How sleep-deprived were you after your kids were born?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I drooled on myself.

Ha ha! I once sat down on the toilet without pulling down my pj bottoms and peed through them!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man these stories are brutal. I had low expectations (partly because of threads like this) and I really was never sleep deprived. Night wasn’t the easiest but I have an insanely helpful spouse. And so many people knock the “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice but…duh. Sleep when the baby sleeps. I got lots of naps during the day.

Would have loved to, but it took a while to sync up my twins’ sleep cycles. For a while, there was always at least one awake.

If you have twins no singleton’s mom’s advice applies. The vast majority of us are not having twins. This is just commonsense.

[Anonymous]

My last baby was colicky for the first 6 weeks and then woke up every 1-2 hours to eat. I ebf. I was a zombie and it sucked even more when I went back to work. I ended up formula feeding at almost 9 months and I began sleeping 8+ hours a night! It felt amazing especially that first night (after baby adjusted to formula).

Now I have another newborn and she is not colicky but will sleep 2–3 hour stretches at 5 weeks. Still exhausting but hoping she goes longer because this time I’m bottle feeding with both breast milk and formula and will go to 100% formula once I go back to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Man these stories are brutal. I had low expectations (partly because of threads like this) and I really was never sleep deprived. Night wasn’t the easiest but I have an insanely helpful spouse. And so many people knock the “sleep when the baby sleeps” advice but…duh. Sleep when the baby sleeps. I got lots of naps during the day.

I mean this only works with one kid. My 3rd was during COVID so I was up every 45 minutes for about 10 weeks straight and then during the day had to take care of a 3 year old and 5 year old. DH was working from home and not really any help. It was torture.

[Anonymous]

Mine were both pretty good sleepers. The first 2 weeks I was up every 2-3 hours and probably got a cumulative 4-5 hours, and felt pretty zombie-like. But after that it improved quickly - by 4 weeks I was getting at least one 4-hr stretch and 6 weeks I got 5-7 hours, plus another 1-2hrs after waking up and feeding, so cumulatively, close to a normal amount. At that point, I was more tired than normal due to the sleep interruptions but I felt basically fine. I did have a Snoo.

Agree that "sleep when the baby sleeps" only really works if you have a good napper, no other young children, and someone to help with other tasks (laundry, dishes, etc) that you can't do while holding a baby. The line I often see is "sleep when the baby sleeps, shower when the baby showers, do dishes when the baby does dishes, etc."

[Anonymous]

My baby ate every 2-3 hours the first month and I was deliriously tired. We had the Snoo but he was tiny and needed to eat. He then magically started sleeping 4-5 hour stretches at 4 weeks, 8 good stretches at 8 weeks, and 11 hours by 3 months. My second baby was sleeping 4 hour stretches from the start and was sleeping 10/11 hours by 8 weeks. Both ate a lot during the day send maybe that helped or the Snoo.

[Anonymous]

It’s not recommended but I sleep trained at 8 weeks and he went from waking every hour to sleeping an 8 hour stretch, one feed, and then 2-3 hours until morning.

[Anonymous]

I slept a 4-5 hour stretch at 4 weeks after my husband started doing one of the feeds. I was so exhausted and couldn’t manage waking up every 2-3 hours. He slowly started sleeping 4-5 hour stretches and then 5/6 but then started sleeping 11 hours when we sleep trained at 4 months. He’s 4.5 months old and he sleeping 8pm-7am with naps at 8:30-10, 11:30-1, 2:30-4, and 5:30-6.

[Anonymous]

Extremely. So sleep deprived that I’d hallucinate. My first would wake at 1 and 4. I didn’t get four hours of straight sleep except for a few nights until he was 18 months.

[Anonymous]

It was bad the first month. Started sleeping 7-8 hours a night at 7 weeks and never looked back; 20 months now. Of course he has regressions, but it’s not unmanageable (eg there might be a week where he struggled at bedtime or wakes up - illness, vocab leaps, etc)

Things that worked for us and seem to work for others: putting him in his own room at 4 weeks. Doing breastfeeding + pumped milk + formula (ie he was always fed until we knew he was full and we generally knew how much he was getting). Once he demonstrated he could sleep through the night (after a week or so of doing it), we would comfort but not feed him if he woke up. Swaddling (recommend the sleep pea). White noise.