Give it to me straight: sleep deprivation
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Anonymous
| Oh and they tell their partners to "support" that choice but when faced with the reality for many women that breastfeeding is extremely time consuming and drives them crazy many men no longer feeling inclined to "support" that choice, after all it is just a "choice". |
Anonymous
PP was blunt, but there's some truth to it. Lots of moms box themselves in to a corner where they are the sole source of feeding for baby. You can give yourself more options if you formula feed or combo feed. |
Anonymous
Yes yes we know of course women can do that and in doing so they are going against medical advice. Not saying they shouldn't but I also think it is borderline abusive to blame them for following medical advice. |
Anonymous
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0-4 months: get a snoo or rent one or buy used. It's worth it. Third baby slept 4, 5, 6, hours at a time sometimes longer.
4-12 months: There will be bad nights. Try to get consistent sleep on good nights so you aren't in a deficit. Don't get stupid about tylenol/motrin if teething--just give them some. Sleep train if needed (they will be fine; I've done it both ways and have great kids with either approach). 12 months - 4 years old: Should be mostly ok. There are always bad nights or stretches here and there. You might need to re-sleep train multiple times following travel, sickness, etc. 4 years old: when they wake up at 6 am on sunday they can turn on TV so you get an extra 90 minutes of sleep. Here starts the golden years. |
Anonymous
| I didn’t fully grasp how sleep deprived I will be until I was in it. I understood why sleep deprivation is a form of torture. But this level of chronic sleep deprivation especially in the first months, made me fall asleep the minute my head hit the pillow. If you’ve ever been under general anesthesia, that’s how it felt. Put my head down, close my eyes, and fall (literally feels like falling) into deep sleep. It was bad, really bad. But I (and everyone else) live through it. Get help, a night nurse, a nanny during the day to let you take longer naps, and it passes. |
Anonymous
My husband and I are both night owls who need a lot of sleep. Pre-baby, I wouldn't make plans with friends until after 2pm on the weekend because there was a chance I might sleep until 1. And I get angry if anyone wakes me up by accident. Surprisingly, I handled the newborn sleep deprivation pretty well. I attribute it entirely to the breast feeding hormones. I had been afraid I'd get post partum depression, but instead I had the opposite reaction. I was deliriously in love with my little nugget and somehow my body/brain gave me the energy I needed to take care of her. My husband struggled with it a lot more, and I felt angry to see him sleeping so much. I was so, so angry at him that first year. Probably the hormones too. With that said, my child is now 18 months and it feels like my husband and I are still recovering from the early months of sleep deprivation. Our child sleeps 8pm to 8am, and has a 2 hour nap and yet we stupidly stay up as late as 12 or 1am. Even so, that should be enough sleep for us, yet we are always tired and spend our weekends taking turns napping 
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Anonymous
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1) snoo
2) formula 3) redbull (because I didn't breastfeed, consuming tons of caffeine was a viable strategy) 4) night nanny (if you have a ton of money) It tough, there is no way around it. For me between snoo and formula feeding from day, it seemed to be workable: DH and I split the night feedings and during the day i snoozed with the baby. From what I read, infants sleep relatively longer once they reach about 12 pounds of weight, so if you have a large baby you'll get there faster. I had a skinny baby, but FF infants gain weight faster, so we got there fairly quick. Obviously, breastfeeding is important to many people, so depending on where it is on your priority list, YMMV. |
Anonymous
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I am like you and I LOVE sleep. The newborn stage was hard for me but your body does get used to the sleep deprivation. It's hard to explain, but pre-baby I thought it would just be impossible for me to go to work without a full night's sleep. But I did it for months and it was ok. The key for me was to keep in mind that it isn't forever. You will sleep again.
We had a Snoo and I was also super vigilant about having my kids on an eat/wake/sleep routine, sticking to "wake windows" and doing all the recommended sleep stuff - blackout curtains, white noise, 5 Ss, all that. They were both better-than-average sleepers as newborns that turned into awesome sleepers around 8-9mo. But, it's impossible to know if it was the Snoo/routine stuff or just luck. |
Anonymous
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I had helped from my mom for the first month and after that my DH shared. I always have formula at night and on the nights I was not taking care of my babies, I could sleep from midnight to 5:30-6 am. I would pump at midnight and then again at 5:30-6. It was a longer stretch than I would do during the day, but it worked and I was always tired, but felt like I could manage.
I had 3 bad sleepers. They would wake up every 2/3 hours for the first few months and did not sleep through the night until 9-16 months. The first month, my mom would wake up almost every night with the baby. I always pumped at night and never breastfed (except for hospital). I emptied my breasts completely at midnight and they were full and hurting by 5:30 am. I was able to do this for 4-5 months and then switched to formula and frozen breast milk. Also, having my mom the first month and my husband sharing night duties equally made a huge difference. Being able to get 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep every other day was great. We didn’t let baby cry to sleep train. We tried other gentle ways, but did not work very well with our kids |
Anonymous
I loved breastfeeding and didn't mind at all being the only source of food for the baby (although my babies were fine taking bottles too so I guess I did keep options). But I didn't mind because I co-slept, which is another thing where I didn't follow medical advice for my own sake. I got more sleep with the co-sleep breastfeed combo. Babies are just SO different and you really cannot say that one way of doing things will result in more sleep and one way won't. |