Tell Fairy Non Bio about your experience of sleep with a new baby - £300 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

As part of our new partnership with Fairy Non Bio, we’ve produced our first ever Mumsnet Babies Podcast. There are ten episodes in the series and so far we’ve released five. Episode two is about sleep, and you can listen to it here . Fairy Non Bio would like you to listen to the podcast whenever you can, and then discuss your experiences of sleep with a baby.

An unbroken night of slumber is the holy grail of parenthood - but it’s often difficult to actually achieve. Fairy Non Bio would like to hear about your experience of sleep with a new baby. Did your baby miraculously sleep through from 3 months? Or was your experience much more of a struggle? Do you have expert tips on getting your child to sleep for that precious extra half an hour, or perhaps on how to cope through bleary-eyed days when you feel like you didn’t sleep at all?

Whatever your experience, share it with Fairy Non Bio by posting on the thread below.

Everyone who posts on the thread will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

If you want to rate the Mumsnet Babies Podcast, please go to the iTunes store and add a review!

Thanks, and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

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Mine was an alright sleeper - not one of the amazing slept-through-at-3-months ones, but didn't seem too bad.

I/We just did whatever was necessary. Only napped on Mummy? Fine. Preferred to sleep in our bed? Sure... Wanted to be fed to sleep? Go on then (again).

He's now 20 months and sleeps through in his cot. Despite a lot of scaremongering warnings from my MIL.

With dd1 she screamed with colic from about 8pm to 2-4am every day until she was 4 months old, then started sleeping really well with just a couple of wake ups, with dd2, she woke up for feeds but was generally ok and for DS, he woke up for a couple of hours during the night until he was about 7 months as well as lots of feeding.

DS is 8 months and (touch wood) his sleep is starting to improve - he now tends to sleep from 6:30pm until 5am with one or two wake ups. The early weeks when he would only sleep when being held seem a long time ago. Somehow you survive! Hope to have another one day but am still traumatised by getting 4 hours sleep in the first week after he was born. My advice would be lower your standards re housework, accept help from family and friends and go to bed early. No one wants to go to bed at 8pm but it might save your sanity!

I was lucky with DN he slept through the night for the first few months i had him bit he was a nightmare as a toddler and constantly waking up especially at 5am to watch cartoons he's 5 now

DD1 slept through from about 11pm till about 5am from about 6 weeks old mostly. DD2 did not .
I spent the first few weeks in pull on cotton pj type bottoms and cotton jersey tops. Would have a shower in the morning after the first feed, and then get into clean ones.

Best thing I found was co sleeping and bf. Stock up the freezer beforehand, accept all offers of help. Don't do anything but essential cleaning.

I always have the moses basket on a stand next to my bed and when the baby wakes i can just lean over to feed them in my bed or simply to cuddle them back to sleep. It is roughtly every four hours but its less disruptive for everyone this way

My husband is a light sleeper and has always, for the last 16 years, listened out for the children while in bed. I am a sound sleeper and only wake up when my husband elbows me to say there is a problem. My dd rarely slept through and I would climb into her cotbed with her and more often than not fall asleep before her. My ds only started sleeping through when he was about 2 and we set him up with a sticker chart to earn a sleeping present. Now it is the cats that get me up in the night to let them out. I can't remember what an unbroken night is like.

Both of my children were very good sleepers from the begining. When I had my first and came back from the hospital, I actually would put alarm clock every 4 hours at night to BF my daughter, as I was told by midwifes at the hospital to feed her every 4 hours. I would wake baby up and force-feed her:))) Luckily, spoke with my mother about it one morning, and was told to stop doindpg such a silly thing! My DD was happy to sleep through the night after that. Same with my son. I really did not suffer even one sleepless night in my life.

Sleep was low on the agenda for both my DDs. I had the cot by my bed for the first 6 months for both, so it meant I could react without being fully awake to feed and resettle as quickly as possible. I suffered from sleep deprivation and there were some days I felt like a shuffling zombie! My mantra was to just take it one day at a time - the first few tricky weeks pass quite quickly and it does get better eventually!

It doesn't feel as bad if you get a drink ready in a thermos cup before you go to bed, the warmth helps you stay switched off too so you can get back to sleep quicker once baby has settled. It's tempting to go on your phone or read or something but it can be counterproductive as it wakes you up more

Neither of mine slept longer than a 3 hour block until they were about 9 months old - it was a killer!! I don't know how we got through it (probably looking like zombies!) but we did and it does get better.
Now aged 4 & 2 they usually sleep through the night. That is about 10 hours - I don't think they were / are ever going to be 12 hour sleep people!

I can remember being so very tired in the very early days. But also I can remember some joy at looking at the lovely little thing that Dh and I had created. I think it was all the loved up hormones but sometimes I would feel all teary!
My only tip would be to accept that it is quite tough, it won't last forever and to be kind to yourself. Don't stress about mess and housework. Also, accept favours. I remember my friend coming to visit. She let me sleep for a precious couple of hours - I came downstairs and she'd done the dishes, ironing and made downstairs look decent. All this with my baby asleep in the Moses basket.

I could only afford 6 months maternity leave so I felt it was really important for both myself and my daughter to get a sleep pattern established as quickly as possible.

What nobody prepared me for, in the whole of the run-up to my daughter's birth was the possibility of total and utter sleep deprivation. She had colic for the first three months and all my intentions had to go right out of the window!

Don't put pressure on yourself and keep going. Luckily, once the colic was over we managed to start the whole process of getting her into a good sleep pattern.

Have breastfed every couple of hours and coslept until 1yr old with my first 3. Then introduced cot and tried to change the sleep associations over then next 6 months (tired then as back at work too) and by 2 yrs old they all got reliable 10+hours sleep.
So really until they were 1 yr old we all slept well. Just that awkward time between then and until they were 2ish!

With my last DC now 18 months I am still cosleeping and breastfeeding at night. I am wondering if I can make it to 2yrs and then miss the bit in the middle! Wish me luck!

I remember being prepared for lots of sleepless nights so that by the time baby came it actually wasn't too bad
We had a routine of a warm bath and a feed with the lights dimmed and baby would fall off to sleep quite quickly,
Sometimes he woke up when i wasn't expecting him too but not getting stressed seemed to be the key to it not being a problem for me or him.

DD1 slept through from about 11pm till about 5am from about 6 weeks old mostly. DD2 did not .
I spent the first few weeks in pull on cotton pj type bottoms and cotton jersey tops. Would have a shower in the morning after the first feed, and then get into clean ones.

Best thing I found was co sleeping and bf. Stock up the freezer beforehand, accept all offers of help. Don't do anything but essential cleaning.

Both of mine slept pretty well initially - well, for a newborn. But they also both broke about 4 months in and were then up and down. I coslept with the second one a bot more which seemed to help. It does get easier, but I don't sleep anywhere near as deeply as I did pre-children

My baby would only sleep in my bed but I didn't mind after a while as breastfeeding and cosleeping meant we got more sleep

we tried to keep to a routine with all three of our babies and quickly learnt that a good nights sleep was never going to happen for a while. Just when you think they are starting to sleep through the night the pattern would change or they started teething. Do not miss the feeling of exhaustion

My baby can go from sleeping through one night to waking every hour the next night. The unpredictability is so hard, not knowing if I should getting an early night or enjoying some "me time" with a glass of wine and a film!
I drive myself crazy trying to repeat the routines that we did to create a good nights sleep. I just hope it'll come in time, as we know she can do it!

I've had both sides of the coin.

My first was a terrible sleeper. I didn't have more than an hour of unbroken sleep til she was two!

My second is, so far, a great sleeper. Despite being breastfed she started out with one waking per night, at a very civilised circa 5 am. That's changed to usually sleeping through from 10pm to 9am plus a 3 hour daytime nap She's 4.5 months. Long may it continue.

My experience of sleep with a baby:

Non-existent.

Maybe one day, I live in hope!

My dd was a good sleeper unless she was ill or teething. Every time this happened I would panic that she wouldn't get back into her sleep routine afterwards but she always did. So much wasted energy on worrying!

My DS has only just started sleeping through at 8 months before he was waking often to feed. However, he just naturally started to drop feeds and sleep through. We never left him to cry it out but leave him for a couple of minutes to see if he would self settle.

Whenever I'm at a baby group with mats and cushions on the floor, I'm so tempted to lie down and have a nap!

I think having realistic expectations has helped me a lot though. I read a lot about why babies need to wake up during the night and don't expect my 4 month old to 'sleep through the night' any time soon. I am lucky to have a baby who goes back to sleep quite easily during the night, but during the day he fights it so hard - the world is just too exciting! The nose-stroking tip really works for us though :-)