The Question New Moms Are Still Asking Years Later: Will I Ever Sleep Again?

My kids are three and two years old, and they still constantly wake through the night

I’m glad my husband is a real partner, not an Instagram Dad ™, the ones who look cute in pictures, playground, and kids’ parties but aren’t involved when shit hits the fan daily. I don’t know how I would cope otherwise.

I have two kids, a three-year-old and a two-year-old. The eldest will be four in January, but she still wakes up during the night, sometimes more often than my friend’s newborn baby. Neither girl was ever a good sleeper; hands up, that has been the most challenging part of parenting for me.

The constant wakes throughout the night, the very early mornings, the longest bedtimes. I didn’t know sleep could be this horrendous, and to be honest, I didn’t know it could be this bad for this long, either; I’m still lying to myself that we must be close to the finish line now.

Sleeping like a baby is an oxymoron

Before I had kids, I had this ridiculous idea that they would nap and I could either nap with them, a lie perpetuated by all the midwives I’ve ever met and by many other parents (sleep when the baby sleeps), or even have time to do stuff around the house. Ah, how silly. I know other parents will be laughing now at how naive I was.

My first daughter had silent reflux. Her case wasn’t bad in the sense that she was putting on weight (in fact, she put on a lot of weight in the first few months of life), but it was terrible in the sense that she wouldn’t lie down at all. For the first three months, she would never lie down. My husband and I took turns during the night.

I would feed her, an ordeal in itself that would sometimes last as long as 40 or 50 minutes counting the nappy changing in between swapping the breast, and then my husband would burp her and keep her for at least another half an hour. Sometimes, she would sleep in her cot for a bit (maybe 20 or 30 minutes) before she was ready for another feed; sometimes, he would give her straight back to me.

I’m not joking, the situation was that dire. Of course, I looked for help. Both about the constant feeding, she would feed between 13 and 18 times in 24 hours, and about the never lying down problem. She was constantly in my arms, all day long. The sling was my best friend, although she wouldn’t stay there for too long before she was ready for another feed. I felt trapped and exhausted; there were a lot of tears.

I had my mom here with me for the first seven weeks — she was an incredible help during the day, not only with the baby but with the house too. I also attended a weekly breastfeeding group for the first two months. It was somewhere to go with my newborn, a place to meet other moms and hear what they were going through.

There was a lactation consultant there every second week to ask all the zillion questions I had. And I also hired a private lactation consultant, an IBCLC. I really wanted to breastfeed, but it was so hard, and I was struggling so much. I had never expected it to be so challenging.

Breastfeeding is natural, and I mistakenly thought that meant it wouldn’t be so difficult, that it would be almost instinctual. Well, I found breastfeeding really tough. I had sore nipples for weeks on end, more problems than I can count on my fingers. And yet, I persisted. I couldn’t take that extra failure — I was already failing at everything else.

In certain ways, I’m lucky I gave birth in January 2020. I had my mom and the breastfeeding group, even if it was for such a short time. It was much harder with my second when so many restrictions were still in place. I wasn’t able to have my mom here with me, and no baby group was back up and running.

And then there was Covid

Covid hit hard in 2020. When my firstborn was just two months old, everything shut down in Ireland. The restrictions in this country were many, and they lasted for a long time. Our family didn’t have Covid until late 2022, but we were hit hard by all the limitations. A newborn baby during the early months of restrictions, a pregnancy, and a second baby while many limitations were still in place.

A situation that was already hard became almost impossible. My mom was gone, and everything else was closed down. There were no mommy meetups, no lactation groups, and no in-person appointments. The lactation consultant that I hired to help me was now only available over Zoom.

The Public Health Nurse, the person who follows your baby’s development in Ireland, was only available over the phone unless there was something major. The fact that my baby wouldn’t be put down, that she cried all the time, and that I hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time (and celebrated when I got that much shuteye) wasn’t a big problem at all — that’s just how babies are. Or so I was always told.

I felt forlorn. Did I have postpartum depression? I don’t think I will ever know for sure. Sometimes, I think I did; others, I think it was just a natural side-effect of having so little sleep and a very demanding baby. My eldest needed to be held at all times; she would not accept the buggy, not even during walks, and she only slept while being held over the shoulder.

For a whole year, she only slept on me. She would accept my husband, too, but he worked during the week, so I was the chosen bed. I can remember many times when she slept out of the sling, and I just needed to go to the toilet really bad — I would either call my husband to hold her or try to go by myself and, inevitably, wake her up.

The twelve hours myth

She never slept twelve hours overnight, not even if you discount all the night wakes. She still doesn’t sleep twelve hours. Eleven is the maximum she has ever slept; ten is her usual. My youngest never did the twelve hours, either. If you’re a parent, you probably heard this story about the twelve hours overnight. I did, and I believed it.

My youngest still takes a nap during the day, and she barely gets twelve hours of rest in a day if you include her afternoon nap in the count. The eldest never did, even considering the nap. As I said, that’s discounting night wakes. Both girls used to wake up a lot during the night for feeds. And they both reached a point of waking up hourly for feeds.

There were days I would sleep four hours in total. I still don’t know how I got through the day at the time. Possibly because everything was closed down, and there was no socialising anyway. So, I was probably a zombie in denial. It makes sense; I look like a zombie in most of our pictures.

My husband was always involved. When our eldest started to accept the crib after the feeds, he started taking her at 4 am. She used to go to bed at 7 pm, but that meant a very early start. We tried changing the bedtime, but it didn’t work well; she would get overtired, and it would backfire on us. We also hired a sleep consultant, and I read so many sleep-related books that I’ve lost count.

To no avail. We learned what worked for our family, and we accepted all the things we couldn’t change. So, my husband started waking up with her at 4 am, and he would try to keep her entertained until 6 am so I could get some decent rest. Some nights, that was the only rest I got; the rest of the night was more akin to snoozing than sleeping.

When the eldest was one, she was walking up hourly. I was two months pregnant, and my spirits were broken. I had been sleeping with her in her bedroom for most of the night since she was six months old, and I couldn’t do it anymore. My husband took my place beside her, and we started restricting the night feeds.

Truth be told, we tried to remove them first, but it didn’t work. Limiting them worked, though. It wasn’t easy, and there was a lot of crying. Not by herself, but in my husband’s arms. He slept on a rocking chair many nights — it was the only way to calm her without him collapsing from tiredness.

She was on four feeds a night, and I was able to get some rest. A few months later, she stopped breastfeeding altogether — her choice, not ours. The sleep didn’t improve much for her, but it did for me. I got two months of decent sleep before my second baby was born.

Your second child will be better!

I had so many hopes. I heard so many stories. All good ones, too. The parents who had two bad sleepers in a row never told me their stories. So it was a shock when my second was also a bad sleeper.

She wasn’t as bad as her sister, that’s true. She could be put down after she was asleep — that in itself was a big deal, to be honest. But she would still wake up several times during the night. And she would not sleep for more than eight or nine hours overnight. But I still had hopes it would become better. Her sister was still waking up crying in the middle of the night, but my husband was there with her. I had only one child to attend to during the night.

If waking up several times wasn’t already a bad deal, my youngest introduced me to something new: she would wake up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. Sometimes, she would be just awake, happily chatting away and refusing to sleep. Others, she would cry and cry, for no apparent reason.

We had a buggy in her bedroom because sometimes the buggy’s movement would soothe her. She wouldn’t sleep, so I couldn’t stop pushing the buggy around the room, but at least she wouldn’t wake her sister up for a crying duet at 3 am.

Around age one, she started waking up hourly, just like her sister. Several wakes, including the long two-hour one in the middle of the night. How could this be so hard? Of course, I blamed myself. There was no other explanation but that I was doing something wrong, and it was all my fault. Other parents didn’t have this problem.

My husband wanted to let her cry. Have you ever heard of “cry it out”? It’s a method to get your baby to sleep through the night, and like its slightly less cruel sibling, “controlled crying”, it involves letting the baby cry for how long it takes until they fall asleep. I couldn’t do that to either of my babies. My husband still thinks it’s my fault that the girls didn’t sleep well — after all, I didn’t let them cry it out.

He supported me in my choice and was there through the nights (and days), helping me in any way he could, but he still believes we should’ve done that. I still think it wouldn’t have worked, and it would’ve been a living nightmare. I’m glad I was there to support my children, but it was tough.

I wasn’t able to limit the feeds overnight with my youngest. She wouldn’t accept having no milk and would wake up her older sister with her uncontrollable cries. We tried for a week, and it was a disaster. So, I lived with the hourly wakes for months. I would get a break sometimes — she would sleep for two or three hours stretches for a few days before returning to her “normal” ways. When she was twenty months old, I couldn’t take it anymore. So we weaned her. It wasn’t her choice, but I couldn’t tolerate it any longer.

Do I sleep now?

This was last May. Since then, her dad has slept with her. I slept with the eldest for a few months and now sleep in my own room. Every night around 11 pm, the eldest comes in to snuggle up beside me. That’s just the first wake of the night, though.

Most nights, she wakes up two or three times. Sometimes, even more often. At least once a week, it takes her an hour or longer to fall back asleep. That means I don’t sleep either, with one demand after the other until sleep finally wins the battle.

The irony is that the youngest now sleeps through the night. Not every night, but most nights. She doesn’t sleep too long — she goes to bed at 9 pm and is up at 5 am most days, but at least she doesn’t wake up throughout the night.

This morning, my eldest woke up at 4 am. She went to bed at 7.30 pm last night. She was asleep half an hour before her usual, so of course, she was up two hours earlier. I am a zombie again.

Will I ever sleep again? I sure hope so. I have never heard of a college student choosing to sleep with their mother and waking her up several times through the night. But then again, I had never heard babies could wake up hourly by age one… or several times at night (every night!) by age three.

I’m not looking for advice. In fact, please keep your advice to yourself. I know you have good intentions, but I’ve been at this battle for almost four years now. I guarantee you that I’ve heard it all and tried all I’m comfortable with. I’m not looking for pity, either.

I’m delighted with my two girls — they’re gorgeous — and although it isn’t easy and I’m exhausted, I am living my best life. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But I would love to hear your tales of woes with bad sleeping kids… at least, that makes me feel less lonely.