Sleep deprivation

[*beannaithe*]

Little sooky whinge post from me but how do you cope with chronic, severe sleep deprivation?

I regularly am getting by on two or three hours broken sleep a night. i know it is normal for babies to wake during the night so what do you do? I feed lying down at night and we have started cosleeping with Miss G which has made no difference to her nighttime antics.

We live an hour from anything so to get anything done, I have no choice but to drive, quite often when I'm barely functioning anyway. And when we are at home, even trying to rest when the girls rest doesn't really work as trying to get two babies to have a decent sleep at the same time during the day is not really conducive to sleep for me.

How do you do it? I feel like horrible cranky mummy far too often

[trishalishous]

can someone sit with the girls while you get an hours sleep here and there? I find that 1 sleep in a week (of 2-3 hours if Im lucky) seems to recharge the batteries enough to function.
I also take my vitamins to make sure Im not missing out on too much for my poor body.

[chody47]

I second seeing if someone else can take over for a bit so you can catch up. Also, I'm not sure if you bf or ff, but is there any chance of your DH doing the odd night to give you a break? Or, you could do what I'm doing this time, DH feeds DD2 a bottle of EBM before he goes to bed (around 10-11). I express before I go to bed and then go early to try to get a few hours sleep before the first feed.....

[LuluHB]

I'm in the same sort of situation with the long drives to get to a lot of places. If I leave the area, there is a long, straight road I have to drive down and its very easy to zone out. As nutty as it sounds, I have an out loud conversation with myself to keep the focus - "So we're driving down Gnangara Road now on our way to X. Today I need to find . . . " sort of thing.

With multiple kids I know how hard it is to catch up on any sleep during the day but if there is ever an opportunity, then take it. Even lying in bed to feeds your girls allows you if not sleep, then rest so if that works for you then try that too.

Good luck. I hope things turn a corner for you soon so you can start to catch up

[onthefly]

It's really rough, I know. I'm sorry to hear things haven't settled down at all.
I coped by doing whatever was easiest - bedsharing didn't improve my kids' sleep, but it meant I didn't have to get up, for eg - and otherwise only doing what is absolutely necessary. And yeah, taking whatever help I could - even one three-hour block of sleep in a week can make all the difference.
It was easier second time round because I knew from experience that it would eventually get better.

[*beannaithe*]

I just wish we knew why, even though in all probability, it is just one of G's little quirks. With no reason, the cycle of awful nights seems never ending. Though isn't it amazing how little sleep we can get by on? I keep thinking on the really bad days that we should switch to formula cos at least then I could load up on coffee to get through.

I do need to make myself lie down when they have day sleeps. My biggest problem was that I would put one down, give the other a quick feed and by the time I had her down, I'd have maybe 20 mins before the first would potentially wake. I'm thinking that I may have to start tandem feeding again to squeeze a few extra minutes for me to rest.