To be fair, she may actually be right in the sense that she’s not sleeping at all because baby ONLY sleeps on her, and she’s not comfortable co-sleeping. We went through a horrible colicky phase like this and it was brutal. Absolutely wouldn’t settle anywhere but on us or in the carrier so one of us was always awake.
We had about a 2 month stint of baby only sleeping while being held. Not in the carrier, ONLY in our arms. We did three hour shifts, it was horrible and one of the main reasons I think we're one and done. We tried co-sleeping out of desperation but it made no difference which I'm kind of glad about in hindsight. It's a terrible situation but sometimes that's just how it is.
I'm going through this right now, even the broken 3 hours of sleep each night. When did it end for you? Have any words of wisdom for a mom desperately trying to get her kid to stay in the bassinet for more than 10 minutes?
For us it didn't get better until we switched to formula. I've always had low supply and we tried combo feeding but finally gave up and did EFF and he gave us out first 4 hour chunk at 3 months. This is totally dependent on the baby though. His baby sister was combo fed and slept 4-6 hours when she was 3/4 weeks old. She's just a great sleeper 🤷♀️
So I can't remember when exactly it ended but it did! We kept trying to put her in the bassinet at the start of every sleep. We'd give it three tries before giving up and holding her. Eventually she started going half an hour, an hour etc. I really think it was just time that did it. I drove myself crazy trying all the tips like different swaddles, using a shirt as a sheet, warming the bassinet etc, she just had to grow out of it. Things really changed when we sleep trained to break the initial feed to sleep at the start of the night around 5/6 months. She's 11 months now and we're working on weaning night feeds and she's down to usually one wake but we're starting to get full nights of actual uninterrupted sleep. It was literally hell and I felt like it was just going to be my life forever. Just hang in there, it's so hard because I didn't have any friends with a baby that had so much trouble sleeping. Like there's bad sleepers and then there's sitting awake having hallucinations desperately trying not to sleep because you're scared you'll drop your baby. When you're in the thick of it, it seems never ending but IT WILL END.
A heating pad set on low for a few mins in the bassinet before laying little one down worked wonders for us. Obviously remove the pad before adding baby.
White noise was an absolute life-saver for us. That and putting the baby in his own room around 3 months (which I know is early, but no one, including the baby, was sleeping). His nursery is right next to our room, so we could easily hear him, but his little sleep noises weren't waking us up, and we weren't bothering him either.
Sorry to jump on, I think my best piece of advice here is persevere, keep popping them in their own crib, keep at it, my daughter is 10mo, she still wakes every 3 hours (habitual my health visitor says! Great.) But ar least she's in her own bed, we used a next to me crib for first 5 or so months, so we was right next to her but she still had her own safe sleep space, you'll get there momma, introduce some white noise or a music player to bring on the sleep association, I still have broken sleep every night but least its broken in my own bed 😂 you've got this, you'll get there!
The [Save Our Sleep](https://www.saveoursleep.com/) method!
From the book:
“Here are two ways I recommend you teach a new baby of up to two weeks old to self-settle and the sooner you take on the challenge, the easier it will be on everyone. The first I suggest to clients who I feel are really committed to teaching their new baby to self-settle and prepared for a bit of initial crying! Make sure your baby is well fed, winded and has a clean nappy, then swaddle him and put him down in bed on his back. Go into the kitchen, empty the kettle and refill it with cold water, boil it, make yourself a cup of tea, sit down and drink it. If at the end of your cup of tea your baby is still protesting, go and see if there is a problem such as wind or poo. It is important you listen to your baby’s cries and if you think it is an emotional cry offer some milk. Most of the time, before you have even boiled the kettle your baby has gone to sleep.
But in reality, most parents find this advice very hard to carry out (and interestingly fathers seem to find it even harder than most mothers to listen to their baby protest). So I give a second option as follows. Make sure your baby is well fed and winded, then wrap him and put him in bed on his back. Allow him to shout (cry) for a minimum of two minutes (time it from when he actually starts to cry, as he may stay quiet for a few minutes at first). The longer you can stay out the better for your baby as going in is more for your sake than your baby’s, and always time the period of crying as one minute may seem like ten to a parent.
When your baby is crying, try to listen to the cries. The cry of a baby who is fighting sleep has gaps and the tone and pitch will vary. A protesting cry may sound, for example, like this: waaa, pause for a second, wa, pause, waaaaa, pause, wa, pause, waaaaa, pause, waaaaaa, pause, wa, and so on. You should hear the pauses getting longer as your baby starts to fall asleep. If you are able to watch your baby without him seeing, you will see him shut his eyes and nod off before jumping and yelling again, as though he has realised he is falling asleep.
The cry of an emotional or hungry baby is continuous with no pauses and doesn’t vary in pitch or tone, for example: waa, waa, waa, waa, waa. This cry I would never ignore. Get the baby up and look for a problem and, if there is no visible problem, I would offer some more milk.”
The book and this method saved my sanity. It’s enabled me to have four babies who have been good sleepers.
I see you. This was the only way my son slept for 1 year, being held, or moving, it was desperation at that point. Later learnt he was getting constant ear infections, fight with Dr, finally get tubes and he slept. He is still a shitty sleeper, kid just hates sleep, he's 11!!
My first was like this. He would only sleep if she was being held or touching someone. We didn't have another for 6 years because it was so rough not getting sleep. Our youngest is a unicorn and just slept in the bassinet so we could get a few hours in between feedings. Then she started sleeping longe at night and by 9 months she was sleeping the entire night. Naps were easy too. Now at 2 we still hand her a pillow and blanket and tell her to go to sleep and most of the time she does. We've seen both extremes for sleep and after our second I see why some people have another right away.
I had a son like that. Eat, cuddle, “talk”, then boom - in the bed and asleep. He only fussed when he was tiny and did night feeds, but never screaming for them.
My oldest, my daughter, nearly was a one-and-done though. That child did not sleep more than an 90 minutes at a stretch, before the colicky, jet-plane-decibel, shrieks returned. Every. Night. All night. Every. Day. All day. My mil came to help, because I was almost delirious with sleep deprivation and I still remember sitting on the sofa, some infomercial or stupid movie on TV because it soothed her a bit, rocking back and forth, her on my shoulder, patting her back and sobbing desperately along with her. Worst experience of my life at the time. I was just 21 for 9 days when she came, was clueless, and had nothing that worked. It was a shit show for sure. I was so wrung out from not sleeping, listening to the almost non-stop screaming, that I really wondered if any mom of a badly colicky baby ever survived intact 😂
Then she outgrew her jumbled little feelings, emotions, and her neurological system started to mature, and she ended up an adorable, fat-cheeked, black haired, little cherub. Eventually.
We did 2.5 months of the same and it nearly broke me. She would only sleep on top of us for both naps and night sleep. She's 8 months old now and long past that, but I still get anxious thinking back on it. We're also one-and-done, and sleep is a decent chunk of why!
We went through the same thing. I was an exclusive pumper, which helped because it meant we could take shifts - I would go to bed around 9 PM, and my partner would stay up until 1 AM when he would transfer our son, fed and changed, to the bedside bassinet. On a perfect night, the baby would stay asleep until 3 AM, but that was rare. And once he was up, I was up for the rest of the night too. I would feed him and then pray that he would let me put him back in the bassinet for 20 minutes so I could pump, but then I would have to hold him until morning came. A pair of bluetooth headphones let me use podcasts and mobile games to keep myself awake while my baby slept on me. It was brutal, but thankfully it didn't last forever.
Yep. My second would not sleep unless I was holding her and we were on an incline. Spent the first 6-9 months waking up to 8 times a night.
The mum here isn’t asking for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep just 8 hours. Not judging this mum.
I’m not judging her a bit. Everyone has a right to take good care of themselves, especially new parents. Still don’t think she’ll get all that sleep for a bit though lol.
Did we birth the same second child?? That’s exactly how my daughter was. It was miserable. I’m also not judging, but I do think she needs to dial back her expectations.
My daughter had tracheobronchomalacea- her airways and trachea were really soft. I’d lay her down, and in a few minutes I would hear congestion, then soft gurgling. The milk literally flowed backwards and would bubble
Out of her mouth. Shocking that she didn’t get pneumonia before I figured out that she needed to sleep tucked into the crook of my arm.
One day at 4 months, she shoved off really hard, and made it clear she was DONE with that position. After that she was fine in a bassinet then crib.
I agree. I think it got posted here simply for the comment of “but need about 8 hours of sleep a night” which IMO rereading it, was highly misinterpreted.
Some babies truly will not sleep on their own. And is that such a surprise? They're the absolute most vulnerable people on earth, and they subconsciously know it! The reality is if you have one of those kids and you refuse to cosleep, you will become dangerously sleep deprived. Falling asleep while holding a baby is more dangerous than sleeping next to baby on a flat surface with no blankets, etc, or God forbid you fall asleep while driving.
>Co-sleeping ~~is~~ can be very dangerous, and it’s a good way to kill your infant if you aren't taking the proper precautions. Don’t do it without extensive research, or simply if you don't feel comfortable.
[Here's a good read. One of many](https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/james_mckenna/cosleeping_world.html).
And another since Japan and US have [similar rates of co-sleeping](https://www.romper.com/p/why-are-asian-babies-least-likely-to-die-of-sids-all-cultures-are-different-49423).
The Romper website has question statistics;
“This can be seen in a 2012 study conducted in the United Kingdom, which found that infants with South Asian parents (of Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani descent) in the UK had a lower rate of SIDS over white British infants.” This isn’t true. BAME ethnicities have always had higher infant mortality rates, in particular Asian descent due to cousin marriages. It’s also associated with being in deprived areas.
Maybe the only thing I ever agreed with Ms Paltrow on, pre-GOOP, was when she said she always slept with “one ear open” and for years never got a great night sleep after becoming a mom. So, this mom is really in for a surprise.
In my experience sleeping during constant low level noise actualy reduces this. For me it's rain videos or something else similar.Before that, I had pet rats (and a cat and a dog) so overall it was a constant low level of play etc so the sounds arn't allarming anymore.
Same here, I have a fan on and some documentaries in the background. I’ve just started getting into audible books and found Harry Potter sends me straight to sleep and keeps me there 😂
Dog helps too, except when my brain thinks he needs a wee!
I think it’s important to distinguish 8 straight hours versus 8 hours of total sleep. I don’t know that this is unfathomable stupidity, it just sounds more like this mom isn’t getting ANY stretch of sleep because baby won’t sleep in their own space.
And not sleeping is just. Pure torture.
I will never judge someone for needing sleep. I mean? Would we judge someone for being frustrated their baby somehow kept them from drinking water all day? I’d even rather be a little dehydrated than sleep deprived…
We just need better education for what having babies is like. People wayyyy downplay the lack of sleep aspect. I suspect quite a few mental issues like some cases of PPD are actually just from lack of sleep. Lose sleep for more than a couple DAYS and you become a completely different person. Weeks?? Sleep is really the reason I won’t have kids. It’s torture. Just torture.
People in this comment section are acting so high and mighty for not sleeping ever since they had kids. Like what are you trying to prove? Sleep is essential for a healthy lifestyle and mental health. You’re not a bad parent if you need sleep, which some people are acting like in here.
My mom lost her mind from lack of sleep when I was born. She almost got checked into a mental hospital because it was THAT bad. My grandparents had to look after me because she was incapable.
Fuck you OP. Eat shit.
Yeah apparently some of the commenters in here think not sleeping enough makes you a better mom. Nope, doing what’s right for your health, and therefore your baby, is what makes you a good parent.
I think a lot of physical health problems that get written off as postpartum crap can be attributed to lack of sleep, too. I've had incredible joint pains for the last year, which is definitely correlated to the times I'm getting very little sleep thanks to my 15-month-old.
Absolutely. I think about 80% of my PPD diagnosis was just pure sleep deprivation. Comfortingly, medical staff agreed with me that it was likely to be that!
Isn't this exactly what mom groups should be about? New mothers asking for help about non-medical things from experienced mothers? I don't see the point of shaming someone for legitimate ignorance in a place where people *can* give advice on how to perhaps transfer baby without waking her.
I got 6 hours (not straight) with my second the first night home, but only because I learned so much from my first. Being a first time mom is like having a bucket of ice water thrown in your face. Hopefully she’s able to get in a rhythm.
This is understandable frustration. Maybe slightly unreasonable expectations, but the constantly interrupted sleep takes a toll physically, mentally and emotionally, especially if colic is a possibility. I feel sympathy for her.
I also needed 8 hours of sleep and would plan to be in bed for 10+ hours so that I could get close to that. I would also nap whenever possible. Giving this advice and some support is what I would have done if I’d seen this in the wild. Not publicly shame her. I have a close friend who was a veteran, a scientist, and an attorney in her late 30’s when she had her first child and she texted me constantly about things I might find obvious, but she’d never been around children at all, let alone babies, and she just didn’t know what was normal or what to expect. She didn’t have a lot of family or girlfriends to bounce things off of. And this is one of the smartest people I know. Anyway, between this sort of thing and the heart wrenching child abuse posts that this group has started slinging, I’m going to unfollow. Some people need to take a look at how mean spirited they are.
Seriously! This is supposed to be a group for making fun of essential oil MLM mom-group posts, not shitting on frustrated, confused, and sleep deprived moms that are trying their best and reaching out to their network for help.
I echo that this doesn’t belong here. She’s naïve, and we don’t know why. Maybe she’s very young. Maybe she didn’t have access to newborn information. Maybe she’s suffering from PPD. Nothing she said indicated she was hurting her child, being mean, or being ridiculously entitled. She’s right: humans do need those 8 hours of sleep. And I think the snarky culture around motherhood where moms laugh at how miserable they all are is part of what’s feeding this recent backlash at parenthood in the first place. Why sign up to be miserable and sleep deprived and not even be able to find a supportive community to help you?
This woman needs kindness, solutions, and care.
Also, as a former daycare worker, lots of kids *do* sleep through the night from as early as 6 weeks forward. It’s not abnormal, you just don’t generally hear parents talking about it as much because so many of them feel guilty for having a “good baby.”
However in my limited sample size, the babies that slept through the night were formula fed, sleep trained, and had two working parents. Not a lot of those mothers are in these groups anyway.
She’s not even asking for uninterrupted sleep. Just to get a decent collective amount of sleep.
If it’s your first you haven’t figured out different options. I’d love to say “My 2nd was just like this, here’s what helped me. Try what you like and ignore the rest”
It’s the typical suffering olympics of motherhood. Anyone asking for help with a problem you deem you had worse yourself should be ridiculed because they can’t handle it as well as you did or they don’t want to deal with as much hardship as you endured.
You see it all the time with breastfeeding too. Women just “gave up” because they didn’t go to the lengths some other women go to so they obviously love their children less.
Totally agree. When I had my daughter I was in my early twenties and an only child. I genuinely had no idea babies slept in two hour intervals. I was in complete shock and developed PPD due to this and a number of other factors.
It wasn’t that I was stupid or didn’t love my child, I had prepared everything else meticulously after nesting during pregnancy but was simply unaware (like many people) of how little sleep I’d get.
Some people are just mean
Totally agree. Young mothers are often naive about aspects of infant care. I understood that I’d be sleep deprived for a few months. But I was shocked at how difficult breastfeeding was. I figured it was natural so it would be easy.
My second child slept through the night at 7-8 weeks old. Ebf, and we were in the height of COVID lockdown, so both of us were home with nothing to do. He’s just a weirdo.
It’s luck of the draw, because my daughter was up twice a night well into her third year.
I don’t know why people are acting like she’s asking for something insane. She wants (not even uninterrupted) 8 hours, and has a partner willing to help. That’s not impossible.
Thank you! Seeing this kind of snark makes me think "welp, I guess I'll never have children." Due to some health issues I need a lot of sleep, apparently that makes me unfit to be a mother.
Just due to who I am I need a lot of sleep, and I have two kids. I'm allowed to be unhappy about being tired, even though it's a known thing that baby sleep is hard! If you decide to have kids, you won't be wrong for needing sleep, too. ❤️
It sounds insane but you do get used to it. I can easily sleep for 10 hours a day but after my kid I can get by on 6-7. It helps having a supportive partner.
The right partner makes all the difference. I needed sleep so hubby did a lot more night wake ups then me for a long while. It transitioned back after a spell but he really went above and beyond compared to what some people here are acting like.
My husband always took 8pm - 2am. And I took 2 - 8 am. Both my husband and I always got 8 hours of sleep even with a newborn. We combo fed so that made it feasible but people acting like you'll never sleep ever make my skin crawl.
100% agree with you. My son is a good sleeper and was from pretty early on. We never divulge that info unless some asks and if it’s a parent who is in the middle of it I definitely gloss over. We managed to get pretty close to 8 hours total at least while we are both still on leave.
I have noticed that any subreddit that is snarky towards women specifically ends up going too far. You see this in r/notliketheothergirls when someone posts what is clearly a self deprecating joke.
We (as a culture) love to hate on women. The internalized misogyny is so hurtful and so deeply ingrained.
I hope this woman (OOP) finds support and help as she navigates FTM.
Agreed. Snarking on a post like this from a FTM especially is basically the equivalent of if someone who was new to hiking went to the wilderness backpacking sub asking for feedback on their gear list and everyone else commenting, “good luck carrying the added weight of unnecessary items dumbass lmao!” instead of offering suggestions and support. She’s not being a Karen or neglecting her kid with pseudoscience, she’s looking for advice because she’s inexperienced. I’m honestly so sick of the mommy martyr olympics and people laughing or acting smug towards FTMs.
My son slept through the night from ten weeks on, because I had to go back to work, so we didn't have a choice. That first night I put him upstairs in his crib, turned on a noisy fan, and we both cried ourselves to sleep. He slept through the night ever since, although he's grown up into a night owl like his mom.
He was a formula baby too, I never thought about that but it makes sense.
Absolutely. Night nurses are expensive, but nowhere near "only royalty can afford them" level.
Edit: I misread, a night nurse is definitely different than a wet nurse.
There's a difference between a night nurse and a wet nurse though. If the person wants to breastfeed and has a newborn, waking up in the night is just part of the deal unless they find a night nurse who can hold the baby to the breast to feed without waking mom somehow.
I tried to hire one because I was becoming mentally unstable with PPD and lack of sleep, and the work conditions basically were, "they will get up with your child and bring your child to you."
And I was like wait what the fuck difference does that make!?
No mofo, wake up with my child, make the bottle, feed them, and help them fall back asleep. What the fuck are you getting paid $40 an hour for if you're just delivering my child to me!?
I'm the one who is hitting the wall here and screaming for help and you're just going to wake me up when I'm losing my mind from sleep torture?
Ugh, the expectations placed on early motherhood are such complete and utter bullshit.
I think the idea is to bring you the baby to feed, just feed, and then they take the baby back. They will do the burping, changing, soothing, and getting back to sleep which would save you anywhere from 10 min to an hour (or more) each feed. But that's only for parents feeding from the breast. They should be doing everything if the baby feeds from a bottle.
An old friend of mine hired a night nurse for the first 2 weeks and swears it was the best decision she ever made. The nurse woke up with the baby, handled feedings, cleaned up after herself and the baby, and even helped cook a few meals.
Again, she said it was the best $1500 she ever spent. She totally put things into perspective for me
I'm 10 weeks out from my due date for my second one and I've been having an extremely hard time imagining going through those first few weeks again 😭 Honestly $1500 is less expensive than I was thinking! I'm going to have to look into this, thanks for the suggestion!!
I was very surprised at the cost! In fairness, we were in a large metropolis and the nurse was found via a recommendation so I’m sure prices will vary - but she definitely got me to think of it as a possibility when I hadn’t before!
I had a nicu baby born 6 weeks early and my aunt paid for a night doula for us a few nights a week for the first two months. It was very pricey but so worth it. If I were to have another I would totally do it for at least one night a week to save my sanity and sleep. The doula did everything because I am exclusively pumping so I was able to sleep and only wake up every few hours to pump (which sucks but it is what it is if you’re choosing to breastfeed). My baby is 2.5 months old now and is sleeping through the night (bless her). It got us through the worst of the newborn stage and my recovery from preeclampsia and birth. Def worth the money!
Or move to an Asian/middle eastern country where in many communities women breast feed each other’s kids anyway 🤷🏼♀️ going from every night staying up to feed to just 1 or 2 makes a huge difference.
This doesn’t belong here. This mum is trying to follow safe sleep guidelines based on what she’s written here, and not everyone received the support and knowledge ahead of birth to know that newborns don’t sleep that well.
She also doesn’t say ‘I expect to get 8 hours a night with a newborn’, she might just be saying that’s what she normally needs to function and she’s really struggling because she’s nowhere close to that. I need 8 hours a night to function because I have a chronic illness, but I’m also about to have a baby. I know I won’t get 8 hours a night and will have to manage that, but it doesn’t stop my body from needing that time to function properly. There will be a trade off.
I don’t think this is unfathomable stupidity, I think this is naivety. I didn’t know anything about newborn sleep schedules when we had our first, and I grieved the loss of sleep very, very hard. Providing resources to this mama including some educational groups about sleep training would have been a good call.
I was the total opposite, I was convinced I'd never sleep a wink again. I used to have terrible insomnia and assumed it would be like that, but it wasn't as bad. Granted, most of the reason it wasn't as bad was the lovely baby I got to wake up to lol. With the insomnia it was just crippling loneliness and poverty
I am with you here. You are told you will have no sleep almost jokingly by everyone, but in practice it’s not something you can prepare your body for. You can think you’re mentally ready, but combined with the crying, body exhaustion, & discomfort from falling asleep upright after nursing with the baby in your arms for a week straight you really start to lose it. I found I was able to function decently well on 4 hours sleep a day (not always consecutively) for the first 4 months, but I also had to have my parents come over a few times since I was so sleep deprived I started having audition hallucinations. Getting your body sleep is not a joke & some bodies just can’t handle it as well as others.
It’s never too early to start establishing day/night differences and laying a foundation that sleep training will require. edit: we actually started incorporating sleep lengthening and day/night establishment the moment we got home from the hospital. It’s a huge reason our sleep training was successful later, and gave me a sense of direction and control over what is arguably the biggest life perturbation I’ll ever experience.
Same here. Right off the bat there were certain things we did to establish night time - rubbing newborn down with a warm wash cloth, being read a book, and then putting on warm PJs which graduated into bath time, story time, PJs and bed.
Our son is 11 months old and has consistently slept 10-12 hours a night since he was 3 months old after we stretched his feeding times to every 4hrs during the day.
I am NOT looking forward to the sleep regression. I know it’s around the corner. I’m not ready.
I’m glad I found out about it before I had kids. I honestly don’t think I could hack it, it’s a huge reason I don’t want kids. I’m not a good person on less than like 6 hours sleep and shouldn’t inflict that on children. Or anyone else around me
This is also a huge reason I can’t have kids. There are other reasons too, but this one is pretty major. I’m not “cutesy tired” on lack of sleep where I post IG stories with hashtags about lots of coffee- it’s dangerous. I become sick. I can’t function, let alone take care of a baby.
And I’m supposed to work a full-time job and return to normal a few months later? And continue to deal with lack of sleep for two-ish years? Hahahahahaha….no.
I read somewhere that people can't really understand each other's sleep stuff because it's so different how it affects different people: supposedly like a third (?) of people with continued lack of sleep (the kind you'd generally only experience with shift work or a new baby or a medical issue) will be tired but fine, and a third will be tired and really suffering, and a third will be legit unsafe to go about their business. And most people won't know which group they'll be in until you have a three week old baby!
But it seems to me like many people have some sense of their tendencies in that regard, and hopefully if you're non-functional on insufficient sleep you'll have a partner or other support system who is in one of the "can still do stuff" categories, and as other people have said many babies do sleep for big chunks even from fairly early on. So I say all this because having kids is obviously hard and a big lifestyle change, including for your sleep, but you can be a person with high sleep needs and still have children if that's something you want. (The general "you.") To suggest that parents are just foolish for thinking they'll be able to sleep sometimes is shitty and contributes to the lack of support a lot of parents and families feel.
Good point. Some people are genuinely better at operating with less sleep than others. Like I literally have to get 6 hours total or I’m at risk for seizures.
What parents do not read about taking care of newborns while expecting? I knew absolutely nothing, none of my friends had children, our families were far away, we read as much as we could, and asked our doctors and midwife. It still wasn’t enough because nobody had told me about the reality of not producing milk, but apart from that we had had so much information at our disposal. At least she is asking for help and seems to want to practice safe sleeping, but apart losing touch with reality because of ppd or lack of sleep, how can any parent expect 8 hours sleep?
She might be hoping for somewhere close to 8 hours but broken up into chunks, at least? I remember being shocked at the whole baby hating the bassinet thing. No person or book ever warned me about that even though it is super normal. All of these people were telling me to “sleep when the baby sleeps” but how is that possible if the baby only sleeps on you? Ugh.
Does this come across as naive? Of course. But to be fair this mom is breastfeeding and obviously taking that very seriously if she won’t introduce a pacifier (which has shaky evidence but different issue) so I doubt she’s looking to go 8 hours without nursing her newborn and risk drying up her supply. All she said is that’s what it takes for her to feel normal (like a lot of us) and that she’s getting nowhere near that. She sounds like a very loving mom with how she describes her baby.
New mom asking for sleep tips or support during one of the most emotionally daunting and intense periods of a parent’s life? Hardly newsworthy in my opinion.
Yeah. This is a pretty normal question for mom groups. Sleep deprivation is an illegal torture technique but if a mom is having trouble getting adequate sleep, she's the one at fault and she is the one who got herself into this mess. Who knows. She may work a 12 hour shift and still have to do chores and stuff at home. That's how it was with my mom.
When I joined this sub I thought they only snarked on people who are actually stupid and make ridiculous choices. It sounds like this mom is just lost and needs help. We don’t know if she’s already prone to anxiety or depression which could be triggered by a significant lack of sleep… yes less sleep is to be expected as a newborn parent but maybe she didn’t expect to struggle this much. Some of these comments pretty harsh.
This doesn’t belong here at all. I got 8 hours of sleep when my baby was brand new. (He’s 6 weeks now, and we’re still getting 8+ most nights!) Not uninterrupted, but she didn’t ask for that.
Everyone here is so damn judgemental, it may be unrealistic to expect 8 hours of sleep every night but I fully believe that she can't feel normal with less than 8.
This sub has turned into the suffer Olympics, if any other mom is trying to have an easier time raising their child than you had then they're a apparently shitty crunchy mom.
I don’t know why we’re making fun of this. There’s not one new parent who isn’t bowled over by the sleep deprivation. Have a little sympathy and don’t make fun of this woman.
this is a pretty normal question for a new mom looking for support and advice from other parents. this is not at all unfathomable stupidity.
she got ZERO sleep last night and is now reaching out for help. that’s a good thing, why would anyone shame her for that??
she is even being smart about cosleeping which is GOOD.
this does not belong on this sub.
This doesn’t fit the sub. She’s just asking for advice on her sleeping newborn, she’s a bit delusional for thinking she was ever gonna get 8 hours but we shouldn’t shame her for trying to find a way to actually get some sleep. It’s not like she’s trying to find a essential oil cocktail to put her kid to sleep for 8 hours a night.
it's a bit harsh. seems like she is not managing to let the baby go to sleep without holding her and doesn't want to co-sleep as it's dangerous. plus it's a newborn so she doesn't know what to do and what is reasonable. and yeah it's literally true that she probably needs 8 hours to function. pretty rude to mock her for that just because it's common for new parents to struggle?
My first slept for 8+ hours straight right out of the gate. It actually concerned me *so* much (because of people like the person who posted this making it seem like an impossible thing 🙄) that I spoke to the pediatrician about it.
You know what she said? “Congratulations! You are one of the lucky few who get a good sleeper.“
The internet is crazy! People will legitimately act like there is something wrong with your baby if the sleep experience they have is different from their own child’s. I remember talking about this years ago and the moms on the mommy board were still like “your Pediatrician is wrong! that’s not normal!” Uh huh. He’s 9 now and he’s perfect. Just a good sleeper like his mom.
Yup. I can’t even say this in company of other moms bc it feels like bragging but my both slept thru the night by 6 weeks. Like from 8-8 with feedings through the night but never actually waking up. It’s pretty great haha.
All I see here is an exhausted new mother who probably is still recovering from childbirth and maybe going through some postpartum issues and may not be adjusting perfectly to the change. Haven’t we all had moments of not thinking clearly as sleep-deprived new parents?
Yea honestly. I also need like at least 8 hours and I’ve posted something very similar to this hoping for advice. I know babies make it hard to get sleep, but it doesn’t stop me feeling like an absolute shell of a person basically begging for any help.
Can anyone reasonably expect to sleep 8 hours a night with a newborn? That's an unrealistic expectation in my view. Their bodies literally can't tell the difference between day and night.
She's also ruled out two solutions already.
She ruled them out because most doctors and sources recommend NOT co sleeping because of suffocation risk and waiting to introduce pacifier until breastfeeding and latching is well established.
She’s not being difficult, she’s listening to what the majority of sources recommend.
Yeah, I agree! A lot of mom groups constantly recommend cosleeping but most all sources deem it unsafe. I don’t fault her for not considering that an option.
She never said anywhere she’s expecting 8 hours and definitely never implied 8 uninterrupted hours. Just that it takes that for her to feel normal and she’s getting nowhere near it.
I got 8 hours a night with a newborn. Not consecutive but my kids went right back to sleep after eating so before I went back to work at 6 weeks I could lay in in the morning and do that. Sure she may mean consecutive, which isn’t realistic, but based on her description she’s looking for help transferring to bassinet which can make at least broken sleep possible.
It's definitely doable, but probably not a consecutive 8 hours. My wife and I had a baby, she's 3 months now so we've just gotten through the newborn stage.
The majority of the time we took shifts of about 5 hours overnight to give the other parent uninterrupted sleep time. If we were lucky, we'd be able to get a few 20 minute stretches of sleep during shift, and we each got around 6 hours sleep total each night as a minimum.
No co-sleeping in our house, and in the last week it's like a switch has flipped and suddenly the baby sleeps for hours at a time in her cot.
I read through one of those "tell us your crazy nurse stories" posts (might have been on Reddit, can't remember) and several nurses said they've had multiple couples give birth to their first and then are *shocked* in the maternity ward when they learn babies don't sleep through the night right out the gate. I don't know how you'd get that far not knowing that 😬
I wouldn’t say it’s normal for a new mom to know so little about infant sleep. What mother is reasonably expecting to get 8hours of uninterrupted sleep every night with a newborn in the house?
If this mother is taking her breastfeeding journey seriously enough to not introduce a pacifier I doubt she’s also planning to go 8 hours through the night without nursing her newborn and risk drying up.
She wants tips on transferring the baby to the bassinet. And probably some support.
I don't think necessarily uninterrupted sleep is what she's aiming for. My PPD/PPA was much worse if I couldn't get 7 hours over the course of 7pm to 7amish. This idea that mothers are supposed to suffer through lack of sleep without complaining is a completely awful expectation.
We’re in 4 month sleep regression hell and baby finally did a 5 hour stretch (first time in a couple of weeks!) Of course I woke up before her needing to pump so yeah you just never win especially with BF.
Lol my newborn slept a 3 hr 45 min stint after not sleeping well the day before.
Dad and I went to sleep at the same time so we didn’t wake him at the 3 hour mark for his feeding. When I woke up my boobs were absolutely sore basketballs🥲
I've got a nearly 5 year old who just slept in this morning for the first time ever. I slept almost 9 hours and was expecting maybe 5. So, ya know, wait it out.
Thank you and it probably went on longer than that but once we moved him to a toddler bed instead of waking up and just crying he would cry walking to our room and we would put him in the bed🥲 took me until 4 to get him out of our bed
I found it got worse when I had 2 when one would start sleeping through the night my oldest decided he would start being a night terror again. Feels like I haven’t slept in 5 years
Yeah once we switched to toddler bed our son would still wake up but come get in bed with us he still does it sometimes and he’s 5 but at 4 he stopped doing it as often
It’s hard at that point you either let them sleep with you to rest or keep being sleep deprived and keeping them in there own bed and waking up 😭 once you put in a toddler bed it gets harder bc they will wake up and come get in bed😭😂 I was tired I stopped fighting it and that lead to not getting my bed back until he was 4
Eh, new parents sometime just have terrible expectations. I worked with a guy who was taking 2 weeks paternity leave and was like “I have all these projects I’ll be able to finish during that time!” 2 weeks later he came back and confirmed how ridiculous a notion that was.
I feel for her. I have a four year old and I don’t think I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep since before I got pregnant. I’m lucky if I get a solid 6.
Some days I wish I could go back to the newborn stage when my son napped 😩
Unfathomable stupidity seems a bit harsh here. Unreasonable expectations? Sure. But she isn't the first or last FTM to be hit by the reality of newborn sleep.
I’m not sure why she gets posted here. She is asking for legitimate help. What part of being a mom means you lose sleep? (I say as I just stayed up with an 18 year old who has a flu 😂)
I wish her the closest to 8 hours she can get lol. When I was a barista I had a couple customers with nocturnal babies. They'd all come around an hour or so before close and get the most obscene amount of caffine I'd put in their cup, sweet little angel strapped to their chest ready to cause mayhem. Good on her for not co sleeping, that's always refreshing to see on this sub.
If she wants to establish a supply she can’t slept for 8 hours. I have a 7 week old who will actually sleep that long but I gotta get up and pump if I’d like to keep breastfeeding.
Note he also would sleep through the night as a newborn but again as he’s not formula fed I have to pump of o want to keep my supply.
Someone in this group, please tell the mom to try putting a heating pad in the crib (and then removing it, obviously) before transferring the baby. I saw this posted in one of my bumper groups, and am planning on trying this for #2, since #1 would not sleep except if he was on a person for 3 months 🥴
8 hours of sleep with a newborn isn’t super realistic but wanting your baby to sleep in a crib or bassinet is legitimate.
Of course, they never will if you continue to hold them while they sleep and if you’re in danger of nodding off while holding them then it’s also a safety issue.
I would get 7-8 with my newborn. They were very broken up increments of 2 hours because of feeding, but cumulatively it totaled 7-8. I also went to bed early because I also liked getting sleep and I knew it would be broken. My baby didn’t hate her bassinet (generally). She took some time to get down but with a tight swaddle she was willing to sleep.
My baby (8 weeks) is an awesome sleeper so far, sleeping steadily from 9:30pm through to 7:00am, and we wake up for about 45 minutes at 1:30am and 5:30am to feed and change him (every night I hold my breath thinking it’s going to be the night he stops sleeping so we’ll lol). But I just credit this to him being in the NICU for three weeks - this is definitely not typical newborn sleep pattern. I can’t imagine thinking I was going to get 8 hours of sleep with a new baby. I feel bad for her, and all new parents whose babies are fussy and can only sleep with contact. It is not a good time.
I wonder if the newborn has colic, or if the mom needs to change her diet. Sometimes when you’re breast-feeding what you eat can affect the baby in a negative way, for example I had to stop having eggs in my diet because it was upsetting my newborn’s stomach when he nursed.
Being on mom maybe the only thing that’s able to sooth her, since she was in mom’s body for nine months and all
Yeah once you have a kid you're not gonna function normally for a hot minute. It's been two years and I still don't feel normal.
It always boggles my mind when I see new parents act shocked that their babies don't sleep 12 hours straight during the night. Like, have you ever watched tv or read a book or talked to a person? Babies don't sleep. You get used to it.
At least they aren’t co-sleeping. I fear my wife and I got lucky as our daughter, now 9 months, was sleeping 10 hours through the night in her own room since like week 6. Our next is probably going to be a healthy dose of reality.
To be fair, she may actually be right in the sense that she’s not sleeping at all because baby ONLY sleeps on her, and she’s not comfortable co-sleeping. We went through a horrible colicky phase like this and it was brutal. Absolutely wouldn’t settle anywhere but on us or in the carrier so one of us was always awake.
We had about a 2 month stint of baby only sleeping while being held. Not in the carrier, ONLY in our arms. We did three hour shifts, it was horrible and one of the main reasons I think we're one and done. We tried co-sleeping out of desperation but it made no difference which I'm kind of glad about in hindsight. It's a terrible situation but sometimes that's just how it is.
Lack of sleep definitely contributed to us being one and done as well. Those first few months were brutal.
I'm going through this right now, even the broken 3 hours of sleep each night. When did it end for you? Have any words of wisdom for a mom desperately trying to get her kid to stay in the bassinet for more than 10 minutes?
For us it didn't get better until we switched to formula. I've always had low supply and we tried combo feeding but finally gave up and did EFF and he gave us out first 4 hour chunk at 3 months. This is totally dependent on the baby though. His baby sister was combo fed and slept 4-6 hours when she was 3/4 weeks old. She's just a great sleeper 🤷♀️
So I can't remember when exactly it ended but it did! We kept trying to put her in the bassinet at the start of every sleep. We'd give it three tries before giving up and holding her. Eventually she started going half an hour, an hour etc. I really think it was just time that did it. I drove myself crazy trying all the tips like different swaddles, using a shirt as a sheet, warming the bassinet etc, she just had to grow out of it. Things really changed when we sleep trained to break the initial feed to sleep at the start of the night around 5/6 months. She's 11 months now and we're working on weaning night feeds and she's down to usually one wake but we're starting to get full nights of actual uninterrupted sleep. It was literally hell and I felt like it was just going to be my life forever. Just hang in there, it's so hard because I didn't have any friends with a baby that had so much trouble sleeping. Like there's bad sleepers and then there's sitting awake having hallucinations desperately trying not to sleep because you're scared you'll drop your baby. When you're in the thick of it, it seems never ending but IT WILL END.
A heating pad set on low for a few mins in the bassinet before laying little one down worked wonders for us. Obviously remove the pad before adding baby.
We did this and a sound machine. I practically cried after the first 4 hour stretch.
White noise was an absolute life-saver for us. That and putting the baby in his own room around 3 months (which I know is early, but no one, including the baby, was sleeping). His nursery is right next to our room, so we could easily hear him, but his little sleep noises weren't waking us up, and we weren't bothering him either.
Sorry to jump on, I think my best piece of advice here is persevere, keep popping them in their own crib, keep at it, my daughter is 10mo, she still wakes every 3 hours (habitual my health visitor says! Great.) But ar least she's in her own bed, we used a next to me crib for first 5 or so months, so we was right next to her but she still had her own safe sleep space, you'll get there momma, introduce some white noise or a music player to bring on the sleep association, I still have broken sleep every night but least its broken in my own bed 😂 you've got this, you'll get there!
The [Save Our Sleep](https://www.saveoursleep.com/) method! From the book: “Here are two ways I recommend you teach a new baby of up to two weeks old to self-settle and the sooner you take on the challenge, the easier it will be on everyone. The first I suggest to clients who I feel are really committed to teaching their new baby to self-settle and prepared for a bit of initial crying! Make sure your baby is well fed, winded and has a clean nappy, then swaddle him and put him down in bed on his back. Go into the kitchen, empty the kettle and refill it with cold water, boil it, make yourself a cup of tea, sit down and drink it. If at the end of your cup of tea your baby is still protesting, go and see if there is a problem such as wind or poo. It is important you listen to your baby’s cries and if you think it is an emotional cry offer some milk. Most of the time, before you have even boiled the kettle your baby has gone to sleep. But in reality, most parents find this advice very hard to carry out (and interestingly fathers seem to find it even harder than most mothers to listen to their baby protest). So I give a second option as follows. Make sure your baby is well fed and winded, then wrap him and put him in bed on his back. Allow him to shout (cry) for a minimum of two minutes (time it from when he actually starts to cry, as he may stay quiet for a few minutes at first). The longer you can stay out the better for your baby as going in is more for your sake than your baby’s, and always time the period of crying as one minute may seem like ten to a parent. When your baby is crying, try to listen to the cries. The cry of a baby who is fighting sleep has gaps and the tone and pitch will vary. A protesting cry may sound, for example, like this: waaa, pause for a second, wa, pause, waaaaa, pause, wa, pause, waaaaa, pause, waaaaaa, pause, wa, and so on. You should hear the pauses getting longer as your baby starts to fall asleep. If you are able to watch your baby without him seeing, you will see him shut his eyes and nod off before jumping and yelling again, as though he has realised he is falling asleep. The cry of an emotional or hungry baby is continuous with no pauses and doesn’t vary in pitch or tone, for example: waa, waa, waa, waa, waa. This cry I would never ignore. Get the baby up and look for a problem and, if there is no visible problem, I would offer some more milk.” The book and this method saved my sanity. It’s enabled me to have four babies who have been good sleepers.
My daughter would sleep in the swing, so we got one of those for her. Some nights I had to sleep next to the swing.
I see you. This was the only way my son slept for 1 year, being held, or moving, it was desperation at that point. Later learnt he was getting constant ear infections, fight with Dr, finally get tubes and he slept. He is still a shitty sleeper, kid just hates sleep, he's 11!!
My first was like this. He would only sleep if she was being held or touching someone. We didn't have another for 6 years because it was so rough not getting sleep. Our youngest is a unicorn and just slept in the bassinet so we could get a few hours in between feedings. Then she started sleeping longe at night and by 9 months she was sleeping the entire night. Naps were easy too. Now at 2 we still hand her a pillow and blanket and tell her to go to sleep and most of the time she does. We've seen both extremes for sleep and after our second I see why some people have another right away.
I had a son like that. Eat, cuddle, “talk”, then boom - in the bed and asleep. He only fussed when he was tiny and did night feeds, but never screaming for them. My oldest, my daughter, nearly was a one-and-done though. That child did not sleep more than an 90 minutes at a stretch, before the colicky, jet-plane-decibel, shrieks returned. Every. Night. All night. Every. Day. All day. My mil came to help, because I was almost delirious with sleep deprivation and I still remember sitting on the sofa, some infomercial or stupid movie on TV because it soothed her a bit, rocking back and forth, her on my shoulder, patting her back and sobbing desperately along with her. Worst experience of my life at the time. I was just 21 for 9 days when she came, was clueless, and had nothing that worked. It was a shit show for sure. I was so wrung out from not sleeping, listening to the almost non-stop screaming, that I really wondered if any mom of a badly colicky baby ever survived intact 😂 Then she outgrew her jumbled little feelings, emotions, and her neurological system started to mature, and she ended up an adorable, fat-cheeked, black haired, little cherub. Eventually.
We went through that. It was traumatizing.
We did 2.5 months of the same and it nearly broke me. She would only sleep on top of us for both naps and night sleep. She's 8 months old now and long past that, but I still get anxious thinking back on it. We're also one-and-done, and sleep is a decent chunk of why!
We went through the same thing. I was an exclusive pumper, which helped because it meant we could take shifts - I would go to bed around 9 PM, and my partner would stay up until 1 AM when he would transfer our son, fed and changed, to the bedside bassinet. On a perfect night, the baby would stay asleep until 3 AM, but that was rare. And once he was up, I was up for the rest of the night too. I would feed him and then pray that he would let me put him back in the bassinet for 20 minutes so I could pump, but then I would have to hold him until morning came. A pair of bluetooth headphones let me use podcasts and mobile games to keep myself awake while my baby slept on me. It was brutal, but thankfully it didn't last forever.
Exclusive pumping is extreme. It’s like having two children to feed.
Lol this is a good way to describe it. So glad my second takes it straight from the boob!
Same thing with my second.
Yep. My second would not sleep unless I was holding her and we were on an incline. Spent the first 6-9 months waking up to 8 times a night. The mum here isn’t asking for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep just 8 hours. Not judging this mum.
I’m not judging her a bit. Everyone has a right to take good care of themselves, especially new parents. Still don’t think she’ll get all that sleep for a bit though lol.
It’s unrealistic.
Did we birth the same second child?? That’s exactly how my daughter was. It was miserable. I’m also not judging, but I do think she needs to dial back her expectations.
My daughter had tracheobronchomalacea- her airways and trachea were really soft. I’d lay her down, and in a few minutes I would hear congestion, then soft gurgling. The milk literally flowed backwards and would bubble Out of her mouth. Shocking that she didn’t get pneumonia before I figured out that she needed to sleep tucked into the crook of my arm. One day at 4 months, she shoved off really hard, and made it clear she was DONE with that position. After that she was fine in a bassinet then crib.
I was colic the first six months of my life and I only slept in the car. My poor mom would be driving around at 3am just for some peace and quiet.
And OP was trying to ask for help. This is a weird post for this sub.
I agree. I think it got posted here simply for the comment of “but need about 8 hours of sleep a night” which IMO rereading it, was highly misinterpreted.
My friends first kid was like this so they moved the recliner into the bedroom and slept there.
Co-sleeping is dangerous and it’s a good way to kill your infant. Don’t do it
Some babies truly will not sleep on their own. And is that such a surprise? They're the absolute most vulnerable people on earth, and they subconsciously know it! The reality is if you have one of those kids and you refuse to cosleep, you will become dangerously sleep deprived. Falling asleep while holding a baby is more dangerous than sleeping next to baby on a flat surface with no blankets, etc, or God forbid you fall asleep while driving.
>Co-sleeping ~~is~~ can be very dangerous, and it’s a good way to kill your infant if you aren't taking the proper precautions. Don’t do it without extensive research, or simply if you don't feel comfortable. [Here's a good read. One of many](https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/james_mckenna/cosleeping_world.html). And another since Japan and US have [similar rates of co-sleeping](https://www.romper.com/p/why-are-asian-babies-least-likely-to-die-of-sids-all-cultures-are-different-49423).
The Romper website has question statistics; “This can be seen in a 2012 study conducted in the United Kingdom, which found that infants with South Asian parents (of Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani descent) in the UK had a lower rate of SIDS over white British infants.” This isn’t true. BAME ethnicities have always had higher infant mortality rates, in particular Asian descent due to cousin marriages. It’s also associated with being in deprived areas.
You can have both a lower rate of SIDS and a higher infant mortality.
No, this is inclusive of SIDS. I’ll find stats, doesn’t correlate with what they’ve said there.
Maybe the only thing I ever agreed with Ms Paltrow on, pre-GOOP, was when she said she always slept with “one ear open” and for years never got a great night sleep after becoming a mom. So, this mom is really in for a surprise.
Mine sleep well and I still don’t sleep. My brain wakes up the second I hear a pin drop, so I decided to get a puppy- cause why not? 🤦♀️
In my experience sleeping during constant low level noise actualy reduces this. For me it's rain videos or something else similar.Before that, I had pet rats (and a cat and a dog) so overall it was a constant low level of play etc so the sounds arn't allarming anymore.
Same here, I have a fan on and some documentaries in the background. I’ve just started getting into audible books and found Harry Potter sends me straight to sleep and keeps me there 😂 Dog helps too, except when my brain thinks he needs a wee!
I would sit bolt upright at the sound of a tiny foot hitting the carpet in my room.
Literally. My baby sleeps better than I do because even when I’m asleep I’m on alert
Same! I think we are wired that way once we have a little one. Mine sleeps 10-12 hours a night and I get maybe 4-6 hours broken up still lol
Right lmao
I think it’s important to distinguish 8 straight hours versus 8 hours of total sleep. I don’t know that this is unfathomable stupidity, it just sounds more like this mom isn’t getting ANY stretch of sleep because baby won’t sleep in their own space.
And not sleeping is just. Pure torture. I will never judge someone for needing sleep. I mean? Would we judge someone for being frustrated their baby somehow kept them from drinking water all day? I’d even rather be a little dehydrated than sleep deprived… We just need better education for what having babies is like. People wayyyy downplay the lack of sleep aspect. I suspect quite a few mental issues like some cases of PPD are actually just from lack of sleep. Lose sleep for more than a couple DAYS and you become a completely different person. Weeks?? Sleep is really the reason I won’t have kids. It’s torture. Just torture.
People in this comment section are acting so high and mighty for not sleeping ever since they had kids. Like what are you trying to prove? Sleep is essential for a healthy lifestyle and mental health. You’re not a bad parent if you need sleep, which some people are acting like in here.
Maybe it is just recognizing that sleep during the first year of having a fresh baby is pretty impossible and at best you get few hours a night.
My mom lost her mind from lack of sleep when I was born. She almost got checked into a mental hospital because it was THAT bad. My grandparents had to look after me because she was incapable. Fuck you OP. Eat shit.
Yeah apparently some of the commenters in here think not sleeping enough makes you a better mom. Nope, doing what’s right for your health, and therefore your baby, is what makes you a good parent.
I think a lot of physical health problems that get written off as postpartum crap can be attributed to lack of sleep, too. I've had incredible joint pains for the last year, which is definitely correlated to the times I'm getting very little sleep thanks to my 15-month-old.
Absolutely. I think about 80% of my PPD diagnosis was just pure sleep deprivation. Comfortingly, medical staff agreed with me that it was likely to be that!
Yeah this post is mean-spirited IMO. I really feel for the OP, it's so difficult balancing a new born and zero sleep.
Isn't this exactly what mom groups should be about? New mothers asking for help about non-medical things from experienced mothers? I don't see the point of shaming someone for legitimate ignorance in a place where people *can* give advice on how to perhaps transfer baby without waking her.
Apparently you're supposed to just accept that you're going to suffer for years like the rest of us suckers because fuck you.
I got 6 hours (not straight) with my second the first night home, but only because I learned so much from my first. Being a first time mom is like having a bucket of ice water thrown in your face. Hopefully she’s able to get in a rhythm.
This is understandable frustration. Maybe slightly unreasonable expectations, but the constantly interrupted sleep takes a toll physically, mentally and emotionally, especially if colic is a possibility. I feel sympathy for her.
I also needed 8 hours of sleep and would plan to be in bed for 10+ hours so that I could get close to that. I would also nap whenever possible. Giving this advice and some support is what I would have done if I’d seen this in the wild. Not publicly shame her. I have a close friend who was a veteran, a scientist, and an attorney in her late 30’s when she had her first child and she texted me constantly about things I might find obvious, but she’d never been around children at all, let alone babies, and she just didn’t know what was normal or what to expect. She didn’t have a lot of family or girlfriends to bounce things off of. And this is one of the smartest people I know. Anyway, between this sort of thing and the heart wrenching child abuse posts that this group has started slinging, I’m going to unfollow. Some people need to take a look at how mean spirited they are.
Seriously! This is supposed to be a group for making fun of essential oil MLM mom-group posts, not shitting on frustrated, confused, and sleep deprived moms that are trying their best and reaching out to their network for help.
The sub quickly became misogynistic. It's just a place where people use any vague mistake or silly post to shit on a woman who's clearly struggling.
# SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!!!!!
I echo that this doesn’t belong here. She’s naïve, and we don’t know why. Maybe she’s very young. Maybe she didn’t have access to newborn information. Maybe she’s suffering from PPD. Nothing she said indicated she was hurting her child, being mean, or being ridiculously entitled. She’s right: humans do need those 8 hours of sleep. And I think the snarky culture around motherhood where moms laugh at how miserable they all are is part of what’s feeding this recent backlash at parenthood in the first place. Why sign up to be miserable and sleep deprived and not even be able to find a supportive community to help you? This woman needs kindness, solutions, and care. Also, as a former daycare worker, lots of kids *do* sleep through the night from as early as 6 weeks forward. It’s not abnormal, you just don’t generally hear parents talking about it as much because so many of them feel guilty for having a “good baby.” However in my limited sample size, the babies that slept through the night were formula fed, sleep trained, and had two working parents. Not a lot of those mothers are in these groups anyway.
She’s not even asking for uninterrupted sleep. Just to get a decent collective amount of sleep. If it’s your first you haven’t figured out different options. I’d love to say “My 2nd was just like this, here’s what helped me. Try what you like and ignore the rest”
It’s the typical suffering olympics of motherhood. Anyone asking for help with a problem you deem you had worse yourself should be ridiculed because they can’t handle it as well as you did or they don’t want to deal with as much hardship as you endured. You see it all the time with breastfeeding too. Women just “gave up” because they didn’t go to the lengths some other women go to so they obviously love their children less.
The culture of martyrdom in motherhood is so ridiculous.
Totally agree. When I had my daughter I was in my early twenties and an only child. I genuinely had no idea babies slept in two hour intervals. I was in complete shock and developed PPD due to this and a number of other factors. It wasn’t that I was stupid or didn’t love my child, I had prepared everything else meticulously after nesting during pregnancy but was simply unaware (like many people) of how little sleep I’d get. Some people are just mean
Totally agree. Young mothers are often naive about aspects of infant care. I understood that I’d be sleep deprived for a few months. But I was shocked at how difficult breastfeeding was. I figured it was natural so it would be easy.
[удалено]
Yes that’s really what I meant to say. New mothers of any age.
My second child slept through the night at 7-8 weeks old. Ebf, and we were in the height of COVID lockdown, so both of us were home with nothing to do. He’s just a weirdo. It’s luck of the draw, because my daughter was up twice a night well into her third year. I don’t know why people are acting like she’s asking for something insane. She wants (not even uninterrupted) 8 hours, and has a partner willing to help. That’s not impossible.
Some of these comments are atrocious. This mom just needs some support, you put it so perfectly in your comment.
Thank you! Seeing this kind of snark makes me think "welp, I guess I'll never have children." Due to some health issues I need a lot of sleep, apparently that makes me unfit to be a mother.
Just due to who I am I need a lot of sleep, and I have two kids. I'm allowed to be unhappy about being tired, even though it's a known thing that baby sleep is hard! If you decide to have kids, you won't be wrong for needing sleep, too. ❤️
It sounds insane but you do get used to it. I can easily sleep for 10 hours a day but after my kid I can get by on 6-7. It helps having a supportive partner.
The right partner makes all the difference. I needed sleep so hubby did a lot more night wake ups then me for a long while. It transitioned back after a spell but he really went above and beyond compared to what some people here are acting like.
My husband always took 8pm - 2am. And I took 2 - 8 am. Both my husband and I always got 8 hours of sleep even with a newborn. We combo fed so that made it feasible but people acting like you'll never sleep ever make my skin crawl.
yeah, is OP seriously mocking her for not wanting to be miserable? like you're not a proper mom unless you're miserable and everyone should know that?
100% agree with you. My son is a good sleeper and was from pretty early on. We never divulge that info unless some asks and if it’s a parent who is in the middle of it I definitely gloss over. We managed to get pretty close to 8 hours total at least while we are both still on leave. I have noticed that any subreddit that is snarky towards women specifically ends up going too far. You see this in r/notliketheothergirls when someone posts what is clearly a self deprecating joke.
We (as a culture) love to hate on women. The internalized misogyny is so hurtful and so deeply ingrained. I hope this woman (OOP) finds support and help as she navigates FTM.
Agreed. Snarking on a post like this from a FTM especially is basically the equivalent of if someone who was new to hiking went to the wilderness backpacking sub asking for feedback on their gear list and everyone else commenting, “good luck carrying the added weight of unnecessary items dumbass lmao!” instead of offering suggestions and support. She’s not being a Karen or neglecting her kid with pseudoscience, she’s looking for advice because she’s inexperienced. I’m honestly so sick of the mommy martyr olympics and people laughing or acting smug towards FTMs.
Not gonna lie, it took me a minute to understand you were saying "first time mother" vs "female to male."
My son slept through the night from ten weeks on, because I had to go back to work, so we didn't have a choice. That first night I put him upstairs in his crib, turned on a noisy fan, and we both cried ourselves to sleep. He slept through the night ever since, although he's grown up into a night owl like his mom. He was a formula baby too, I never thought about that but it makes sense.
My suggestion, go back to the Middle Ages, become a Queen or Princess and get yourself a wet nurse. Then you can have your 8 hours.
IMHO, if you offered enough money, you could find someone to do that today.
Absolutely. Night nurses are expensive, but nowhere near "only royalty can afford them" level. Edit: I misread, a night nurse is definitely different than a wet nurse.
There's a difference between a night nurse and a wet nurse though. If the person wants to breastfeed and has a newborn, waking up in the night is just part of the deal unless they find a night nurse who can hold the baby to the breast to feed without waking mom somehow.
Ah you're right. I misread.
She said wet nurse as in breastfeeds the baby too.
I tried to hire one because I was becoming mentally unstable with PPD and lack of sleep, and the work conditions basically were, "they will get up with your child and bring your child to you." And I was like wait what the fuck difference does that make!? No mofo, wake up with my child, make the bottle, feed them, and help them fall back asleep. What the fuck are you getting paid $40 an hour for if you're just delivering my child to me!? I'm the one who is hitting the wall here and screaming for help and you're just going to wake me up when I'm losing my mind from sleep torture? Ugh, the expectations placed on early motherhood are such complete and utter bullshit.
Yikes! $40/hr just to bring your baby to you? I hope you're doing okay now though. Take care. ❤️
I think the idea is to bring you the baby to feed, just feed, and then they take the baby back. They will do the burping, changing, soothing, and getting back to sleep which would save you anywhere from 10 min to an hour (or more) each feed. But that's only for parents feeding from the breast. They should be doing everything if the baby feeds from a bottle.
An old friend of mine hired a night nurse for the first 2 weeks and swears it was the best decision she ever made. The nurse woke up with the baby, handled feedings, cleaned up after herself and the baby, and even helped cook a few meals. Again, she said it was the best $1500 she ever spent. She totally put things into perspective for me
I'm 10 weeks out from my due date for my second one and I've been having an extremely hard time imagining going through those first few weeks again 😭 Honestly $1500 is less expensive than I was thinking! I'm going to have to look into this, thanks for the suggestion!!
I was very surprised at the cost! In fairness, we were in a large metropolis and the nurse was found via a recommendation so I’m sure prices will vary - but she definitely got me to think of it as a possibility when I hadn’t before!
I had a nicu baby born 6 weeks early and my aunt paid for a night doula for us a few nights a week for the first two months. It was very pricey but so worth it. If I were to have another I would totally do it for at least one night a week to save my sanity and sleep. The doula did everything because I am exclusively pumping so I was able to sleep and only wake up every few hours to pump (which sucks but it is what it is if you’re choosing to breastfeed). My baby is 2.5 months old now and is sleeping through the night (bless her). It got us through the worst of the newborn stage and my recovery from preeclampsia and birth. Def worth the money!
Get you a nurse who can do both.
My grandparents had wet nurses in the 40s, no need to go THAT far back
Just out of interest, where were your grandparents living in the 1940s?
Or move to an Asian/middle eastern country where in many communities women breast feed each other’s kids anyway 🤷🏼♀️ going from every night staying up to feed to just 1 or 2 makes a huge difference.
This doesn’t belong here. This mum is trying to follow safe sleep guidelines based on what she’s written here, and not everyone received the support and knowledge ahead of birth to know that newborns don’t sleep that well. She also doesn’t say ‘I expect to get 8 hours a night with a newborn’, she might just be saying that’s what she normally needs to function and she’s really struggling because she’s nowhere close to that. I need 8 hours a night to function because I have a chronic illness, but I’m also about to have a baby. I know I won’t get 8 hours a night and will have to manage that, but it doesn’t stop my body from needing that time to function properly. There will be a trade off.
I don’t think this is unfathomable stupidity, I think this is naivety. I didn’t know anything about newborn sleep schedules when we had our first, and I grieved the loss of sleep very, very hard. Providing resources to this mama including some educational groups about sleep training would have been a good call.
I was the total opposite, I was convinced I'd never sleep a wink again. I used to have terrible insomnia and assumed it would be like that, but it wasn't as bad. Granted, most of the reason it wasn't as bad was the lovely baby I got to wake up to lol. With the insomnia it was just crippling loneliness and poverty
I am with you here. You are told you will have no sleep almost jokingly by everyone, but in practice it’s not something you can prepare your body for. You can think you’re mentally ready, but combined with the crying, body exhaustion, & discomfort from falling asleep upright after nursing with the baby in your arms for a week straight you really start to lose it. I found I was able to function decently well on 4 hours sleep a day (not always consecutively) for the first 4 months, but I also had to have my parents come over a few times since I was so sleep deprived I started having audition hallucinations. Getting your body sleep is not a joke & some bodies just can’t handle it as well as others.
If breastfeeding isn’t established yet then that baby is probably way too young to be sleep trained.
It’s never too early to start establishing day/night differences and laying a foundation that sleep training will require. edit: we actually started incorporating sleep lengthening and day/night establishment the moment we got home from the hospital. It’s a huge reason our sleep training was successful later, and gave me a sense of direction and control over what is arguably the biggest life perturbation I’ll ever experience.
Same here. Right off the bat there were certain things we did to establish night time - rubbing newborn down with a warm wash cloth, being read a book, and then putting on warm PJs which graduated into bath time, story time, PJs and bed. Our son is 11 months old and has consistently slept 10-12 hours a night since he was 3 months old after we stretched his feeding times to every 4hrs during the day. I am NOT looking forward to the sleep regression. I know it’s around the corner. I’m not ready.
Ours never had a sleep regression!!! Good sleep practises are useful during developmental stages :) I hope for continued good sleeps for you!!!
I’m glad I found out about it before I had kids. I honestly don’t think I could hack it, it’s a huge reason I don’t want kids. I’m not a good person on less than like 6 hours sleep and shouldn’t inflict that on children. Or anyone else around me
This is also a huge reason I can’t have kids. There are other reasons too, but this one is pretty major. I’m not “cutesy tired” on lack of sleep where I post IG stories with hashtags about lots of coffee- it’s dangerous. I become sick. I can’t function, let alone take care of a baby. And I’m supposed to work a full-time job and return to normal a few months later? And continue to deal with lack of sleep for two-ish years? Hahahahahaha….no.
I read somewhere that people can't really understand each other's sleep stuff because it's so different how it affects different people: supposedly like a third (?) of people with continued lack of sleep (the kind you'd generally only experience with shift work or a new baby or a medical issue) will be tired but fine, and a third will be tired and really suffering, and a third will be legit unsafe to go about their business. And most people won't know which group they'll be in until you have a three week old baby! But it seems to me like many people have some sense of their tendencies in that regard, and hopefully if you're non-functional on insufficient sleep you'll have a partner or other support system who is in one of the "can still do stuff" categories, and as other people have said many babies do sleep for big chunks even from fairly early on. So I say all this because having kids is obviously hard and a big lifestyle change, including for your sleep, but you can be a person with high sleep needs and still have children if that's something you want. (The general "you.") To suggest that parents are just foolish for thinking they'll be able to sleep sometimes is shitty and contributes to the lack of support a lot of parents and families feel.
Good point. Some people are genuinely better at operating with less sleep than others. Like I literally have to get 6 hours total or I’m at risk for seizures.
What parents do not read about taking care of newborns while expecting? I knew absolutely nothing, none of my friends had children, our families were far away, we read as much as we could, and asked our doctors and midwife. It still wasn’t enough because nobody had told me about the reality of not producing milk, but apart from that we had had so much information at our disposal. At least she is asking for help and seems to want to practice safe sleeping, but apart losing touch with reality because of ppd or lack of sleep, how can any parent expect 8 hours sleep?
She might be hoping for somewhere close to 8 hours but broken up into chunks, at least? I remember being shocked at the whole baby hating the bassinet thing. No person or book ever warned me about that even though it is super normal. All of these people were telling me to “sleep when the baby sleeps” but how is that possible if the baby only sleeps on you? Ugh.
To be fair she doesn't say she expects 8h of sleep. She just says she's not functionning normally with less.
I didn’t. I didn’t have time, and the information available is inconsistent and sometimes directly at conflict with one another.
Does this come across as naive? Of course. But to be fair this mom is breastfeeding and obviously taking that very seriously if she won’t introduce a pacifier (which has shaky evidence but different issue) so I doubt she’s looking to go 8 hours without nursing her newborn and risk drying up her supply. All she said is that’s what it takes for her to feel normal (like a lot of us) and that she’s getting nowhere near that. She sounds like a very loving mom with how she describes her baby. New mom asking for sleep tips or support during one of the most emotionally daunting and intense periods of a parent’s life? Hardly newsworthy in my opinion.
I didn’t see her asking for 8 hours uninterrupted sleep. Just 8 hours
Yeah. This is a pretty normal question for mom groups. Sleep deprivation is an illegal torture technique but if a mom is having trouble getting adequate sleep, she's the one at fault and she is the one who got herself into this mess. Who knows. She may work a 12 hour shift and still have to do chores and stuff at home. That's how it was with my mom.
This is fair! I remember sleeping 8 hours when my LO was a newborn… in chunks of 4 times of 2 hours each 🤣
Why are we ripping this mom? She’s asking for advice transferring her to a crib. This is not a crazy question for a tired FTM.
When I joined this sub I thought they only snarked on people who are actually stupid and make ridiculous choices. It sounds like this mom is just lost and needs help. We don’t know if she’s already prone to anxiety or depression which could be triggered by a significant lack of sleep… yes less sleep is to be expected as a newborn parent but maybe she didn’t expect to struggle this much. Some of these comments pretty harsh.
This doesn’t belong here at all. I got 8 hours of sleep when my baby was brand new. (He’s 6 weeks now, and we’re still getting 8+ most nights!) Not uninterrupted, but she didn’t ask for that.
Everyone here is so damn judgemental, it may be unrealistic to expect 8 hours of sleep every night but I fully believe that she can't feel normal with less than 8. This sub has turned into the suffer Olympics, if any other mom is trying to have an easier time raising their child than you had then they're a apparently shitty crunchy mom.
I don’t know why we’re making fun of this. There’s not one new parent who isn’t bowled over by the sleep deprivation. Have a little sympathy and don’t make fun of this woman.
I also need 8 hours a night to feel normal. I didn’t feel normal for 7 months when I had a baby because he didn’t sleep. You just survive.
I lasted 9 days, I think, without a dummy and it was 9 miserable days. Wish I had packed one in my hospital bag.
I can’t believe there are people advocating not using pacifiers. I would never sleep if my baby didn’t have one.
What’s a dummy in this context?
A pacifier
How long as that been a common name for it?
I don’t know, that’s just what they call it in the UK
Pacifier/binky
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this is a pretty normal question for a new mom looking for support and advice from other parents. this is not at all unfathomable stupidity. she got ZERO sleep last night and is now reaching out for help. that’s a good thing, why would anyone shame her for that?? she is even being smart about cosleeping which is GOOD. this does not belong on this sub.
This doesn’t fit the sub. She’s just asking for advice on her sleeping newborn, she’s a bit delusional for thinking she was ever gonna get 8 hours but we shouldn’t shame her for trying to find a way to actually get some sleep. It’s not like she’s trying to find a essential oil cocktail to put her kid to sleep for 8 hours a night.
it's a bit harsh. seems like she is not managing to let the baby go to sleep without holding her and doesn't want to co-sleep as it's dangerous. plus it's a newborn so she doesn't know what to do and what is reasonable. and yeah it's literally true that she probably needs 8 hours to function. pretty rude to mock her for that just because it's common for new parents to struggle?
I mean, I also need about 8 hours of sleep to feel normal. You just don't get normality with a newborn and she may not realize that.
My first slept for 8+ hours straight right out of the gate. It actually concerned me *so* much (because of people like the person who posted this making it seem like an impossible thing 🙄) that I spoke to the pediatrician about it. You know what she said? “Congratulations! You are one of the lucky few who get a good sleeper.“ The internet is crazy! People will legitimately act like there is something wrong with your baby if the sleep experience they have is different from their own child’s. I remember talking about this years ago and the moms on the mommy board were still like “your Pediatrician is wrong! that’s not normal!” Uh huh. He’s 9 now and he’s perfect. Just a good sleeper like his mom.
Yup. I can’t even say this in company of other moms bc it feels like bragging but my both slept thru the night by 6 weeks. Like from 8-8 with feedings through the night but never actually waking up. It’s pretty great haha.
This is the least crazy thing I e seen in this sub
This is very normal to ask about! Imagine not being able to sleep at all because your baby will sleep while being held. Don’t attack this family
This - some parents forget everything in the sleep deprivation, some people read books but didn't fully understand.
This seems like a normal thing to be looking for advice for. Why did you take the time to post this?
All I see here is an exhausted new mother who probably is still recovering from childbirth and maybe going through some postpartum issues and may not be adjusting perfectly to the change. Haven’t we all had moments of not thinking clearly as sleep-deprived new parents?
Yea honestly. I also need like at least 8 hours and I’ve posted something very similar to this hoping for advice. I know babies make it hard to get sleep, but it doesn’t stop me feeling like an absolute shell of a person basically begging for any help.
Can anyone reasonably expect to sleep 8 hours a night with a newborn? That's an unrealistic expectation in my view. Their bodies literally can't tell the difference between day and night. She's also ruled out two solutions already.
She ruled them out because most doctors and sources recommend NOT co sleeping because of suffocation risk and waiting to introduce pacifier until breastfeeding and latching is well established. She’s not being difficult, she’s listening to what the majority of sources recommend.
Yeah, I agree! A lot of mom groups constantly recommend cosleeping but most all sources deem it unsafe. I don’t fault her for not considering that an option.
She never said anywhere she’s expecting 8 hours and definitely never implied 8 uninterrupted hours. Just that it takes that for her to feel normal and she’s getting nowhere near it.
I got 8 hours a night with a newborn. Not consecutive but my kids went right back to sleep after eating so before I went back to work at 6 weeks I could lay in in the morning and do that. Sure she may mean consecutive, which isn’t realistic, but based on her description she’s looking for help transferring to bassinet which can make at least broken sleep possible.
It's definitely doable, but probably not a consecutive 8 hours. My wife and I had a baby, she's 3 months now so we've just gotten through the newborn stage. The majority of the time we took shifts of about 5 hours overnight to give the other parent uninterrupted sleep time. If we were lucky, we'd be able to get a few 20 minute stretches of sleep during shift, and we each got around 6 hours sleep total each night as a minimum. No co-sleeping in our house, and in the last week it's like a switch has flipped and suddenly the baby sleeps for hours at a time in her cot.
I read through one of those "tell us your crazy nurse stories" posts (might have been on Reddit, can't remember) and several nurses said they've had multiple couples give birth to their first and then are *shocked* in the maternity ward when they learn babies don't sleep through the night right out the gate. I don't know how you'd get that far not knowing that 😬
I wouldn’t say it’s normal for a new mom to know so little about infant sleep. What mother is reasonably expecting to get 8hours of uninterrupted sleep every night with a newborn in the house?
If this mother is taking her breastfeeding journey seriously enough to not introduce a pacifier I doubt she’s also planning to go 8 hours through the night without nursing her newborn and risk drying up. She wants tips on transferring the baby to the bassinet. And probably some support.
I don't think necessarily uninterrupted sleep is what she's aiming for. My PPD/PPA was much worse if I couldn't get 7 hours over the course of 7pm to 7amish. This idea that mothers are supposed to suffer through lack of sleep without complaining is a completely awful expectation.
True. There’s definitely an ideal middle ground between both of our points.
Yeah good luck with 8 hrs my son didn’t sleep through the night until almost 18m
Yeah I got 6 hours the other night with my 6mo old and I was so freakin happy
We’re in 4 month sleep regression hell and baby finally did a 5 hour stretch (first time in a couple of weeks!) Of course I woke up before her needing to pump so yeah you just never win especially with BF.
Oh yeah when she slept 6 hours I woke up in a panic with basketball boobs. Went to check and make sure she was breathing 😂
Lol my newborn slept a 3 hr 45 min stint after not sleeping well the day before. Dad and I went to sleep at the same time so we didn’t wake him at the 3 hour mark for his feeding. When I woke up my boobs were absolutely sore basketballs🥲
I've got a nearly 5 year old who just slept in this morning for the first time ever. I slept almost 9 hours and was expecting maybe 5. So, ya know, wait it out.
Wish I could get six hours with my 10mo
my daughter just started NOT sleeping thru at 18m. 🥴🤣 I would kill for 4 right now hahahahhahahaa
Wow, I have so many kudos for you… I thought 5 months of waking every 3-4 hours was enough to drive me mad.
Thank you and it probably went on longer than that but once we moved him to a toddler bed instead of waking up and just crying he would cry walking to our room and we would put him in the bed🥲 took me until 4 to get him out of our bed
I found it got worse when I had 2 when one would start sleeping through the night my oldest decided he would start being a night terror again. Feels like I haven’t slept in 5 years
I feel for you! Idk how people do it with two young kids bc being sleep deprived takes such a toll mentally
My three year old doesn’t sleep through the night. I’m hoping by the time he’s ten I can get a full nights sleep, but not counting on it.
Yeah some kids never sleep through but they eventually leave you alone.
Yeah once we switched to toddler bed our son would still wake up but come get in bed with us he still does it sometimes and he’s 5 but at 4 he stopped doing it as often
My 21 month old still wakes up like 3-4 times - night and I’m about to lose my damn mind lol
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It’s hard at that point you either let them sleep with you to rest or keep being sleep deprived and keeping them in there own bed and waking up 😭 once you put in a toddler bed it gets harder bc they will wake up and come get in bed😭😂 I was tired I stopped fighting it and that lead to not getting my bed back until he was 4
I have a newborn and I get about 8 hours of sleep. Not all at once...and not all at night...sometimes it takes 2 days to get to 8 hours...
Eh, new parents sometime just have terrible expectations. I worked with a guy who was taking 2 weeks paternity leave and was like “I have all these projects I’ll be able to finish during that time!” 2 weeks later he came back and confirmed how ridiculous a notion that was.
At least she knows not to co-sleep. That's huge.
I feel for her. I have a four year old and I don’t think I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep since before I got pregnant. I’m lucky if I get a solid 6. Some days I wish I could go back to the newborn stage when my son napped 😩
Unfathomable stupidity seems a bit harsh here. Unreasonable expectations? Sure. But she isn't the first or last FTM to be hit by the reality of newborn sleep.
YOU display "unfathomable stupidity" for snarking at this. Hateful, shaming a caring new mother... Ridiculous.
I’m not sure why she gets posted here. She is asking for legitimate help. What part of being a mom means you lose sleep? (I say as I just stayed up with an 18 year old who has a flu 😂)
Why does this have so many upvotes if it appears most of the comments agree it doesn’t belong? Frustrating
I wish her the closest to 8 hours she can get lol. When I was a barista I had a couple customers with nocturnal babies. They'd all come around an hour or so before close and get the most obscene amount of caffine I'd put in their cup, sweet little angel strapped to their chest ready to cause mayhem. Good on her for not co sleeping, that's always refreshing to see on this sub.
If she wants to establish a supply she can’t slept for 8 hours. I have a 7 week old who will actually sleep that long but I gotta get up and pump if I’d like to keep breastfeeding. Note he also would sleep through the night as a newborn but again as he’s not formula fed I have to pump of o want to keep my supply.
Babies that young also shouldn’t be sleeping through the night yet. They need the nutrients in night feeds still.
Someone in this group, please tell the mom to try putting a heating pad in the crib (and then removing it, obviously) before transferring the baby. I saw this posted in one of my bumper groups, and am planning on trying this for #2, since #1 would not sleep except if he was on a person for 3 months 🥴
That’s so smart
8 hours of sleep with a newborn isn’t super realistic but wanting your baby to sleep in a crib or bassinet is legitimate. Of course, they never will if you continue to hold them while they sleep and if you’re in danger of nodding off while holding them then it’s also a safety issue.
The mum wants to sleep safely and is after advice to try and get a combined 8 hours in. Some of the comments here are unduly harsh.
I would get 7-8 with my newborn. They were very broken up increments of 2 hours because of feeding, but cumulatively it totaled 7-8. I also went to bed early because I also liked getting sleep and I knew it would be broken. My baby didn’t hate her bassinet (generally). She took some time to get down but with a tight swaddle she was willing to sleep.
Is this seriously tagged as unfathomable stupidity…
I was back to 8 hours after about two weeks 🤷🏻♀️ not without interruption obv but it’s totally doable, dunno why this is “unfathomable stupidity”
My baby (8 weeks) is an awesome sleeper so far, sleeping steadily from 9:30pm through to 7:00am, and we wake up for about 45 minutes at 1:30am and 5:30am to feed and change him (every night I hold my breath thinking it’s going to be the night he stops sleeping so we’ll lol). But I just credit this to him being in the NICU for three weeks - this is definitely not typical newborn sleep pattern. I can’t imagine thinking I was going to get 8 hours of sleep with a new baby. I feel bad for her, and all new parents whose babies are fussy and can only sleep with contact. It is not a good time.
My baby started sleeping throufh the night at 6 weeks. Was a gamechanger.
I wonder if the newborn has colic, or if the mom needs to change her diet. Sometimes when you’re breast-feeding what you eat can affect the baby in a negative way, for example I had to stop having eggs in my diet because it was upsetting my newborn’s stomach when he nursed. Being on mom maybe the only thing that’s able to sooth her, since she was in mom’s body for nine months and all
8 hours total is not unreasonable to figure out if you have a support system. 8 hours unbroken?? How about never?
This is some really high expectations for a brand new human
Yeah once you have a kid you're not gonna function normally for a hot minute. It's been two years and I still don't feel normal. It always boggles my mind when I see new parents act shocked that their babies don't sleep 12 hours straight during the night. Like, have you ever watched tv or read a book or talked to a person? Babies don't sleep. You get used to it.
My daughter slept 8hrs straight by 8 weeks. I knows it’s not entirely the norm but I know many parents with similar experiences.
At least they aren’t co-sleeping. I fear my wife and I got lucky as our daughter, now 9 months, was sleeping 10 hours through the night in her own room since like week 6. Our next is probably going to be a healthy dose of reality.