Research request: A Mum's perspective on sleep deprivation and night wakings?

[Melodymumof1]

I'm a mum of a 3 yr old who was lucky to have the support of this forum during the first years of his life. Inspired by that experience I am now working on my Master thesis in Visual and Media Anthropology and I wanted to reach out to you all as I am researching "the experience of sleep deprivation and night wakings in babies under 2 years old from the perspective of mothers."

If you have the time to answer any of the questions below I'd be incredibly grateful.

* How old is your baby?

* How many times does your baby wake up in the night?

* How much sleep do you think you get?

* How many days of broken sleep can you handle before you start to feel the effects during your daytime?

Any input or thoughts you may have would be fantastic, please feel free to post here, pm me or email me on: Melody@hazardandchance.com .
Many thanks and best wishes
Melody (Melodymumof1)

[creations]

Hi Melody and welcome back to the forums

My DS is turning 5yo in a few days so I am outside the bracket of your research but I hope you get the responses you need for your thesis.
I actually try my best not to think of our year from 1yo - 2yo the lack of sleep was shocking!  Teeth!!
I do remember getting my first lie in (with someone else to mind DS) at 19 months, really I don't know how I lasted.

[Melodymumof1]

Hi Creations, thank you so much for sharing your experience. It would be great to hear from some of the other mum's here on the forum who feel they'd like to share their experience. One of the reasons for doing this research is to create a deeper understanding of what we are parents experience during this time of no sleep and the hope is that it will provide insight so that there is more empathy and more support for parents during this time. Please rest assured everything can be anonymous if that is a concern and please feel free to pm me if you have any questions about the research I'm doing. Thanks again for all your support. Very best wishes!  Melody

[dache]

Hi Melody.

My lo just turned two a few weeks ago.
She is not waking at night unless something is bothering her.
At the moment, I`d say I`m getting around 7 hours of sleep.
Maybe because we had lots of sleepless nights and busy days in the past 2 year but I`m at a phase where even after one bad night I get grumpy, although I can still function. After 4-5 nights it really affects me. Thankfully, dh is great, he gets up with her during the nights or leaves me to sleep in if I was up with her.

Hope you get all the information you need and your research goes well.

[Lindsay27]

Hi Melody Answers to your questions below!

- my baby is pretty new so I'm on the low end of the sleep scale.  She's 5 weeks and my DS is 3 years
- she pretty consistently wakes every 3hrs over night, so 10pm, 1am, 4am, 7am...so 3 times I guess if you count the 10pm feed
- I think I get about 5-6hrs of sleep a night.  Each feed takes 30mins-1hr. (can take long as she often goes on a poop marathon and often gets the hiccups which can last a while).  Each stretch of sleep I get is usually 2-2.5hrs
- I'd say it doesn't take very many days of broken sleep to affect my daytime (maybe a week?) but you just learn to live with it, like we all do.  My DH is great though and will let me take a nap on the weekend if I need to

Hope this helps!

[trimbler]

Hi there, sounds interesting sorry I kept putting this off as I wasn't really sure of my answers But here's my best guess...

- DD is almost 19mo
- dealing with some OT at the moment from 18mo SR and 2-1 transition, so waking a couple of times on average before we go to bed, wakes us up probably once during the night on average, then waking early, variable times
- I probably get 6-7h broken sleep on a good night, sometimes by sleeping in the living room
- I hate sleep deprivation! If I've had a run of decent nights, I can manage ok after one bad night but then it hits me the following day. After 2-3 bad nights, I'm struggling and if it goes on for a week or more, I feel myself spiralling down and that's my cue to sleep in the living room for a while! DH is good at falling asleep quickly or not waking up if he doesn't really need to, or snoozing on the sofa in the evenings - I'm not!

[Melodymumof1]

Thank you all so much for taking the time to answer my questions Lindsay mentioned something that it's something we all learn to live with. It's so true, it's something ultimately we find a way to deal with. But my question if anyone has a moment to answer is how do you cope? Do you have any strategies for coping? And where or who are the places or people you go to for support?

Thanks again! Melody

[Eva's Mummy]

Hiya,

My baby is 16 months, she has slept through the night maybe 10 times since birth 

She still wakes twice a nigh every night.

I get around 3hrs unbroken sleep or around 5/6 hours all in.

How many days of broken sleep can I handle, we it seems 16 months! I am constantly tired but luckily dd1 still naps so 2 days a week when I'm not at work I get an hours snooze at 1 and that seems to keep me going. I am far more short tempered than I use to be, I cant be bothered doing as much cooking and housework as usual, but you just get on with it. Seeing my beautiful girls grow up makes it all worth while. Don't have lots of support but I don't nee it when my girls cuddle me and say they love me, what more do we need.

I do on the odd day she does sttn get that feeling in the morning of omg, how amazing will I fell when I can do this all the time.
 

[creations]

Giving you a bump up to see if anyone else has some replies for you

[Mimi1]

Hi, my lb is just over 7 months and never slept through yet. He can wake anything between 2 to 5 times at night. I get around 6 hours broken sleep. It affects me very quickly if I have a particularly bad night. My partner is great and although working he will get up a few times to help if our lb wakes a lot.
I think I become more patient and undwrstanding but have no time for people who are annoying. 😁

[Lindsay27]

But my question if anyone has a moment to answer is how do you cope?

Drink wine!? LOL

Seriously though...

My DH is pretty great, if there is a bad night he will get up with the kids on the weekend and let me sleep for another hour or 2, or take a nap with the baby.  This is limited to weekends though since he works during the week.  Having that support is greatly needed and appreciated.  There are some days though that you just can't cope and it takes everything in you just to make it through the day.  On those days I think you just cope by letting other things go, the cleaning, laundry or whatever just to give yourself a break. 

[-Maya-]

Talk about broken sleep? Here I am.

DS is 19 mo (almost 20!). Now he usually wakes up once a night, easily resettled (unless bad things going on, i.e. teething). I had an awsful 1 year of DS so now 1 night of bad sleep is enough for me to fall into ppd. Two if tyue come after a row of good nights. Good nights are intended for me: I can stay awake even when DS is sleeping for sheer stress. I do not cope in any way with that: only things that usually works is medi to sleep and DH sleeping in DS room, so I am not bothered by baby monitor. Mind that I was the best sleeper before DS.
I uslally get 7h of sleep + break and one or one and a half hour of very light sleep.

[centrestage88]

you have the time to answer any of the questions below I'd be incredibly grateful.

* How old is your baby?

* How many times does your baby wake up in the night?

* How much sleep do you think you get?

* How many days of broken sleep can you handle before you

Hi
My lo is almost 11 months. He started sttn from 10months. Previously it was once a night. I get around 8 hrs of broken sleep.( I wake up at every sound he makes. Silly me. )
I'm not good dealing with lack of sleep. 2 days and I start feeling very overwhelmed.

[Katet]

My children are now 10yo & 12yo. They were both (for different reasons not the best sleepers) but in the last 2 weeks I have been reminded of what the impact of less than ideal sleep (for me) has. I can sort of compare what "normal" feels like compared to broken in a very different way & it brought back lots of memories, so while it may be outside your questionaire range I thought it might be interesting.
So background I have been a "tour parent" for 12 girls on a 12 night tour overseas. We had a busy program & aimed for the 10-12yo boys & girls to go to bed around 8.30/9pm & up around 6.30/7 depending on training times as it was a track & field Athletics tour.  So they were getting around 10 hours sleep IF (not often happened) we weren't running late & they weren't unsettled by another child in the group. So by the time we got them settled around 10/10.30 & then we sorted ourselves for the night (& often needed to unwind with other adults in the Rec room) we made it to bed around midnight & up again at 6am to be showered & ready before the children were up... so 6hours was a "normal" night (I normally get 8 hours) then of course it was an open dorm so children talking in their sleep even falling out of bed, getting up to go to the toilet it was broken sleep. I have a fit bit, so I know  the wake periods etc & it was very different to my normal patterns.

I found 1) I was far more emotional about things 2) I got even more frustrated by noise (I'm noise sensitive anyway) 3) I was tired - exhausted to the point of tears sometimes, but I couldn't get to sleep & need a LONG time to wind down even though I wanted to sleep 5) food choices were different, I looked for food that would give me a pick up rather than being hungry.

This brought back memories of when my boys were babies/toddlers & while I loved them, all I looked forward to was when I could have a nap or go to bed. I spent lots of time waiting wishing for the next time i could get some sleep.
 I also today notice that I feel a whole host of emotions over things that I just normally get on with without a thought, like I have to make a phone call to sort out a problem - it makes me cranky I have to do that - extra cranky & I fear I will get angry when I do, I'm dreading having to go get groceries because the environment will be too over stimulating & I will feel stressed by it.

Overall this is 12 nights with around 6 hours of sleep & on average 2 wakings a night & I've got to that point... looking back on my journals when my boys were little - DS1 fed every 2.5 hours & a feed lasted 1 hour, by 3 months it was more like 3.5hours & 30mins & he had night wakings on off until 4yo... DS2 fed every 3-4 hours & took 20-30mins & that was noticeably better, but if I had 2 nights of teething where I got say 4 hours of broken sleep I was worried about driving a car etc.

[ecwinters]

This is really interesting!  Just to add my bit...

How old is your baby?- nearly 10 months old.

How many times does your baby wake up in the night? - once on a very good night but otherwise 2 or 3 times.  Can be up to 7 or 8 times if teething or something else is going on with him!

How much sleep do you think you get? - I have just got into the habit of going to bed as early as I feel I can get away with (and still get a few things done in the evening) so on a good or average night it's probably about 6-7 hours.  I sleep with the monitor next to my ear though so any sound DS makes wakes me up.  If I get an unbroken stretch of 5 or 6 hours sleep then it's a good night.  On a bad night it can drop to about 3 hours (broken) and once I;ve been woken up about 3 times it's rare that I can get back to sleep anyway.

How many days of broken sleep can you handle before you start to feel the effects during your daytime? - only about 1 night! My DH says I have a personality change at 3am when DS is having a bad night!  I'm afraid I take it out on DH, who is much calmer about it than me, but also finds it hard to stay awake once he gets extremely tired and will just fall asleep.  I tend to get stressed rather than sleepy.  If DS is having a bad week and DH is working away from home then after 2 or 3 days I start to feel quite miserable from lack of proper sleep.