@dmurrayfly You can't do any of those things you listed without sleep. In fact, you shouldn't. While my kids were crap sleepers my only hobby was sleep. There is no benefit to exercising on 4.5 hours sleep, or journalling or anything really.
You're a good mum and those people telling you those things are completely out of touch with reality.
@danoded It’s weird that people don’t seem to understand that our absolute basic physiological needs as human beings are food, water, shelter, and adequate sleep. For some reason people think moms can just function without sleep even though it is critical to our brain functioning, mental, and physical health. When you don’t have your basic needs for health and survival met you can’t do much beyond thinking about that missing need. If you were getting way too few calories to function no one would suggest journaling ffs. But moms are expected to just cope. And we’re often criticized for being so focused on sleep. But if you were regularly not getting enough water to function you would think about water all day. Obviously.
@dmurrayfly Before having kids I used to wake up at 5 am everyday to go workout. There’s no way in hell I would ever do that now. Not with a 1 year old whose sleep is still iffy, and with another on the way in 2 months! Sleep is precious, get as much as possible. People who want you to wake up earlier don’t remember what it’s like to have young children.
@doreenpayne You’ll see this advice sometimes from momfluencers who have good sleepers. I used to get up at 4(!) to either get extra research done or workout, I’d go to bed before 9 before I had a kid.
My son is almost five and he sleeps from 8-6 most nights but I just can’t go back to that schedule. I need the downtime at the end of the day more, so I’ll be up past 10 most nights.
@dmurrayfly Oh, I LOVE the momnesia that older generations have. I have heard all about how myself and my siblings were good sleepers who potty trained ourselves.
After decades our parents have forgotten what it actually took to raise us. Please do not spend anytime wondering if it's just you. When kids are that small no one has time for anything unless they have a large village that helps regularly.
Sending you solidarity! You are great parents and eventually as kids get older you'll get back some time. In the meantime, know that you are not alone.
@peter252 This. It’s why I would rather hire a teenage babysitter who listens to instructions than leave a baby with my mil who raised 5 children and already knows everything and isn’t going to follow the schedule I left because she never did that with her babies. The way she remembers it her babies just slept where and when it was convenient for her. On their stomachs and under a pile of baby blankets.
@dmurrayfly Early risers act like people who are sleeping are lazy when they’re freaking in bed at 9pm while some people are very much still working on chores etc.
But that’s not even relevant when your kids are already awake at the time many “early risers” get up.
Also I think not having baby monitors played a big role in how much sleep babies got in the past or were perceived to get. On one hand for small wake ups where they might grizzle and then go back to sleep in less than 10 minutes, not being able to hear them as well makes it a kind of accidental ‘Le pause’. Not to mention that if they were further than say the next room you might not even hear them at all. So even if they did wake up the parents didn’t know and would get them in the morning. I’m not advocating for this at all (my 5yo still has an audio monitor to make it easy for him to call out to us if he needs). But I think it both made the babies sleep better AND they wouldn’t even know if they didn’t
@regondifan My theory is that a lot of boomers sleep trained their babies unintentionally by just sleeping through night wakes. They didn’t sleep with a motion sensor camera pointed at the baby and a video monitor screen next to the bed. My in laws had 5 kids and they were like, “babies wake up at night? I don’t think so. We don’t remember that.
@vel Yes! I agree, thats what I was trying to say as well but you’re absolutely right. I don’t even think audio monitors were a big thing back then. When I’ve talked about this with others some have even mentioned that their boomer parents had them on the other side of the house
@dmurrayfly Solidarity. My little guy is 2.5yo and I'm still only averaging maybe 5 hours of sleep a night, often broken in half. Get up a single minute earlier than I have to? F all the way off with that. It's not just bad impossible to implement advice, it's also unhealthy to get any less sleep than our already unhealthily scant amount.
@pwanous03 Right?? Sleep deprivation has already impacted my physical and mental health. I’m doing what I can to fix and mitigate the effects, but damn. My weight, my moods, my eating habits. If I get any less sleep I might as well go dig the hole myself.
@dmurrayfly If I wake up early I would have to go to bed early and then when am I going to clean up from dinner, tidy away toys, and make the house livable for the next day? No thanks.
@peterh99 Exactly!! I cannot start the next day with the previous day’s mess still going on. I’ve done it a few times. My blood pressure hits the roof the moment I go downstairs.
@dmurrayfly I have a 6 month old who has been really difficult until now and the useless advise and judgement from others is what gets me. I can deal with sleep deprivation and being in what feels like solitary confinement in my home but when people start giving advise like this is when I feel myself starting to crack. As if we hadn't thought of and tried everything and anything which might make life more tolerable. Everyone is acting like I'm doing this to myself.
@dmurrayfly We’ve all heard of those magical babies/toddlers who sleep 12 hours straight and don’t wake up mom in the middle of the night screaming or throwing up in bed! Well, I have 3 and all of them were crappy sleepers and are still light/low needs sleepers. They stopped napping around 2/3 and I had 14 hour shifts with toddlers/babies. Exhausting and no way would I have been able to wake up before them! No me time for almost a decade. So when my mom bragged about how she was “left alone” for 12 hours straight, I knew that either she was lying or she was ignoring her crying babies/toddlers.
I understand what you’re going through I have high needs/ low sleep kids and it’s relentless. You’re doing your best.
@rovanpenny For real!! Why on earth would I get up BEFORE 4:30 if I don’t have to?! Especially not when I’m the last one to bed and I’m up throughout the night. It’s insane. If you ask my MIL, she was like the SAHM goddess. Perfectly tidy house, had to manage only cloth diapers with her oldest (my husband), took the kids to all the activities, had a perfect schedule.
@dmurrayfly Housewives during that time were all doing speed, so maybe that has something to do with their ability to do it all and not sleep a wink but also having a kid that sleeps a lot (before mine turned 2 she was an amazing sleeper and would do that 7-7 schedule) gives you a LOT of extra time.
