1 year and a half in - sleep is impossible

[christoph006]

@bondo I don’t have any suggestion for you but I felt it like pure torture and I used to complain to my wife every morning. I also follow same ideology like few said in comments “One day at a time!”

 

[mkodd]

@bondo Highly recommend the Facebook Group “Respectful Sleep Training/Learning”. It provides information on a variety of sleep training styles and provides feedback to families trying to troubleshoot. What I learned from that group is that there is likely a schedule issue when there are sleep difficulties (e.g., expecting too much or too little sleep time, off wake windows times). First get your schedule figured out and then choose a sleep training method. There are lots of styles. Most will require some level of crying. Choose one and be 100% consistent for at least 2 weeks. Extinction or Ferber tend to be the most effective/quickest. For those opposed to sleep training, my child would be crying either way. When I assisted to sleep, my child often got poorer sleep over the night which led them to be grumpier/moodier the next day. They would cry often due to the poor sleep. With sleep training, my child was almost immediately so much happier. Lots better self regulation during the day. One of the best parenting decisions we made.

 

[potomac]

@bondo Reading "it's never late to sleep train". Good book and some of the tactics work. May be worth trying?

 

[jur56alv]

@bondo Oof thats rough. I don’t have any suggestions as I’m sure you’ve tried sleep training already, which worked for us.

 

[shunt31]

@bondo My daughter (our second) didn't sleep through a single night till she was well past 24 months. She's 5 and still probably gets up once a week. It gets better slowly with a poor sleeper. We can get a feel for it and if she hasn't had an exhausting day of playing, we give her half a melatonin gummy, so probably .5mg, a half hour before bed.

The big thing is to get to where you have a sustainable base line. Like even ONE night of sleep is a big deal. Maybe get a hotel room or stay at a friend/relatives or something. My wife was super supportive and probably slept with her 75% of the time or more, but one of us had to sleep in her bed for another 2 years. If she goes to day care, take a day off for a sanity break and to catch up on sleep. As for working out, I just stopped and only got back into it in the last 12 months. I'm probably an old dad but I haven't played vidya since PS3 and I don't miss it. I keep a small woodworking bench with projects ready to go and pick up and put it down as I can. Videogames are an illusion as far as relaxation goes, I built a raspberry pi with 8 and 16 bit games and that helps, the new games just release too much dopamine and it makes the rest of life kind of suck, especially the boring repetitive parts of life, but I have no science to back that up. I did do some hiking with the older kid (carrying him at least half the way most of the time) and that was a great outlet and seeing him see things for the first time was amazing. Kids + Nature really recharge me. Cooking on campfires, tent camping (even with two diaper age kids) is so miserable yet rewarding it makes your house feel less like a prison. As for diet, I'm assuming you're feeding her healthy food? Try to eat what you feed her lol, if they're on the nuggets and noodles plan, then do quick chicken breast in the air fryer with something green. Another killer for me was alcohol. Thousands of empty calories and it kills sleep/metabolism so I have to limit sweet sweet whisky to Friday nights only.

You're at the hardest part, I promise it gets better. Any day now it will turn the corner and you won't even notice it. Just keep your head above water.

 

[cowboyjunkies]

@bondo BLACK OUT STICKERS.

White noise machine.

 

[sparum]

@bondo Our daughter is 20 months. Asleep at 19:15, rise 6:15-7 ish. Reading a lot here just makes me feel like we are blessed or something. Sure she wakes some nights, but she is a very active kid during the day. Always playing, reading and so on. We also spend a lot of time playing with her which I do think helps. She has a maximum 30 min screen time at home per day. I think limiting screen time helps since it avoids over stimulation. We also sleep trained early since she slept poorly and it took minimum 2 hours to get her to sleep when she was small. Now it takes 15 min most nights and we try not to go in unless she is obviously sad or sick.

 

[wiselife]

@bondo If dad bod AND sleep are a problem, if you haven't tried this already, try really hard to get them into sunlight every day, run them in a jogging stroller to the park and back, spend a massive amount of time at the playground. Both my kids sleep well, but they slept worse before I started doing this.

 

[nelsemacio]

@bondo It's probably a habitual thing, as other people have suggested, but I'm going to throw this out just in case: Has she been checked for anaemia? My girl was iron deficient and anaemic, and it definitely affected her sleep.

I used to have a happy life, I’m struggling to see the bright side at times these days

Please talk to your GP about your mental health. A low dose of SSRIs might help you tremendously.

 

[friezpop]

@bondo It's hard man, sleeps the most important thing for everyone and hard to get when you have a bad sleeper.

Not quite as many wakes as yours but ours use to wake up 4 times a night regularly until 2 years old. We managed it as my wife could settle him in minutes with a boob feed and she falls back to sleep easy. I really struggle to get back to sleep when I get too awake so she was happy to do the settling and we all got enough sleep.

Have you considered co sleeping? When we went through a pretty rough patch we would settle him in his own cot but bring him through once he woke during the night and I would sleep on a spare bed. It's not ideal but it meant everyone got some much needed sleep.

When we felt he was ready we got him back into his own bedroom, we had a couple rough nights as he protested but once he realised he wasn't going to get back into our bed anymore he started settling in his cot again and sleeping better.

He's now 2 and 2 months and sleeps through mostly now, occasionally waking up once.

 

[lakergirl]

@bondo All these people advocating for child abuse- cry it out. What's the kids daytime nap like? My kid used to be up all hours of the night at that age and was having a 2-3 hour nap in the day. I started waking her after 40 minutes of nap and she was mad about it but it drastically reduced the night wakes. Try reducing the day nap by a lot and see what happens. Plenty of other options to try before emotionally traumatising your kid by leaving them alone in distress

 

[deadietrickwood]

@bondo Does anybody have kids that sleep through the night at like 3 months old?

 

[chelsi]

@bondo Shift work. One parent gets first four hours, 2nd takes the other four. Takes a village.

 

[huabiao]

@bondo Have you done sleep training?

 

[inahava26]

@bondo Have you had your child assessed for oral ties by a pediatric dentist? It sounds crazy but my oldest was like that. We had his oral ties lasered when he was two and the night of the surgery he started sleeping through the night.

 

[cindy9505]

@bondo Sleep training. We ST’d our then 4MO using Ferber and never looked back.

2 days of hell.

3 years of peace so far.

 

[osddso]

@bondo I assume you tried cry it out? You can do it as early as 4 months. We did it at 9 months and two nights later she was sleeping through the night.

 

[cmurp]

@bondo Our 18 month old is doing the same thing omg.
All was good when I was on dayshift i went to bed around 9 every night so did my baby. My wife a stay at home mother would wake up with her between 7-8 that was her best pattern. Then I went to night shift at work 6pm-4am our 18 mounts old will be awake at 4am sometimes most time she will crash around 2am sleep till 9am. We have tried everything to get her back on schedule. The weekends I’m off I’ll lay down at like 8 or 9 in the bed make her think I’m going to bed like before nope don’t help. Tried to have big days doing a lot still no going to bed. Wife struggles she normally goes to bed bout a hour after baby goes to bed around 3am then she gets up with the older kids around 7 to get off to school. She lays back down then back up at 9am with the baby or I’ll get up with her one. If I get up and let the wife sleep then I have to get a nap before work. Pure hell wasn’t like this with the other kids.

 

[zinger]

@bondo My daughter is around the same age as yours and sleeps through the night most of the times, maybe 1-2 days a week wakes up in the middle of the night but goes back to sleep in like 30 minutes. Some things that helps a lot(in my opinion) to put her to sleep are: 1) If she takes a nap they are usually before 6pm, later than that she stays up until 11pm. 2). Take her to the park or just out in the backyard/frontyard to play, usually for 2 hours or until she gets tired, gotta get all that energy out. 3) Give her a filling dinner before bed, otherwise she wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. Try to create a routine for your daughter if possible. It will get better, slowly but surely, you got this!

 

[pcspeaker]

@bondo Find a way to get at least one decent night's sleep, per week, for both you and your partner and then some time off the following day. The way we did it was I'd get a sleep in on the Saturday and then the following morning to do what I wanted. Ex wife would get a sleep in on Sunday and the morning to herself. That may not work in your situation, but try and find a way to get a bit of respite. Talk it through. Problem-solve together. Be honest about how hard you're finding it and how it makes you feel.