Sleep depriving tiny babies is cruel

[PathofLeastResistance]

I need to vent on this and say stuff I feel I can never say to people?s faces.

Sleep is needed for cognitive development and sleep deprivation is used as torture yet noone teaches parents about it, except to what to do when they?re older and have established problems. Babies need an incredible amount of sleep and there are detrimental consequences for them if they don?t get what they need. Breastfeeding introduces challenges to help them get the sleep they need and I wish I?d known what I know now before I had my first baby. Many first time mothers (me included) never consider their babies sleep requirements and are never advised on it. We took our babies out wherever we went leaving them to sleep whenever they could. When they cried from tiredness we would misinterpret their cries as hunger or boredom and feed them or produce some new plastic toy to dazzle them with.
They then would develop a wide eyed exhausted gaze which would cause people to comment on how ?they?re taking it all in? when they?re actually overwhelmed.

It is amazing quite how much sleep little babies need. Before 12 weeks they need about 16 hours a day . My 9 wk old feeds about 7 times in 24 hours taking a total of 5 hours 15mins. Assuming he goes straight back to sleep after his night feeds and one day feed. Then after the other 4 day feeds he has 40mins before he needs to be asleep and as it can take 10mins to get him to sleep he can only really be awake 30 mins after a feed. Ime babies under 2 months can stay awake for a max of between 1 and 2 hours. If kept awake longer than that period they not only struggle to sleep immediately after but also struggle to sleep in the evening, for the night.

I do realise that the first few weeks when establishing breastfeeding are an exception. Until breastfeeding is established the baby by definition isn?t full and they have to work at increasing your supply. Living with a hungry baby is really hard and they inevitably can?t get the sleep they need while they need to be awake and feeding constantly or else when they sleep only briefly before waking hungry. One problem in parents? perception after these weeks is that their baby can?t sleep and we become quite used to having an awake baby for company. The baby then cluster feeds due to the sleep deprivation and the mother is left thinking there is no time between feeds to bother trying for a nap. I remember myself and other mums at the time commenting on how our babies didn?t sleep anything like the amount the books suggested (as if that was their fault ) and we would miss our babies company if they slept more during the day!

However, once breastfeeding is established we should be trying much harder to get our babies to sleep in the day. My first was unable to sleep unaided, unless exhausted, after those first 6 weeks. She needed to be rocked and have a finger to suck before she would sleep. We naively only gave her the opportunity to sleep at night. It could then take up to 3 hours of various tactics before she eventually succumbed. Demand sleeping does not work . Babies need a quiet, dark, comfortable environment and many need help getting to sleep. We shouldn?t be offering them this only at the end of the day and we shouldn?t be left to learn it the hard way.

Vent over. Carry on.

Path I just looked at your profile.

I can see you are new to MN and all your recent posts have been in the 'sleep' topic. I conclude from that, that you are a little obsessed with the topic.

Pray tell us what makes you so?

Oh I do rather think you're jumping on the op - so she's venting on here and judging in her head ( as we all judge in our heads as humans do)- give her a break - she really passionately believes that she knows babies that are having a hard time because they're not getting enough sleep.
If you think she's wrong can't you try and 'educate' her in a less bitchy way!

I've had 3 babies and all of them completely different sleep patterns

dd1 slept all the time whenever wherever with great ease

dd2 never slept regardless of what I did to get her to go to sleep

dd3 somewhere inbetween

each child is different and the circumstances change with subsequent children too

am I missing the point here

Wow... That put the wind up rather a lot of people... Why so touchy?

When babies are utterly exhausted then yes they do sleep regardless. When they are sleepy - they don't make much fuss about it, perhaps yawning occassionally. I've seen plenty of people thrust another rattle at babies who are sleepy but not exhausted.

FGS, wind it up ladies, this thread is a load of nonsense!

Path Seriously, - what has brought you to feel so passionately about this?

your guess is a good as mine LL

FWIW - DS1 - hardly slept - (not through lack of trying on my behalf I hasten to add) - he still doesn't need much sleep now at 8yrs old

DS2 - slept like a log from the day he was born - would stay in bed all day if given the chance even now at nearly 5yrs

DS3 - slept in fits and starts, only became a "good" sleep at about 12 months old - too young (at only 16 months) to say what amount of sleep he'll need when he's older

Oh, I dunno why people were taken aback and rather peed off by the OP..hmm...let's see...maybe it was the insane premise (lots of people don't want their babies to sleep) or the use of the words 'cruel' and 'neglectful' seemingly used to describe anyone whose newborns don't obediently sleep in cots in darkened rooms while the mother stays dutifully at home. After all we don't want all this 'going out' nonsense do we?
Blimey, I'm always telling people that new babies are fab because they are portable and to get a sling or put them in a cosy buggy/pram and see the world. Nothing is as miserable, soul-destroying or lonely as being at home all day with a sobbing baby, even if he is in his cot in a darkened room.

PoLR, while your baby might have happily gone down when you saw him yawning and decided it was time for a sleep, rather alot of babies will actually get very agitated if you do this and need to fall asleep on their terms or else you end up with a hysterical overtired baby.

each baby is differant, if you only have one you might not be aware of how differant they can be... i certainly didn't til i had my second and felt very embarressed about alot of the stuff i'd presumed was universal!

What a load of absolute twaddle.

I guess we best not take our children to school either because the youngest may be needing to sleep at that point.

Of course all babies are different and all get to sleep in their own ways. I should perhaps have prefaced everything I said with that proviso but would have got a bit dull - no?

MurderousMaria what I was suggesting - perhaps in a too wordy way, was that it would be good to take a step back add up how much time your baby spends awake feeding / otherwise and see if that approaches the amount of sleep they should be getting. If so fine. If not try and get them to sleep before they become exhausted and fall asleep themselves.

I think because you have three tiny children you are a bit obsessed with sleep. HOnestly, when they get older, it all fades and you realise all that agonizing over naps and how much sleep and reading sleep books and panicking etc was all completely pointless. I think all my real early baby-era nightmares and tears were over sleep - such a waste.

mabanana - of course mums should be out of the house for their own sanity - but there need to be some insight that being out all the time isn't necessarily best for your baby.

what a very strange conversation. as i have no idea what you are talking about i shall go somewhere more fun. bye

but if baby is sleeping in pushchair/pram/sling - does it really matter where they sleep??

FWIW the only place that DS1 would sleep for more than 10 minutes or without me either holding him or lying next to him (I couldn't get up or he'd wake up again) was out in his pram - so I spent many many hours for the first 6 months of his life wandering aimlessly round the local area........I couldn't go home once he was asleep or he'd wake up straight away.

Again Path Seriously, - what has brought you to feel so passionately about this?

If you felt so passionately about it you would carry your baby in a sling all day so they can sleep whenever they want. That would be far closer to what is "natural" than staying at home so they can sleep somewhere alone.