You’ve tried co-sleeping, no sleeping, gradually retreating and dabbled in Gina Ford but STILL your baby will not sleep.
So in a desperate moment of sleep deprived madness you go to the place you told yourself you would never go… The Mum Forums.
Then you post the words no parent should never post on the Internet ‘How do you get a baby to sleep?’ . And things go a bit like this: Continue reading
It is the summer holidays and so NO school run for six weeks.
It is the summer holidays so no school for six weeks…
I have been nagged almost to death and feeling a bit weird about my youngest starting school in September but amazingly I have not completely lost my shit – yet. However, it is only Day five.
Here is one thing i have learnt his week
ME: Right, you go first!
4YO: Who are you?
ME: No, remember you have to guess who I have on my card? That’s the game.
4YO: OK. Are you Captain Barnacles?
ME: No.
4YO: Are you a banana?
A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO BABIES BY BABIESLESSON 2: AN IDIOT’S GUIDE TO SLEEPING OUTSIDE THE WOMB
Babies wake up during the night because they are babies and it is what they do. This is a fact.
Yet, so many proper grown up people who have been to school and everything, some who have even written books about babies will not accept this.
They try and work out how to fix us when in actual fact we are just BEING BABIES and sleeping outside of mummy’s lush womby palace kind of takes some getting used to.. Continue reading
TIRED MUM: Dear Google, can you die from sleep deprivation?
GOOGLE: In the 1980s, a researcher named Allan Rechtschaffen conducted a series of ground-breaking experiments on rats who died. After 32 days of total sleep deprivation, all the rats were dead.’
TIRED MUM: But what about humans? Google, what are the effects of sleep-deprivation on humans?
GOOGLE: Regular poor sleep puts you at risk of various conditions, including depression, heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy.
TIRED MUM: Oh god!
GOOGLE: Oh and it might make you obese.
TIRED MUM: Anything else?
GOOGLE: Hallucinations, possible brain damage…
TIRED MUM: OK, ok stop. I don’t want to hear anymore. So what can I do? I can stop this, right? Google, how can I prevent the effects of sleep deprivation?
GOOGLE: Get some sleep.
TIRED MUM: But I have a baby!
TRYING to get a baby to fall asleep is a frustration that every parent will face at some point. And while some children drift off to dreamland fairly easily, others, however, just do not.
Neither of my babies liked to go to sleep. Some nights it could take anything up to four hours to get them to doze off, so I spent a lot of time desperately browsing the Internet for The Answer. As a result, I tried a lot of weird and wonderful techniques. Here are a few ways I tried and failed to get my babies to go the f**K to sleep:
The Internet is awash with ‘research’ that shows sleep training is bad for our babies. However, there is also an abundance of ‘research; suggesting that NOT sleep training is bad for our babies. (The research is usually taken from studies of 4 babies, 2 kangaroo cubs and a tadpole so it is almost always definitely accurate). So when it comes to baby sleep, what bullshit advice are we supposed to follow? Continue reading
I have a confession to make.
When I was a new mum I did NOT cherish every moment with my baby. In fact, I actually wanted to punch most of the moments in the face. My life consisted of trying to get my daughter to sleep, trying to get some sleep and stumbling around the house like a zombie not cherishing anything at all BECAUSE I WAS TOO BLOODY TIRED. Continue reading
Thanks to the Internet we now have parenting tips available to us 24 hours a day!
While we might occasionally stumble across some helpful advice, most of it is either totally useless or appears to assume that parents are idiots.
One area in which there is an abundance of guidance from ‘experts’ is how to get a baby to sleep.
For example:
I have this old friend.
She occasionally turns up at my door, totally out of the blue. I don’t see much of her any more but when she is here, it’s like she has never been away.
We met shortly after the birth of my eldest child. She came into my life and managed to get her feet firmly under the table. Continue reading
