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Original poster

Sleep depriving tiny babies is cruel

207 replies

PathofLeastResistance · 06/10/2008 16:28

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.

OP posts:
CoteDAzur · 09/10/2008 12:12

Path - In the future, before you mouth off about how SIDS can't happen to you because are a family of non-smokers with a high socio-economic status, read up on the genetic factors being researched at the moment. You might be interested to find that www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/12298.php are discovered in DNAs of SIDS cases.

Saying you know it all because you are a pathologist was particularly weak, by the way. Your field of study/practice gives you no authority on the subject of SIDS.

CoteDAzur · 09/10/2008 12:14

You might be interested to find that mutations are discovered in DNAs of SIDS case, rather.

scampadoodle · 09/10/2008 12:16

I wish someone had told my DCs that they needed a lot of sleep...

PuppyMonkey · 09/10/2008 12:17

Is there an actual point to this thread or shall I not bother reading the whole thing?

bronze · 09/10/2008 12:18

My brother died of sids. I come from a middleclass (ish) nonsmoking family and he died in his cot. Writing posts about such things is neither going to get your message across nor make people agree with you more. Maybe if he had been with my mum at the time she would have noticed the second he stopped breathing and could have done something.
Oh fuck it (I dont normally swear on here) but I can't be arsed and now just want to cry.

beforesunrise · 09/10/2008 12:23

i don't have time to read the whole thread- but what a stupid op, sorry.

as any sleep deprived parent will tell you, sleep is vital. babies need to sleep. a lot. they cry when they can't sleep. but many babies don't know how to sleep, and it is incredibly hard to get a bad sleeper to sleep. my dd2 is such an example, she sleeps maybe 2 hours in total in the day and it takes on average one hour to get her to sleep for half an hour, be it rocking, feeding, walking her around etc. i am at the end of my tether and physically drained.

IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING!!!!!!

i would like to know where the perfect babies who get "put down for a nap' live. certainly i don't seem to produce them!

SmugColditz · 09/10/2008 12:28

Stop throwing hard figures at people who weren't lucky enough to get a baby just like yours.

Ds1 responed fantasically to the darkened room approach - it was like a dark quiet room on his own was all he had been waiting for for the three days he sc reamed for after he was born - I don't actually think he really cried again until he teethed.

Ds2 - well, I had no worries. I had already figured out how to make babies stop crying and go to sleep, right?

wrong.

He cried every time I put him down. No problemo, thought I. I'll leave him for a bit, let him realise he's tired, let him wind down, it's cruel to keep picking them yp (remember, with ds1 it would have been cruel to keep picking him up!)... and he cried, and screamed and screamed and screamed until he was bent in half and his lips were blue.

I went rushing in, convinced he must be ill to cry so hard so quickly (in less than 2 minutes, I only went to the loo), picked him up - and he stopped, he snuggled in, and I rocked him to sleep.

There are millions of babies in this world, path, and yours is only one of them. Statistically, you know fuck all about babies.

edam · 09/10/2008 12:29

Path, your OP was confused and your subsequent posts haven't made things much clearer.

What/who rattled your cage? What is the point of this thread?

memoo · 09/10/2008 12:37

have just wasted my time reading this whole thread.

OP, I have no idea what your point is!!

You're rambling women!

memoo · 09/10/2008 12:42

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

flourybaps · 09/10/2008 12:43

God, have you got in my head? I think maybe you have just bought "Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child"?.............

You sound like you have had a big guilt trip off the author, horrible book in my opinion, very jusdgemental.... Lots of headings in bold stating your basically a terrible parent if you dont enable your child to sleep in a darkened room for at least 15 hours a day and how your child will be damaged forever if you dont enable him to have this.........

My DP has dumped it in the bin next to Gina! The only book im allowing myself is the occ glance at the baby whisperer, an altogether kinder book.

MrsMattie · 09/10/2008 12:46

i second memoo.

What on earth is the point of this thread?

Tiggiwinkle · 09/10/2008 12:50

Actually, I think pathofleastresistance's post of 9.09 should be removed. Posting that in the guise of a so-called professional (she says she is a pathologist) is downright irresponsible.

Original poster
pathofleastresistance · 09/10/2008 13:04

I sincerely apologise for all the hurt I caused with what I said. I promise not to say any more on the subject and I will ask mumsnet to remove the post.

OP posts:
Neeerly3 · 09/10/2008 13:28

I'm going to takea leap of faith here and hazard a guess that OP is sleep deprived, not her baby......me thinks perhaps the fog of not enough sleep is clouding her posting judgement somewhat!

monkeymonkeymonkey · 09/10/2008 13:35

If the post had been called "sleep depriving mummies is cruel" I think there would have been no disagreement!

Twelvelegs · 09/10/2008 14:10

I love your post smug.

edam · 09/10/2008 14:20

Good point, Neerly. Path might well look back at this once she's past the fog of the early days and cringe at herself...

annoyingdevil · 09/10/2008 14:22

Actually, I can kind of see where the OP is coming from.

DD was an extremely colicky baby (relentless all-day colic that almost drove me to distraction).

Looking back, I can now see that - most of the time - she was just desperate to sleep.

I schlepped her out and about (expecting to carry on with my life as before). Exposing her to lights and sounds and other sensory experiences that her brain was simply too under developed to cope with - I took her to a wedding at 3 mths old fgs!!!

It was total overload. I used to watch her eyes glaze over, her stare become wider and wider and then she'd suddenly start screaming and screaming and.....screaming.

I even believe that normal, everyday household stimulous was too much for her. (so I can see where the OP is coming from with the darkened room)

With hindsight, I should have stayed in for 4 months or so - perhaps just venturing out with her in a sling.

I appreciate that some newborns are portable and will just slot into your life - sleeping on the go etc. But for my DD this was absolutely not the case.

MurderousMarla · 09/10/2008 15:21

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Twelvelegs · 09/10/2008 17:02

PS shhhh but there's no such thing as colic, just miserable babies!!

MurderousMarla · 09/10/2008 17:03

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PinkTulips · 09/10/2008 17:13

FAQ.... you could be describing dd she screamed her way through the first night and never stopped except when she was clamped to the boob for 6 months and was still a nightmare well past a year. we'd spend hours trying to get her down for a nap only for her to wake after 5 minutes.... it was draining. she did have reflux though and puked an immense amount... i only realised when i had ds how unusual that was... so she must have been in agony all the time

when ds was born dp and i were petrified and just wished to god the first year would go quickly as we expected the same hellish experiance again. but, differant baby, differant behaviour..... he slept for 7 hours right after he was born and it kept up from there. my mother laughed at me when he was a couple of days old as i didn't know what to do with a sleeping baby, i'd never had one before! i was so twitchy and nervous!

path, sleep routines can be great yes, but the fundamental point you're missing is that they make the situation worse with some babies and aren't necessary for some others. nobody can loook back and say for sure 'if i'd done this, this and that my baby would have slept'

we tried everything with dd and she wouldn't sleep, she was ill and the only way she would nap for short periods was upright... not great for SIDS right but if it's the only way the child will sleep then you have no choice. she's now 3 and a half and a fantastic sleeper, drops off the second she goes to bed and often oversleeps til ridiculous times the next morning, and can sleep through bombs going off just like me and dp, but that didn't happen til she felt better and wasn't in agony 24/7

beforesunrise · 09/10/2008 17:18

twelvelegs- that's what tracey hogg says in the baby whisperer! 3 months into colic hell, i read this and threw the book in the bin.

while i agree with devil that you cannot just expect to slot right back into your old life, you also cannot expect to put your whole life on hold for the sake of a "routine". just now i desperately tried to get dd2 to sleep, only for dd1 to jump in screaming needing my attention, so no nap for dd2 this pm. tbh, i feel shit about it, but what am i supposed to do?

Twelvelegs · 09/10/2008 17:46

Before sunrise, I had a child who screamed and wouldn't be put down for 8 months..... I do think some babies just need to interact or crawl or something. There's also acid reflux to consider which a doctor can give gaviscon for.
FWIW I did hold and feed her constantly and do not EVER subscribe to a baby recipe for parenting. Although I did with my first two very very easy babies, then I had a thrid to serve me a bloody large helping of humble pie!!
IMHO, do whatever it takes to a)get sleep and b) stop from throwing your baby out of a window!!!