Parents with no friends or family around, how did you survive the first month on barely any sleep?

[Anonymous]

Baby is three weeks old and now that my husband is back to work and I’m the only caregiver night and day I’ve become well acquainted with sleep deprivation. I know that it’s not an avoidable issue and I’ll endure it for as long as I can but I’m afraid it’s not sustainable for too long. I get 3-4 stretches of one hour of sleep at night because my little one goes two hours between feedings. During the day sometimes I manage to fall asleep for another hour or so when he’s asleep but sometime I fall asleep while he’s already waking up. My concern is that in the afternoon my alertness is pretty bad and I’m afraid I’ll get to the point of being unsafe/drop things/make poor judgements, etc.

Those of you who’ve survived this period, which resources did you use? Did you hire someone to come to your house for a few hours to be with the baby while you napped? If so, how did you find these people? How do you find sitters/nannies that are experienced specifically with newborns this young?

Are there tricks out there to allow myself to be well and functional without hiring someone?

[Anonymous]

With only one I slept when the baby slept during the day. When you’re super sleep-deprived, it’s easy! With my second, I got help (a great nanny) during the day.

[Anonymous]

Hired a night nurse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hired a night nurse.

Which website/app did you use to find the night nurse and do you mind if I ask how much they charge and how long you ended up using their services for?

[Anonymous]

Trade off with each other. Let other things (cleaning, friends, etc) go for a few months. It should be fairly short lived. It is doable but get used to be more tired as a parent.

[Anonymous]

You hire help.

But also, with your first baby it's much easier to find pockets of time to rest. Mine would do a 5/6am feeding, and then still go back to sleep, so I would too. Sometimes she'd sleep until 8/9am after that, so I often wasn't getting up for the day until then. It was still only in 90 minute to 3 hour chunks here or there, but we muddled through.

If you really feel like you need solid sleep, you have your DH take over for a night time feed. There is no reason you should be tasked with only sleeping in 90 minute chunks while he gets 6-8 solid hours. He will do just fine with 3-4 hour chunks as well. Every single woman who goes back to work at 12 weeks goes back to work doing that.

[Anonymous]

I slept with the baby (babies the second time around) next to me in a bassinet. I was nursing, so I picked them up, nursed them, and went back to sleep. I slept during the day when they were sleeping.

I might be an outlier, but I didn't find it to be that bad.

[Anonymous]

I didn't have any family help and didn't really need DH either. So my advice is to hang in there. Baby should start going longer between feedings soon. I never had sleep of only an hour between feedings, that seems extreme. I recorded baby wake times and I show 2-3 hour stretches normally, feeding 15 min between stretches. The best thing I did to get baby to sleep longer was to pump them up during the day. Long, long breastfeeding stretches. Once baby gains weight, they eat more and sleep longer.

Can you go to bed at 8pm and your dh does a feeding until he goes to bed at 11pm or midnight? (My kids hated bottles, but so many moms have told me this is what they did)

[Anonymous]

We didn't have help because of COVID and I don't know honestly, you just survive. It feels never ending in the beginning, but it'll get better soon. And my husband went back to work after 2 weeks, but still helped at night so I could get rest too. We did have a meal train organized by our neighborhood list serv and that was immensely helpful to not have to think about making food in those early weeks.

And we got a Snoo when he was 3 weeks old and it was magic and he started sleeping longer and longer stretches. I remember feeling like a new person the first time I got a 6 hour stretch of sleep (around 7 weeks old) and he was sleeping through the night consistently months 2-4 in the Snoo (until regression).

[Anonymous]

Nap more during the day. Keep the baby in your room so that you can go right back to sleep in between feedings. See if your husband can handle one of the feedings to give yourself a longer stretch.

Most people do this without hired help or even family/friends close by (I have plenty of friends local and some family, but there's not much they can do in this case).

[Anonymous]

we didn't have help. DH was in charge of the baby for a few hours after dinner (like 8-11) so I could get some sleep without interruptions, and then I'd take the first overnight wakeup, and he'd do the early morning wakeup before work. I normally cannot nap, but those sleep deprived first few months I could.

[Anonymous]

Most babies should be up to sleep more than one hour stretches at that age. With my second, swaddling didn’t work from the get go. Due to persistent waking, I really tried type of swaddling at about four weeks and that really increased her ability to sleep for longer stretches.

[Anonymous]

Not “type of”. Should be tighter swaddling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I slept with the baby (babies the second time around) next to me in a bassinet. I was nursing, so I picked them up, nursed them, and went back to sleep. I slept during the day when they were sleeping.

I might be an outlier, but I didn't find it to be that bad.

This was me too. That's the beauty of only having one. When they sleep, you can sleep too. I've had an infant and a toddler during the pandemic, and it has not been fun. Especially since toddler stopped napping a month in, and we decided to potty train. Husband and I trade off on night waking, but it's not much help when the two of them decide to tag team their wake ups (toddler used to sleep so well ) Coffee is my friend.

Give a bottle, either pumped milk or formula before bed to help get longer stretches of sleep. I would pump during baby's bedtime while husband gave the bottle and did bedtime routine, and then go straight to sleep. Husband would handle any wakeups until the 2-3 hour mark when it was time to eat again. It definitely gets better around the 2-3 month mark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Baby is three weeks old and now that my husband is back to work and I’m the only caregiver night and day I’ve become well acquainted with sleep deprivation. I know that it’s not an avoidable issue and I’ll endure it for as long as I can but I’m afraid it’s not sustainable for too long. I get 3-4 stretches of one hour of sleep at night because my little one goes two hours between feedings. During the day sometimes I manage to fall asleep for another hour or so when he’s asleep but sometime I fall asleep while he’s already waking up. My concern is that in the afternoon my alertness is pretty bad and I’m afraid I’ll get to the point of being unsafe/drop things/make poor judgements, etc.

Those of you who’ve survived this period, which resources did you use? Did you hire someone to come to your house for a few hours to be with the baby while you napped? If so, how did you find these people? How do you find sitters/nannies that are experienced specifically with newborns this young?

Are there tricks out there to allow myself to be well and functional without hiring someone?

Short answer, no. I think around the 3-month mark I started getting 4-hour stretches of sleep at a time and that felt functional, if not healthy (I went back to work at 7 weeks postpartum). If you have the resources for a nanny (night or day, doesn't matter if you're just trying to snag some rest), that's pretty much your only option, but if you're nursing you'll still have to wake up at night and/or factor in extra pumping. Not trying to be unsympathetic here - it really sucks! - but it's also not permanent and in hindsight will just be a blip.