily realise that as you think it's down to your parenting. My DC are 13 & 11 (years not months!) and I still feel lesser somehow if baby sleeping habits come up & I say that mine didn't sleep until they were 2.5yrs.

My first was like this with the rocking and I have a bad back anyway so it was torture. I ended up doing most of his daytime naps in the sling, co sleeping at night and spending my money at the osteopath. Then sleep trained at 6 months. He 2.5 now and you can leave him to fall asleep in his room after stories, and he sleeps through the night unless Ill.

Id just ignore all the advice to be honest - none of it worked for me (swalddling, wake windows etc). Day time naps were the worst and he massively resisted sleep. Ended up dropping his naps quite early and basically he's massively nosey and on the go all the time.

I think all the "they need to learn to fall asleep stuff" really applies to older babies? Or people who have been able to put an awake baby down to sleep and think this is a skill they've taught them!

Don't talk to anyone about it who has children who are easy sleepers - their advice is the worst. Even my mother in law who has 3 kids and lots of grandchildren admitted that DS was pretty bad. He was sick a lot so I think partly it was a reflex issue when he was really little. When he was about 3/4/5 months I think it was just his personality.

I've got a 6 week old now and he's really quite different. It's the baby not you.

Some babies sleep.

Some babies can be persuaded to sleep. This is where all "sleep training works" stories come from.

Some babies laugh in the face of sleep and have it as a personal challenge to minimize parental sleep by all possible means, and are immune to all forms of persuasion. I had one of these.... I'm still waiting for this teenage "they sleep til lunch" to start - and he sits his GCSE's next year!

Thanks, baby is asleep in a sling right now, very true that this is the best option, I have resorted to sleeping sat up with him in it which is a no no but I'd argue better than chucking him out of the window in a fit of rage 😂.

I also think reflux and other problems must play a huge part. Mine wakes up in clear stomach pain quite often (a whole other story and various possible causes we are looking into). It's no wonder they need extra comfort in that case, it's just tough!

So true as well that people think it's down to parenting. I'm sure there's things you can do to influence them a bit, but fundamentally it's obvious it's down to the baby as the same approach gets different results with different babies. I don't know how people with solid sleepers don't get that! Particularly comes to mind when I see comments that the newborn phase was easy because all they do is sleep...well yeah if they sleep alone then easy peasy, but if they won't be put down for 2 minutes while you put a wash on and they are vomiting on everything you own and are generally unsettled then it's a whole different game!

I bought about 8 sleep books second hand and skim read them, have discarded all as useless (one literally just says thing alike "by week 8 your baby should be sleeping 5-8 hours in one go" with no advice on how that might happen!!) except one by Lucy Wolfe. Almost all the advice in her book is along the lines of "try this at bedtime each night, give it some time to succeed, if it becomes an exercise in frustration leave it and try again in a week or two". At least she's honest it might not work!!

I think 1 is the most true of them OP. I'm not convinced we have much influence over how well such young babies sleep.

Honestly I found the first few months fairly hellish. DH and I took it in turns to sleep basically. DS woke very very frequently and took a long time to settle.

At this stage I don’t think there’s any magical cures.. just depends on what variety of baby you get.

Babies who apparently respond well to routines from an early age would have slept well regardless. I’m convinced of it. I always used to see this one particular smug poster who would pop up on threads like these saying “we did an amazing bedtime routine from 4 weeks and he slept all night”. Gives me the rage!

The only game changer for us was sleep training at 6 months. I’m pregnant with 2nd DC and will be holding that in my mind as the light at the end of the tunnel if he turns out to be as difficult as my first.

Lolz. My ds is nearly 8yo and will only sleep more than 5 hours straight if I'm in bed with him. Some babies are just shit sleepers OP, it's nothing to do with you and what you do or don't do. My saving grace was breastfeeding and cosleeping. I'd feed him to sleep, roll away as gently as possible and escape for however long he cared to sleep for.

@Viewfrommyhouse oh dear god haha imlive my sleep I hope we don't have 8 years of this! On the other hand, I can't even do the cosleep and roll away - he won't be rolled over onto his back and if I roll away even a few millimetres he wakes up and flails around! We do share sometimes, I get worse quality but more sleep and frequent panics that I've smothered him because he's nestled under a boob!He sleeps better swaddled but you're not meant to do that if cosleeping.

I wish this sleep stuff was a science not an art/a lost cause!

It's a fucking nightmare tbh. DS had colic, which added to the fun. I feel like a fraud saying he was ebf when his staple diet for the first few months was infacol and gripe water 😂. It doesn't feel like it, but it will get better

I genuinely don't know how people survive colic. Today he's having so much unstoppable screaming and I'm at breaking point from 1-2 days of it - and it's not been hours at a time, much as it feels like it.