I’m the dad of a 7 month old baby. I think I feel around 100 years older than I actually am.
Also, I know saying this now doesn't help, because at the moment you are in one of the most "intense" periods of their development where they need all of your attention but give relatively little back - but that will improve. They will eventually sleep better and they will start telling you how much they love you and kiss you goodnight - and then all of those early months are forgotten :-)
How parents in the US do it when maternity is only 12 weeks unpaid... I have no idea!
I left that company the same day. We lived VERY lean for a year or so while I figured out a new direction. Thank Christ for a supportive family.
How old is/are your kid/s now if you don't mind me asking? And did you have another one after the terrible sleeper? I only ask because we're now in that phase of trying to decide whether having another one is what we want.
And nope, I'm very much against having another one, exactly because the first one was such a bad sleeper, every time I start thinking whether to have another child I remember sitting on the floor and literally crying because I was so exhausted and he just wouldn't sleep, or doing something and just knowing that he will wake up in an hour and there is nothing I can do to prevent that. It was absolutely awful and I don't want to take that risk again.
Having said that......he is an absolute angel now. Very bright, very cuddly, loves to play and hug and definitely reciprocates all the love we give him. So I do sometimes think "wouldn't it be great to have another" - and then I remember again.
> I remember sitting on the floor and literally crying
I feel this, and it's still like that for me sometimes. Last night I shouted "Just go to sleep!" at him, I got so frustrated and upset because he kept taking his own dummy out of his mouth and waking himself up. I'm really hoping that once he starts either crawling or walking he'll burn off that energy and sleep better.
Answer B: Work harder on the days you have energy.
It's a great strategy for survival. We did this a lot with our second child and still so sometimes if there is a patch of disrupted sleep.
The person with the child is not getting zero sleep. A small baby can't stay awake for an entire night. So you could get two or three hours in small batches.
You are exhausted the next day, but at least you have the following night to recover.
If you have a full time job you just do your job. You are really tired and not operating at 100℅ but you get through and it is better than having 2 or 3 hours broken sleep every night.
Our oldest child wouldn't sleep until we got him not only out of the bed but the bassinet all the way out of the room.
Our second child slept like a baby pretty much whenever.
Our third did fine in the bassinet, but now that she's older and transferred to the nursery she wakes up if even the slightest bit of light comes in through her door.
Kids are wildly different from one another from a very young age. I wouldn't assume that your cosleeping is the cause of your having fewer sleep troubles. If anything it might be the reverse.
But yes, in hindsight I would probably try some form of co-sleeping, even though everyone around us was advising against it(too much of a risk).
It turns out that co-sleeping is a risky thing if you are on drugs or are drunk.
If you are 100% sober, then it's perfectly fine. If you are high, or have had a drink, or are on some sort of flu medication (NyQuil, then the risks start ratcheting up.
So, since we're most worried about the parents that do drugs and drink around their infants, the common advice is to no co-sleep. It makes sense, I totally agree with that tack, but if you are willing to be 100% sober of all drugs and alcohol, then try co-sleeping and see how it goes.
Finally realized that I was going to fall asleep somewhere and did the same research. Co-sleeping sober ( and with a healthy BMI ) is safe and often better than sleeping somewhere else. We don't all have the money and space for cutesy recliners.
Second child did like to sleep in the bed and still does, though now we are trying to break the habit.
Each child is different and even one child can change a lot through different developmental stages.
Omg same, but for more than 2 years, because I'm a breastfeeding mom. Idk how this is healthy or normal!
It was living hell for me- my son wouldn't sleep during the night for more than 10-20m at a time, and my partner was having severe postpartum mental health issues (psychosis/rage/depression) so I was parenting solo, and up all night every night by myself with a crying baby. I eventually started hallucinating, and had a short temper and made very poor decisions. I couldn't get advice, help, or sympathy from anyone- usually something along the lines of "parenting is so easy for dads, why are you complaining?" Visiting family would expect me to serve meals to them, and not help either.
I almost lost my job also because I couldn't focus or code anymore. Once I started sleeping in a separate room from my son, I could finally think/code/work again. Understanding in the workplace for a struggling new dad was non-existant: everyone assumed the mother was doing all of the work, and I would perform like normal.
If anyone is reading this and can relate, don't do what I did- pay for help. Pay for a nanny- take out a loan if you have to. If you or your partner is struggling, get them professional mental health support. Prioritize your sleep, bodily, and mental health needs: you need to "put the mask on yourself first" or you can't help anyone else. Don't be afraid to set a crying baby in a safe crib and go sleep for a while if you need it.
/father of a 14 and 12 year old boys
"If you are going to have kids and run a company, you all need to sleep." and then he introdued me to a sleep trainer/coach.
"No way, we are not sleep training" was my thought, but I quickly realized that there is a difference between sleep normalization and what we know as sleep training.
The sleep coach gave us a completely customized regime for 2 weeks. Once the baby is 6 months or so, you can start. (up until 6 months, I just slept with the kids in my arms every night. Oh my god I miss those nights now. It makes me cry to think about how wonderful it felt.)
We've done it 4 times now and all our children gladly sleep from 7pm to 6:30am every single night. (The older ones now go to sleep more like 9pm). Everyone in the house is rested every day and it makes a big difference. Those two weeks are a lot of work for one of the parents (it is specified that one person should be focused on it) but in our experience it works by the 3rd night or so.
The main takeaway from the aproach is to disassociate eating and interaction from the act of sleeping. It created buffers between feeding times and play times and when you finally put them down in their crib to sleep. If they do wake up during the night they don't think "oh, if I cry I will get to eat right away." and they self-soothe and go back to sleep. If they do wake up hungry, it's a failure of the parent to have ensured they've eaten properly. You adjust as they grow. (A hungry cry is totally different from a discomfort or bored cry. You learn them pretty quickly.)
When I put my 10 month old in his crib to sleep now he looks back at me briefly and then turns over and gets in his sleeping position and he's asleep before I leave the room. It's such a relief knowing that no matter how badly a day goes, you can sleep that night.
I've had a lot of friends think this isn't for them, but 100% of the ones I have convinced to do it (and in some cases have just paid for) have been successful.
I'll also add that 2 of our kids were "colicky" and were very unfcomfortable during the day for their first year. Even still we were able to have them sleeping the entire night most nights after 6 months.
Again, there is no "cry it out". In fact, the baby almost never cries at all in this process in my experience.
This kinda matches what I’ve read recently in a parenting book.
I’m currently reading Bringing Up Bébé, a book written by an American journalist who lived (maybe still lives?) in Paris and had her kids there. She wrote it after she started observing that French parents don’t seem to have the myriad of exhausting issues American parents have, or at least not with the same intensity and for the same duration.
When it comes to sleep, she writes that most French babies sleep through the night by the time they’re 6 months old.
According to her, what a lot of American parents (and from my experience as an expat, parents from several other countries too) do wrong is to immediately tend to the baby the moment they make any noise at night, in the first months few of their lives (this apparently doesn’t apply to the very first month though). That trains the baby to do exactly what you wrote, to get what they want as soon as they wake up in the middle of the night.
According to the author, French parents typically wait a few minutes whenever the baby wakes up at night. Most of the time the baby goes back to sleep.
The explanation she offers is that babies’ brains don’t know how to link one sleep cycle to the next, so they wake up between cycles and typically cry or fuss for a bit. By leaving them alone for a few minutes instead of instantly reacting, parents can help their brains learn to connect sleep cycles more efficiently. If they’re immediately picked up though, they’re actually being trained to do the exact opposite and to stay awake instead.
I really like your post btw, going to look up what you wrote about as it sounds invaluable in case the French method doesn’t work :)
We recently all had the flu, 2 nights of the baby having a fever and both of us being sick and also having a fever was one of the most testing things in my life.
But it’s not a contest.
Or is it about ensuring that mom and dad don't make a sibling that takes away the baby's resources?
Having run the same gamut three times, the best advice I ever got was: chunk sleep. Let the wife sleep for 4 straight hours, and then tag out, where the awake person sleeps if/when they can. I know nursing can gum this up, but either pumping, or just doing the formula thing, it's worth it.
It did! But we, in our infinite wisdom, got selfish and we now live alone. Fight nature and she fights back!
Somebody invented the crib, got rich at our expense, and now people can't imagine life any other way.
"It's very safe to sleep with your baby unless you sleep with your baby drunk or on a small couch", and
"It's very dangerous to sleep with your baby especially if you sleep with your baby drunk or on a small couch"
That last bit is right and a study found "The risk associated with being found in the parental bed was not significant for older infants (>14 weeks) or for infants of parents who did not smoke and became non-significant after adjustment for recent maternal alcohol consumption..."
See
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28288/
Anyone who has shared a bed with a cat or small dog would note that you never roll over and crush it.
And the tradeoff makes sense -- as a parent, you are biologically programmed to go through great lengths to keep your children safe.
You mean Socially programmed.
Instincts are biological programming.
Parent under drugs/medications (including smoking) is mainly what drove the death statistics in cosleeping.
Don't have links to studies but is what is teached in official parental education courses in spain atm.
We co-slept for the first 2-3 months, then had baby in a "next-to-me" for a few months, then moved baby to a crib in his own room at 6.5 months. Prior to being in their own room, the baby would usually wake up every 2-4 hours, with the very occasional 6-7 hour stretch. After going in his own room, his sleep began to consolidate and he would regularly last from 7-8pm to 4am without needing resettling.
We have friends with a 4 year old daughter who co-slept until now and have just moved her to her own room. She wakes up screaming and needing attention most nights around midnight.