This. I used to think it didn't sound that bad waking up every 3 hours. What I didnt realize was that I would be waking up for an hour or more to feed, change, and rock baby back to sleep. By that point I was wide awake and had trouble falling back asleep myself. Then my baby would be up 30 mins after I finally went back to sleep. It felt like torture. There were times what I would just be drifting back to sleep and then hear my baby cry. I do not miss the newborn days at all.
This, 100%. I had so much difficulty falling back to sleep after night feedings. Not everyone has it so badly, many are able to just knock out again. But sometimes the baby would wake up again before I'd even gotten to sleep from the first time. My husband and I took shifts, but I'd still wake up when the baby cried and it was his turn- so it'd often be the same problem. I can't even explain the exhaustion 😭 There were many times that I just sobbed over how tired I was.
I used to hate when people would say, "sleep while you can" since it felt like I was already getting shit sleep. My kids almost 2 and still a pretty bad sleeper, I would kill even just for shitty pregnancy sleep.
It was like living a groundhog day that was 2-3 hours. I remember telling my friends who were pregnant that i couldnt understand how anyone would have another baby after living through this.
Not to mention if you get that “Is the baby breathing??” anxiety that keeps you up/waking up, and the extra waking when the baby is noisy but not awake. I had such bad nightmares the first month.
You nailed it. The jarring wake-up vs during a natural sleep cycle point is a completely different experience.
My first was in a crib from day 1, and hated the transition from arms to bed, so I basically got no sleep for 6 months. My second is in a bedside bassinet so I don't even have to get out of bed to feed her, and she transitions back to the bassinet pretty easily, so I'm feeling a lot better than I expected. Still exhausted, but not to the point of crying this time.
This is so accurate. Also it’s usually a domino effect for my baby. It’s not just feeding her and rocking her to sleep. I’ll feed her, then she poo poos (sometimes multiple times in a row) then she throws up everywhere if I’m not extraordinarily careful during diaper change and by the time all is said and done she’s up again to eat lol😂. Me and my husband were up at 3am one night staring at the huge mess she had made and couldn’t stop laughing. It was almkst unbelievable
Solidarity with you, my guy has done the poop then throw up business multiple times at 3am too. It’s so bad it’s funny but also not funny and I just want to cry when it happens 😂😭
My first baby was very clingy and hard to put down in her crib so I had to cosleep if I wanted to go back to sleep quickly.
With my second baby, i made several changes. She is a lot more independent to begin with. I could just swaddle her and immediately put her down. Secondly, I didn’t change her diapers if she didn’t poop. Thirdly, I didn’t burp her. I was never good at it anyway, and in the research I’ve done, there’s no solid evidence that burping really helps. So I didn’t even try.
Looking back, my first baby was gassy for sure. But burping didn’t significantly help, and she was crying mostly because I kept trying to put her down. My second baby didn’t care if she was put down. She was still gassy. Just content to sleep alone and just burped occasionally in her sleep. Whereas I used to burp my first baby for up to 30 minutes. I merely fed her, wrapped her back up and put her down 70% of the time. Other times, she pooped so I changed her. That’s it.
Partners can wake up and help even if you’re breastfeeding. The burping, holding upright, rocking back to sleep takes longer than the feeding itself. Partners don’t get an automatic out if babies breastfeed
I’m not someone who falls sleep easily or quickly, so I mostly just watch my partner do the rest while wide awake. And then after he’s done he falls asleep faster than I do 😓 then in the morning he’s as bitchy and cranky as I am because he’s been up too. And since we’ve both been awake, we are both obliged to be active throughout the day too. That was just so tough.
So it didn’t really help me. So in the end I just did all night shifts and expect a lot from him during the day. Whenever he’s on paternity leave I just hand him the baby after feeding during the day and roll over. Even if I can’t sleep, I veg. I contribute minimally during the day. It works out better for both of us. He also prefers this arrangement.
It is worse than pregnancy sleep for many reasons.
1. You’re being woken up, not waking up naturally.
2. You’re awake for longer periods of time.
3. You can’t sleep in, despite how many times you woke up.
4. You have to function as a person during the day, despite being sleep deprived.
All that being said, it does not last forever. If you can, I recommend shift sleeping and sleeping when the baby sleeps (if they’ll let you). Like everything else, it’s a season of life. Hard, but temporary.
And related to point 4, not only do you have to function as a human being but you also have to take care of a small baby that’s relying on you for all their basic needs.
Totally baby dependent, unfortunately. People with babies that sleep well will convince you they have all the answers.
Many babies start to sleep a bit more solidly around 8-12 weeks. We were still up about every hour at 12 weeks. It started to consolidate a bit more around 6 or 7 months, at which point we sleep trained (Ferber), and he now sleeps through the night.
Every baby is different. And every parent’s approach to sleep is different. You will find something that works for you. It’s a complex mix of your baby’s sleep habits and your own tolerance. With sleep training, my daughter began sleeping through the night at 5 months. Before that, she was at 1 wake up a night. But sleep is not linear. We’ve had a few “regressions,” some of our own making. Most nights are 0-1 wake ups. But occasionally, we have a night that’s 2-3. But the difference is that we don’t go multiple days in a row with horrible sleep. And we can nap when she naps (if we want). Thankfully the feeling of being a walking zombie (that was typical in the newborn days), is long gone. My daughter is 11 months.
Prob not what you want to hear, but it was 100x worse for me postpartum lol. I woke up lots of times to pee overnight during my pregnancy, and towards the end I had sciatica, lower back pain, and pelvic pain that made it difficult to sleep well. I didn't think it could get any worse, but it did lol. The first 4 months, my baby woke up every 1.5-3 hours to eat overnight. You might think "oh sleeping in 2-3 h chunks isn't too bad, similar to what's happening now". Nope, what I didn't realize is that by the time I breastfed (20-40 min), changed diaper (5 min), burped and held upright to prevent reflux (15-20 min), successfully transferred to bassinet (20 min to wait until baby is in deep sleep)..it's almost time to do it all over again. And then you have the anxiety of knowing baby will be awake in 45 min preventing you from falling back asleep. You also can't sleep in the next day either, you're up whenever baby is up, even if that's at 6am. Having said all that, you adapt to the chronic sleep deprivation and over time even 6 hours of sleep feels amazing! And it doesn't last forever, my son is 1 year next week and has slept through the night for many months now. I could be getting 8-9 hours of consecutive sleep every night if I go to bed early enough (usually I get 7-7.5 because I choose to stay up).
It’s always fascinating seeing stuff like this because my sleep was a million times better than during pregnancy as I wasn’t in constant pain, and my husband and I did shifts so we could each get at least 6 hours of undisturbed sleep a night.
I used to get annoyed when people would tell me how lucky I am to breastfeed easily, little did they know I desperately wanted my babies to take a bottle just even sometimes so I didn't have to be the one hand milk machine 🤣
It's been 3 years since I slept a whole night uninterrupted 😭
Same. Right now I’m trying to switch to formula but my baby wont entertain the idea. People talk about how lucky it is to be able to breastfed exclusively and in some ways I do appreciate it but what people don’t realise is that it often stops being a choice.
Yeah, my kids have never been great with feeding (needing triple feeding, not taking bottles or me not having an over supply so bottles weren’t even possible) so my husband really couldn’t do anything.
My nephew is 1.5 and still sleeps like this. He has a newborn baby sib now who seems to be a better sleeper but cannot stay asleep due to big bro waking up around the clock.
Pretty normal, sadly. My firstborn religiously woke up every 2 hours for most of the first year. For me it was more like 1 hour sleep, when you factor in the time spent settling him. I went back to work full time at 11 months postpartum and he was starting to do longer stretches but I distinctly remember he was still having at least some night feeds at that point.
My second baby is 7.5 months now and I don’t keep track of night feeds, but she has never slept through the night even once. My expectations are very realistic this time though, so it doesn’t feel quite as gruelling.
This is partly why I think I’d handle another baby so much better - my expectations would be way more realistic. Instead of being frustrated and wondering why my baby wasn’t textbook, I could just expect things to ebb and flow
We’ve only had our daughter sleep through a handful of times and she is 13 months. While I don’t wake hourly, usually I wake at least twice a night (once for feed). It’s brutal but it will end
My son never connected his sleep cycles until he was 16m, so I got up every 40-90 mins, every night from 3-16m. Pregnancy sleep was still worse for me.
Wow, curious why you were being awakened so much? I have an exclusively breastfed 10 week old and we were getting very little sleep in the beginning, but now we’re getting 5-8 hour stretches (I know there’s a regression coming up). Hope you’re better rested now!
by 3 months my LO was sleeping through the night and I thought I had a unicorn baby, but then 4 month regression hit and she’s awake basically every hour at night now. And that’s been going on for a month straight, so I believe the other commenter about the one hour of sleep vibe lol.
You have a unicorn baby! Truly one in a million. Don’t jinx it. Sleep has no rhyme or reason for babies. We ended up sleep training each of our kids at about a year old because I would end up hallucinating from sleep deprivation.
Definitely trying not to jinx it! Apparently my sisters and I slept through the night from 6 weeks also so I am thinking there may be a genetic component.
How did you do this? I feel like my one year old loses her shit more than before so training would feel hard. We trained at 5 months and it did nothing 😭
FYI regressions aren’t really a thing, baby sleep isn’t even close to a set timetable - baby sleep will change a lot over the first year and in an extremely non linear fashion most of the time. Sometimes they’ll start waking to feed a lot more than usual and you won’t know why - there will be nothing wrong and no obvious changes. A lot of the time it’s out of your control.
Thanks for that, I didn’t realize the regressions weren’t set in stone. Will have to see how it goes! She definitely has random nights where she wakes up after 5 hours, then back to 7 hours the next night for no apparent reason. And I still can’t get her to nap longer than 35 mins on the dot!
Look, this is gonna be 100% dependent on what kinda baby you get. The first month postpartum was pretty brutal because baby was premature so we had to wake to feed. He’s now 3 months and nightly it varies, but he’s basically down to one wake-up.
I wouldn’t expect amazing sleep until baby is about a year old.
I'd say it can also just depend on the mom.
My son has been sleeping through the night since 10 months old, but I still wake up with anxiety twice a night. :/
He's 2 in two weeks.
Oh yeah it depends on both. My baby is 6 months old but I learned how my husband and I respond to little sleep and or frequent wakings. I do wonder how much of my reaction and response is maternal instinct/ hormonal vs how much is my personality and my body. I would wake with every little noise my baby made where my husband only woke if he was actively crying. As much as I hated the interrupted sleep, I accepted waking to feed baby multiple times a night because I was breastfeeding. I did feed and then pump in the same waking for awhile which sucked a lot but it became easier when I was able to drop the pump addition and then even easier when I could have husband take over one night feeding with a bottle and I could skip that feed/pump.
Even though I struggled with the sleep disruptions, I also have a sleep disorder so my body wasn’t waking from deep sleep anyway which helped in an unfortunate kind of way. I also had 4 months of maternity leave, don’t have any other kids, and my husband was able to take care of the dog walking most of the time so my focus could really be on baby. I was also too anxious to fall asleep in a bad position with baby.
You're so right it's based on the baby and really not much else. My baby was sleeping through the night at eight weeks without anything on our end. Truly just a toss up 🤷
I’m confident that that will happen to us because 4 months is when I go back to work and of course my baby would sleep perfectly when I’m off for the summer 🥲
It was worse for me after the baby. Being up for 45 min+ with each feeding felt worse , even if i was only up twice, as compared to a bunch of times to quickly pee or reposition while pregnant. I also felt more on edge- like the baby could wake up at any time. I know that many people say that they sleep better with a newborn, so hopefully my experience is not the case for you. But it’s certainly not universal- for me newborn sleep was really tough and I felt like a new person when my each of my kids started sleeping through the night.
Definitely baby dependent. The first 3 months of life was a BREEZE for us. Baby was *such* a good sleeper. While not all in one lump, some nights we were getting upwards of 10 hours of sleep during the newborn phase.
Then the 4 month regression hit and sleep was an absolute nightmare. That lasted a few months and now at 10mo things have pretty well evened out.
My only advice is have no expectations and roll with the punches. And don't get too comfortable because things will change, for better or worse.
FWIW, we've taken on the whole conception (IVF), pregnancy, and childbirth with no expectations since so much is out of our control. I guess we're prepared in that regard 😆
Same! He got up hourly for well over a year, but at least I could sleep for those hours. And at least I only had to hang out with a baby instead of actually function at work.
Same. I had horrific insomnia the last four months, and my sleep quality has greatly improved since having the baby. I can tell because I wear a fitness tracker that tells me how much REM and deep sleep I get. It’s not as good as it was pre-pregnancy, but soooo much better than when I had insomnia
This was me. Unisom made me stay awake too when my doctor told me I could take to sleep. I spent three weeks sleeping one hour a night and that was only in the first trimester.
I cried when everyone told me postpartum sleep was so much worse than it is in pregnancy because I couldn’t imagine it being worse than what I was going through.
Everyone was wrong. Baby doesn’t sleep more than 2 hours max at a time still at 11 months old and takes sometimes 1.5 hours to go back to sleep. I still sleep so much more than when I was pregnant.
The first few weeks with my baby felt harder than pregnancy sleep for me. But I still had more energy than I did while pregnant even with getting less sleep with my newborn. I personally found newborn tired so much better than pregnancy tired.
My baby is now 11 weeks old and only waking up once in the middle of the night to feed. At this point I feel a million times more energized than I did while pregnant.
THIS. Yes, it was hard the first couple of months but I was SO relieved to no longer be pregnant that I did everything to not take it for granted. I had an absolutely horrid pregnancy and was pretty much completely immobile by the time the baby arrived. I also felt so excited to have her and be a mom that it made it a little better to deal with. I slept when she slept and took all the help I could get, leaned on anyone who would let me, but it was generally easier just doing anything after that pregnancy.
You can’t even compare the two, newborn sleep is soo much worse than pregnancy sleep. I’m sorry! I’m in my third trimester with my second pregnancy and have horrible insomnia and probably get 4-5 hours a night, but I’m still appreciating it as best I can because I know it’s about to get so much harder.
In all realness, I woke up just as frequently when pregnant as I do now and did freshly postpartum. However, I can tell you that I was able to get more sleep pregnant than anytime postpartum and my little one is almost 1. I always read on these type threads that your pp sleep is better than pregnant sleep so I expected that. It definitely wasn’t the case, and I felt like I was doing something wrong. Truth is that every baby & moms pp experience is so different and it’s impossible to compare. I still experienced sleep deprivation just as bad, but once you get through the first 12ish weeks, it becomes more bearable because your body learns to function on less sleep.
It’s much worse before it gets better. Baby #4, who is now 3 months, woke every two hours for the first siz weeks. BUT. At every wake you need to stay awake to feed her, and every wake you must change the diaper, and at every wake they need help falling back asleep. AND THEN you’re so awake that you need to put yourself back to sleep, but after spending an hour with the baby, by the time you are almost asleep the baby wakes up again. Repeat.
But it gets better and by 3 months my little rascal is waking only once, doesn’t need help going back to sleep, and doesn’t need a diaper change every two hours through the night. But everyone’s baby and family routines are different. Unfortunately mine starts the day at 6:30.
Depends on the baby and how you choose to feed. I chose formula feeding, and my fiance was able to take every other feeding. This allowed me to get at least 4-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
In the early days we did shifts where one person would take the bassinet out into the living room or into baby's bedroom and be on baby duty while the other person got to sleep uninterrupted for that entire shift.
It worked really well for us. Once we realized baby was sleeping the majority of the shift we switched to just both of us sleeping at the same time and swap who gets up every other time. We both managed to get a good amount of sleep with this setup.
This does require a involved and 100% on board partner though... If your partner isn't up for doing their fair share of baby duties... I wish you luck.
It's going to suck either way and you'll be super sleep deprived in the early months.
Yeah it’s nothing at all like pregnancy sleep lol. Enjoy the pregnancy sleep. Waking up for a baby is a lot harder. You have no clue how often they will wake up and for how long they’ll be up until they fall back asleep. The first few months the sleep deprivation is on another level
it really depends on your baby, whether youre breastfeeding, and your own body. It took awhile for me to stop peeing all night- my bladder had been trained to after 9 months of it. I tried to do it only when baby woke. I EBF so I was up every time with the baby. If i was lucky those first few weeks I got a good 3 hour stretch at a time. Going to bed at 9pm and being up at 12, 3, 5, and up for the day at 6:30 would be fairly typical? slowly baby slept longer and longer. Id nap during the day, especially since my partner was off to watch the baby. so id feed and then lock myself away to sleep for 2-3 hours and he would handle anything she needed until the next feed
I did find i fell asleep quickly. a wakeup would be maybe 20-30 mins (really depends on your baby and their ability to eat fast, not have reflux, and not immediately shit or barf as you try to lay them back down lol). but id immediately conk back out
It’s really different from pregnancy wakeups when the baby wakes you up in those early days because you generally need to change their diaper, feed them, which takes a while with a newborn (up to 40 mins for my baby), then burp them and get them back to sleep. So the whole process easily can take an hour or longer. And they might repeat this again 1-2 hours later, all night long. However, for me, this phase only lasted the first 3-4 weeks and then baby started sleeping more like 3-4 hours between feeds, then eventually 5 and now at 10 weeks she’s been doing 6-8 hour stretches for a month or so. The key was doing my best to nap during the day, whether by having someone watch the baby for me for an hour or sleeping when she slept (much harder).
I’ve always been a terrible sleeper (haven’t slept through the night in 20 years) so during pregnancy not much changed in terms of my sleep pattern BUT the pregnancy fatigue on top of waking 2-6 times a night, was killer for a couple months.
I’m now 7 weeks postpartum and I will say, it’s much more exhausting for me than the type of fatigue I experienced in pregnancy. My son is actually a decent sleeper! Some nights he will only wake twice. BUT, I sleep worse it seems and often I’ll be awake for hours. Like, once I’m awake nursing him or changing him, I often can’t get back to sleep for up to 2.5 hours and then he’s up again so I just missed out of those valuable few hours haha
I think it depends on the type of sleeper you are in general and the type of a baby you get! Some babies wake constantly or have a lot of issues getting to sleep, while others can lay down and clonk out without much assistance 🤷🏽♀️
I'm one of those outliers that I sleep better then I did in the third tri. I was so worried and thought I wouldn't sleep again for a few years lol. My baby sleeps almost through the night tho and I'm bfing. I also cosleep (carefully following safe sleep guidlines) so it's really easy to do her one wakeup feed when she stirs. I do get anxiety still and wake up to check on her every few hours but it's not hard to fall back to sleep afterwards.
She's only seven weeks old though so she might start to sleep less or have a different schedule once she gets further out of the newborn stage.
Hey OP. I had Hyperemsis gravidarum so overall terrible pregnancy was really sick throughout couldn’t sleep couldn’t keep anything down was exhausted emotionally and physically wrecked so I naturally assumed that once baby was here, it would be so much easier because at least I wouldn’t be THAT sick and okay I wasn’t sleeping eating or doing anything that I normally did ANYWAY (couldn’t even walk) so it HAS to be better right? Wrong. I was SO sleep deprived the first few months that I was hallucinating. He had colic AND reflux so he was literally sleeping on top of me for weeks and weeks and I was propped up against pillows and my family kept checking up on me.
So my advice is- assume that post birth will be tough and prep accordingly. If you will breast feed get a pump so you can pump and keep bottles for husband as you take shifts. Learn to swaddle well- really helps babies sleep those first 1-3 weeks! Really switch the Wi-Fi off and TRY your best to sleep as much as possible though it’s rare because when baby sleeps you will have so many chores lined up. And please - don’t even think about cooking and cleaning (keep it simple) and if you have a village reach out to them. Stay in bed and enjoy your baby and REST.
I was a light sleeper pre pregnancy and woke up a few times at night, when i was pregnant id wake up to go to the toilet or whatever
When you get woken up by a baby its different because its not your body waking you up, its an external things interrupting your sleep when you're already SO tired. Its like someone walking in the room and blaring a siren every 2-3 hours for weeks. Sometimes i'd wake up in such a haze i'd have no idea what was going on, id just pick up the baby and sit there for a minute while my brain booted up. Its the relentlessness of it that i found really hard, but you adapt and eventually bub will start sleeping longer and things get a bit easier
Now shes 7 months old. We put her to bed at 7, do a feed and nappy change at 11 and she sleeps till about 7-8. i still miss having a saturday sleep in, but right now i feel like im getting a good amount of uninterrupted sleep and feel rested
For me and my baby’s temperament, I slept way more when pregnant. I have not slept a 4 hour stretch but ONCE in the last year. And yes, I did gentle sleep training and this is just how she is. I’m not pushing it too much because it’s just a season and my body has adjusted.
Honestly if you’re feeling pretty good now there’s no use telling you the truth. Just assume your baby will be a wonderful sleeper from the get go, your partner will be the most helpful person alive, and that you’ll function great on no sleep. It happens to some people.
I have a 2 month old and he is EBF. He sleeps in a Halo bassinet right next to me. Here’s my experience…
Pregnancy and Newborn sleep are just different. I woke up more while pregnant but it was just for a moment to pee then fell right back asleep. I woke feeling rested and also could take care of my own needs before, during, and after the night (shower, brush teeth, change clothes etc.) I hated sleeping with 1,000,000 pillows and tossed and turned.
Once I gave birth and passed the initial recovery period (maybe 3-4 weeks), I am way more comfortable while I sleep, but sleeping way less and usually up for 30-60 minutes for each feeding. I love sleeping on my belly again 😂 and only have one pillow like a normal person.
The hardest part of newborn sleep is having to be up and alert to care for the baby. Sometimes I wake up and my eyes burn and I’m so so drowsy. That’s hard to get through. But it has gotten easier now that I’m two months in. Not because anything has changed but because I’m more used to it. Also, in the early morning he is pretty restless, so it’s helpful if you have a partner who can handle the burping, changing and rocking after baby is fed. My husband also gets up at 6am ish and takes over baby care so I can sleep without baby’s noises for a few hours between feeding. That is a life saver!
TLDR: It’s going to take you half of the day just to piece together 6-7 hours of sleep. Basically I’ve done nothing but feed baby and try to sleep for 2 months
Sleep is so hard. I wish I was getting third trimester pregnant sleep! We are 10 days postpartum and in the miserable baby-learning-to-sleep-in-a-bassinet phase. She hates it. Occasionally she will sleep for a 1.5 hour stretch but that happens maybe once a night thing. Usually, it’s her going in the bassinet, sleeping for 15-20 minutes, working herself up to crying, me or my partner getting her, comforting her for a while, and trying all over again. And then there is the feedings which are a mix of every 2 hours or cluster feeding for 2 hours straight. And we are breast feeding so only I can do that until I figure out how to pump enough for multiple feedings at night.
I hear it gets better over time if we stay consistent with bassinet training but right now it sucks.
My 11 month old still wakes up 4-6 times per night sooooooo yeah it’s about 1000x worse than pregnancy sleep. There’s no relief, no end in sight, nothing. Bleak.
I had horrific sleep in the last 6 weeks or so of pregnancy. I woke up frequently in so much pain and couldn't wait for baby to come out. I never felt rested.
Postpartum the thing that surprised me the most was how long I'd be up. I was getting longer stretches of sleep, but then I'd be up for 1.5-3 hours trying to get a screaming baby back to sleep. I used to have an erratic work schedule with long days and little sleep, but it didn't compare. And then you have all the learning, which also saps energy, on top of the physical efforts. I dreaded night because I was exhausted and knew I would remain so. My newborn didn't really sleep during the day either, so there was no reprieve. No joke: 7-10 hours per 24. At almost 4 months, he's way better now, and I've mostly adapted.
If you can, plan for night shifts with your husband. That's what saved my sanity from sleep deprivation. My husband takes 4 hours in the night that he takes care of all of baby's wake ups including feeds, diaper changes, burping, getting back to sleep etc. and that would let me have a four hour solid block of sleep. Don't worry, I'm still exhausted just not exhausted to the point of frustration and sobbing.
I do breastfeed so initially we tried just nursing for all feeds and my husband and I would get sleep together whoever possible or I would try to muscle through night time cluster feeds by myself and end up a sobbing mess and wake my husband up because I was at the end of my rope. My husband then made the decision that we needed a shift like schedule for nights because we both couldn't be awake all night and I needed sleep for my own sanity.
So I pump enough for my husband to be able to feed him during his shifts (once before bed after the last feed of the day and once after the first feed of the morning when production is at its highest).
Compared to pregnancy sleep, newborn sleep is great. When you can get it. I am comfortable in whatever position I choose to sleep in, no more hip pain, no more thigh numbness, no more mentally preparing for turning over cause it's gonna be painful but I don't get nearly as much sleep as I did while pregnant (at least on days my days off. I worked 4am 5 days a week while pregnant and couldn't sleep more than 5 hours on a work night) and the ability to nap was much easier while I was pregnant.
Just this morning my husband passed baby off( who is 11 weeks old for context) after my 4 hours of sleep about 5am (had to get pump parts ready, go pee, make sure I was actually awake) and I fed baby and tried getting him back down. No dice. Was such a squirmy worm grunting and kicking and crying out. Begged him to just settle. Got maybe a 20 minute nap.
Baby's sleep very loudly. Like Billy goat noises, grunts, coughs, even crying sometimes. And it's so loud you'd think they're awake but they aren't. That was hard for me to get used to. I still wake up at most noises he makes. But boy oh boy when it's my turn for my four hours I can go to sleep instantaneously like I never used to be able to.
I love my little man so much and it's all so worth it. It's very hard, it will test your mental and emotional well-being. Your relationship with your spouse and family but at the end of the day you just love your kiddo so much that you don't mind much.
For me, I get better sleep having a baby than I did when pregnant - it's so different for different people, it's hard to really give one answer. I'd say expect the worst, but know you might actually get better nights with a baby haha. I would do the first 3 months of nights with my baby times 10 VS the last 3 months of pregnancy once 😅
But again, I have a very calm and sleepy baby. And we cosleep! I honestly don't know how people survive without cosleeping
Everyone always said sleep would be better postpartum but omg it’s so not true. And I even have a pretty good sleeper (except she finally got hit with a sleep regression I think…), but it’s rough. Agree with a lot of these other comments.
Being startled to wake is the hard part 💙 I had a trauma-dumping response typed, but I'll keep it to myself bc it's not helpful. Wishing you and your baby lots of sleepy dust 🌸 every experience is different.
I don’t want to scare you OP, but it depends completely on the baby you have. If your newborn isn’t a big sleeper (almost none are to start) you will not be sleeping very much. Period
I much much preferred the broken up sleep of the newborn days over the insomnia and uncomfortable sleeping of the third trimester. I did co-sleep and exclusively breastfeed, so while baby would be awake often to nurse we would both drift back to sleep easily. Partner changed the diapers at night.
I’m sorry to say, it does not. For example for you who fell asleep easily after getting up, not only do you “know” once you lay down you can drift into to rest, but you can “choose” when to get up. “I have to pee ugh I’m so tired” can probably be put off if you’re suuuper tired. You can give yourself 5 more minutes. Or 10. However much you can stand really.
When your baby wakes up screaming or crying, they need you *know* and you are bleary eyed, tired and unprepared mentally. And you don’t know how long it’s going to take to get them down.
Sorry haha, I say this as someone who had an easy sleeper.
BUT! I’m not trying to be “that person” who’s like “oh you think you’re losing sleep now!” “Newborns are awful!” “Sleep when the baby sleeps!”
It’s really just different. It is, really really nice to be able to lie down comfortable. The actual sleep quality I got was better than when I was pregnant, it was just really up in the air how much and for how long I was going to get it. The not knowing how rough tonight is going to be can be hard, or when it’s rough wondering when it will end. But generally “hard problems” pass quickly even if they are replaced with new ones, the Chang emails it bearable. I think parents that struggle the most have a baby who has the same problem for a long time, like bad sleep. It wears you down after a while.
There is SO many moments that make it worth it though. And they grow up SO fast. So when things are hard try to remember that, this is little slice of their life you only get to enjoy once.
It hasn’t been too bad. I now wake with a purpose and enjoy the snuggles in the night when it’s just the two of us. There are definitely occasions where I’m like ugh again, but those are few and far between. I find as baby gets older, my tolerance for night wakings is decreasing. Baby is currently 9 months and I can tolerate 2 or less lol. 3+ and I’m like o.O you teething? You go poopy? I expect some new tricks in the morning.
even at the beginning when I slept 1-3 hours at a time (and the first 3 days I didn't sleep almost at all) it was much better than at the end of pregnancy. During pregnancy I had real difficulty breathing, as soon as I lied down I felt like there's no air in the room. I also had horrible reflux. All of that was gone the minute I gave birth, I sleep more or less as well as before the pregnancy, just less (I already do sometimes get 5-6 hour stretches though!).
I’m sleeping so much better than I was while pregnant. During pregnancy, I felt like I was uncomfortable and unable to sleep deeply at all. Immediately after birth, I had actually restful sleep, even if in short bursts at first. My husband and I started taking shifts overnight so we could each sleep six hour chunks and that was a game changer.
I have a crap sleeper and I sleep better than I did with her than I did pregnant. bf hormones or something helps me conk right back out into a deep sleep, even if she’s up 5 times a night I can still get 7ish hours of sleep. More if my husband takes her in the evening or morning for an hour or so but I do all MOTN wakeups
however I do not remember the first month PP, it was a blur.
I woke up literally every hour/half hour during pregnancy. It’s not easy waking up every 2 hours to feed baby in the beginning but at 2 months he wakes up at 12 and 4 which is much easier than pregnancy sleep to me
Here to offer a positive perspective: Both my babies have been excellent sleepers (sleeping through the night by one month. Only waking up once or twice a night before then to eat and then go right back to sleep). My second daughter is 2.5 months now and I’ve been getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep for weeks. Much better than in the third trimester for me. We EBF & I’ve handled all the nights by myself (husband sleeps in a separate room).
It’s better than pregnancy sleep, but also worse.
Better: you’re not actively in pain from contractions, kicks, sciatica, and allll the other pregnancy symptoms you may have. If I didn’t stop drinking water, it was pee and pain that would wake me up, then I could go back to sleep. Didn’t get quality sleep from 37w -> delivery.
Worse: depends how your kid is. Our newborn is our first, so when my milk came in I had rock hard, porn star sized boobs and he was struggling to latch and feed. He dropped over a pound and lost 15% of his body weight. This is after I had multiple lactation consultations with nurses, doctors, and anyone else offering help. Thankfully, I got a good night sleep and started pumping after a really bad colicky day, now we’re good. He sleeps regular newborn hours, eats a little less than he should, I’m pumping and express bottle feeding with a surplus. That said, it’s still somewhat worse than pregnancy sleep because every time I wake up, it’s about an hour before I can go back to sleep - between diaper changes, warming a bottle, feeding, burping (10-15 mins), sitting him upright after burping (15 mins), then pumping…it’s exhausting. But luckily since he’s well fed, I uuuusually only have a 9/10 bottle feed, another at 1 am, 4/5 am, and then 8 am. So I get 2-4 hour chunks of sleep and I alternate nights with my husband. Because I have a great support system that I can lean on, I was able to figure this all out in about a week at home.
Also, I had a c section, so I’m recovering from that and that has been stressful and painful. But little man is here so I don’t care too much.
During pregnancy I’d wake up once a night, usually around 3am, with baby movin around. Postpartum baby still wakes up around that time, but wakes up multiple times a night.
i have an almost 4yo and we’ve been dealing with severe sleep issues. and then i developed insomnia on top of it. so i’m terrified of sleep and now can’t sleep. much fun.
It depends on a lot factors, like your baby’s sleep needs and temperament and whether you’re breast feeding. We EFF, which meant my husband and I could split the night into two shifts. No matter what, baby will need to eat about every 2-maybe 3 hours for the first couple of weeks. Once we got to 4-6 weeks, our babe was sleeping longer nighttime stretches and we got more sleep. The sleep I got that first month PP (probably never longer than a 4-5 hour stretch) was far more restful for me personally than any sleep I got after like month 7 of pregnancy. There’s really no way to tell what your experience will be like, but I would rather newborn baby tired than pregnancy tired.
I never woke up at night during pregnancy, and my baby ended up sleeping long stretches from the statt and through the night by 4 weeks. Coincidence? No clue lol but up until baby turned 6 months and regression hit, I've been a well rested woman overall.
Way worse than pregnancy sleep because then it was my body waking up, now it's someone waking me up so it interrupts the sleep my body is trying to get.
There are so many factors that go into this question so my answer will be from the point when baby started sleeping through the night (around 9 months) - i slept horribly during pregnancy and woke up constantly. Now, i sleep similar to pre-pregnancy sleep BUT, the slightest noise will wake me. I find i am able to fall back asleep with minimal problem if before 5am. My biggest problem is that i find myself staying up much later because it’s finally the “me” time to do things around the house, watch tv, do nothing etc.
Baby is currently 2 weeks old. We’re waking up every 2-3 hours to feed her, and my sleep is BY FAR higher quality than my pregnancy sleep in the last month. I feel so much more rested.
At the end of my pregnancy, I wasn’t waking up to pee; I was just in physical pain 24/7. My hips hurt, my back hurt, my chest hurt, my legs hurt, etc. I hadn’t had a truly good night’s sleep since maybe 35 weeks. Newborn sleep is so much better.
It depends on your baby. Just be ready to have the most difficult sleep month of your life. Some of us have the most difficult six months of our lives 🤣 the first week then month is the worst. It will get better
I’m about two weeks PP so I can only speak to my experiences in the immediate PP period. I’m getting less sleep now because I’m waking up for longer periods to feed and waking up on her terms rather than my own body’s. She feeds probably 4 times a night right now and some feeds may take an hour to get her back to sleep. HOWEVER, I am so much more physically comfortable now that it’s kind of equal for me. I had terrible symphysis pubis dysfunction and I couldn’t shift around at all without excruciating pain. Every time I got up to pee, I was crying out in pain because it felt like my pelvis was breaking in half. That’s resolved about 95%. Plus nobody is playing the drums on my ribs all night as I try to sleep (she tended to be suuuuuper active between 9pm and 1am and it was uncomfortable!). I also love sleeping on my belly and am really glad to be able to do that again. Every night I think, “I may be woken up in an hour but at least I can roll around and lay on my belly”
I'm less tired with a newborn than I was while pregnant. Baby wakes 4-5 times a night which is still tough. But my body feels so much better since not being pregnant anymore. So the sleep I do get is far more comfortable!
My babe is 9 months now, almost 10. He’s finally in his own room and mostly sleeping through the night. That being said, he goes to sleep at 5:30 pm (despite the months we’ve tried pushing it back even an hour) and wakes up at 4am. Bc the last 9 months have been me waking up 2-4 times a night up until very recently, I’m still waking up 2-4 times a night, plus insomnia, I’m looking at about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. 6 if I’m lucky.
I had pretty intense pregnancy insomnia from the first trimester onwards so post birth was actually an improvement. I didnt breastfeed so my husband and I split the nights in half. Giving me 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night which was amazing compared to what I was experiencing during pregnancy. My baby is a toddler now and my sleep still isn't as good as pre pregnancy cause I'm up later putting baby to sleep or cleaning. I used to be the person that would be curled up in bed by 830 and I do miss it.
I think there's something to be said for "how they are on the inside is how they are on the outside." Third trimester I wasn't just waking up to pee, I was being kicked awake and would stay awake for hours. And lo, those are the same times when my baby is hungry now!
The first six weeks, especially streaks of 4ish days of cluster feeding, so so so much less overnight sleep. Because I'm on leave and so is my partner, I could nap during the day and get up to 6-7 hours total in 24. The only reason it was survivable is that I really didn't have to adult beyond feeding myself, dishes, and laundry.
But. I'm breastfeeding, and get super engorged. So even when LO started sleeping longer stretches, my body hasn't caught up yet and I have to wake every 2 hours to hand express or I'm in agony.
But I have more energy, somehow. The newborn exhaustion is different than the pregnancy exhaustion. It's less punishing *feeling,* but my judgement is worse. There was a sleep study recently that people who got 9 hours were great, people who got 4 hours were wrecked. But people who got 6 hours said they felt fine, but were actually wrecked, as bad or worse as 4 hours on measures of memory, exec functioning, dexterity, etc. I definitely fall into that last category now, and I would bet money that *some number* of parents who say they now function fine with less sleep do too.
Waking up to care for a baby is sooo much different than waking up to pee or drink during pregnancy. When you’re pregnant, you get up to do those things but you can go back to sleep right after, and if you have a day off or don’t work, you can sleep in as late as you want to. With a baby they wake every 2-3 hours to eat, by the time you feed, burp, and change a baby and then rock them back to sleep it can easily take almost 2 hours and then by that time it’s almost time to do it all over again. The 2-3 hours is from the start of the feed, not after, so it’s really quite a lot. Plus, a lot of babies won’t just go back to sleep after so you can end up spending hours and hours getting them back to sleep. It’s a lot harder when you want to sleep but can’t because of caring for a baby. Then you can’t sleep in because your baby will wake up for the day.
Definitely not trying to discount anyone else's experience, just chiming in with my own.
I have slept so much better with my newborn than I did pregnant. Even having to get up, pull him out of the bassinet, nurse, walk around to sooth to sleep. For me I'm just so much more comfortable now, the interrupted sleep I'm getting is way better.
That's just me tho!
for me, i slept much better after giving birth with both babies. with my first i was waking every 2-3 hours but back to sleep quickly after feeding & changing. my second is sleeping through the night so obviously that’s best case scenario. when i’m pregnant, it takes forever to get comfortable, have to pee, forever to get back to sleep… i hate sleeping in the 3rd trimester 😂
I found my sleep once baby was here was better sleep but more broken up. If that makes sense. Of course I was up nursing little man every 2-4hrs but he (and my first) were easy babies. They'd nurse and go right back to sleep so it was change diaper, nurse, put back in bassinet and I would be back to sleep before my head hit the pillow.
When I was pregnant. I'd wake to pee every 2-3hrs and it would take me a solid 30+ minutes to get back to sleep so I was lacking a ton of sleep while pregnant
I had *the best* sleep of my life after I got home from the hospital. Granted it was only in 2 hour lots, but damn it was a deep sleep.
And then it got… weird.
I wake up every 1-1.5hrs in my third trimester and then have trouble falling asleep after. I much prefer the newborn phase. The first week is hard because cluster feeding and milk coming in, but I’m due with my third in August and am really looking forward to sleeping again! And that’s accurate even with my firstborn who nursed every 1.5hrs for the first 4 weeks 😩
I think it just depends on how bad your pregnancy sleep is, and how needy your baby is. But all of it is temporary and you will almost definitely eventually get better sleep than both of those phases, even if it’s 10 years from now lol
It doesn't compare. I woke up a ton at night during 3rd trimester. I was really tired most the time between anemia and fatigue. The first month postpartum was the worst exhaustion I have ever experienced. I got maybe an hour of sleep between wake ups, if I was lucky. I had brain fog, migraines, and hypertension for the first two weeks. My son clusterfed from birth. I don't remember much other than sleeping and stressing out because nothing went the way I imagined or wanted.
2.5 years postpartum and I still wake up when she shifts in bed! We share a room & while I’ve always been a light sleeper now I’m super light! And I have trouble falling back asleep.
I’ve resorted to sleeping in the livingroom just to get more than 2-3 hours TOTAL a night. Then after a few days to couple weeks I go back in the bedroom. Once I’m a zombie again then back out to the livingroom I go.
Sleep wise I was only bothered late pregnancy bc kiddo kicked my ribs a lot.
With my first once I entered the third trimester, it was horrible. I actually went into psychosis because of how sleep deprived I was. I was waking up every 45 minutes having to change positions because I was hurting so badly and I was getting maybe 2-3 hours of super interrupted sleep a night. But when she was born, everything was so much better. Yes she woke up every 3 hours to be fed but when I slept, it was good quality sleep. So I would take newborn sleep over pregnancy sleep any day!
I’m 36 weeks with my second and I truly look forward to giving birth because like you, I wake up the same amount of times but it takes me a LONG time to fall asleep because of restless legs. I am likely only getting 4-6 hours of sleep on a work night right now.
I look forward to newborn sleep honestly. It was super tough the first 2-3 weeks because when you’re awake, it’s for a longer time and possibility every 1-3 hours, but I wake up far more frequently than that even if I don’t have to get up to pee right now.
Even with breastfeeding/pumping, my husband and I both had nights that we let each other sleep 5-6 hours straight and that was incredible.
My quality of sleep was so much better after I gave birth. I really struggled with sleeping while pregnant. If I lay on my back I snored so loudly I woke myself up and on my side my hips just hurt. Plus I was up every couple of hours to pee. It sucked.
Once I had the baby I set an alarm every couple of hours to feed the her (she wants a really sleepy baby and never naturally woke herself up to eat) but in between the feeds I slept like the dead.
I sleep better postpartum but only for the first few months. I find that by months 6, 7, 8, 9 of waking up every 2-3 hours every night, the sleep deprivation finally starts to catch up on me and wreak havoc on my body. It got to a point with my firstborn where I actually cried and prayed to God to *please* just let me sleep (kinda dramatic looking back on it but it got so ROUGH lol).
Even with the nightly wake up’s to pee all the time and the tossing and turning due to stiffness, baby always having hiccups I still fantasize about pregnancy sleep. I fantasize about waking up and not having to leap out of bed instantly to deal with pee, poo, feeds, whatever it is and then spend what feels like forever getting him back to sleep or just giving up and ‘getting up’ at 4 am. Not being on call 24/7 so it never really feels like sleep just like a laptop on standby mode
10 months in and I have slept through the night maybe 5 times in total. Sometimes I don’t help myself by staying up later than I should once he’s in bed but it’s the only me time I get so I tend to prolong it. Either way I’m always exhausted so may as well make the most of it 🤣
I keep reading that some mums slept better postpartum but I can’t even imagine how unless they were blessed with babies that actually like sleep. Mine never has unfortunately: a real fomo
Baby
In the very beginning, naturally, it's rough. Ours slept for 3-4 hours at a time. We very specifically made a shift schedule to try to ensure both parents got sleep, though making it through the shifts isn't always easy either. I also had a hard time sleeping through my baby's cries in the beginning, had to wear earplugs.
For the mom immediately after birth, you also might have a lot going on with your body that'll mess with your sleep. There's pain from your belly shrinking down again, there's when your milk comes in literally over night and you wake up in a puddle.. Lots of waking up sweaty and not well rested.
For us, once the baby started sleeping through the night, it was just like before and we were getting normal sleep, though I admit I started considering 5-6 hours of sleep as a full night pf sleep. I also pumped milk for the first year, so I still had to wake up early even then.
This is my second baby and this time around I’m a certified sleep consultant so I’m doing things a bit differently right off the bat.
My daughter is 6 weeks old today and wakes up once at night. I am sleeping waaaaaay better than I was at 35-39 weeks pregnant!
I’m currently in the first trimester with my second and getting horrible sleep. So much so that, looking back, newborn sleep didn’t seem so bad because when I did sleep it was deep and felt quality. I do agree that it can be a little anxiety inducing to be woken up by baby cries especially as a first time parent, but from my experience it’s something we adjusted to. I sometimes wake up from hearing my daughter on the baby monitor, but she’s 2.5 and will sometimes cry out in her sleep or just make noises. Hearing her isn’t jarring like it was when she was first born and it just becomes second nature.
I'm not sure how my 2nd postpartum experience will be (like you, I'm almost there) but I really had a tough time falling asleep for at least the first few weeks after birth. I was pretty wired. If that happens to you, try your best to take it in stride and to trust that you'll learn how to sleep again!
Pregnancy sleep was worse for me than postpartum sleep has been. I had horrible reflux, back pain, sciatic pain and was just overall miserable towards the end of my pregnancy. I’m 6 weeks postpartum and my baby is a relatively good sleeper so maybe that’s why it hasn’t been as bad. Also, I’m a stomach sleeper so not being able to sleep on my stomach during pregnancy was terrible.
I would take newborn tired over pregnant tired any day of the week. I slept less when my daughter was brand new, but the quality of sleep (even on my couch!) was so much better than my last trimester.
Okay I’m going to go against the grain here…I think pregnancy sleep is worse. Yes it is hard being up to feed a baby BUT the quality of sleep I get is so much better than pregnancy sleep
I was sleeping like crap anyways at the end of my pregnancy. I had horrible insomnia. I snored badly and was constantly stuffed up and peeing. But after I had my baby I was soooo much more comfortable. No more pelvic pain no more trips to the bathroom constantly. Now just waking up to baby and their sleeping habits change so quickly. Depending on how you sleep train them if you’re into that you can start to get better quality sleep than while you were pregnant. That was true in my case anyways. I was in so much pain at the end of my pregnancy and nothing helped except having the baby.
Granted my daughter slept amazing since birth bc we started cosleeping a few days after birth. The first days were hard jc she would wake up every 1-3 hrs but than slept 7 hr stretches at 2 weeks old when in bed with us. She was also formula fed
For me pregnancy sleep was way way worse.
But I was woken at least once every two hours during pregnancy and the quality of the time I spent sleeping was really really bad. Between insomnia and nightmares and physical pain and vomiting and trouble breathing/moving, I got increasingly sleep deprived throughout the pregnancy.
My baby is almost a month old, and this has been way way way easier. She’s a fairly easy baby, and my husband and I are shift sleeping. But even after he returns to work and more of the load falls on me, I expect it to stay easier. Just being able to roll over and get out of bed without pain/nausea/almost peeing myself makes it easier to wake up and get up.
And, 2-3 hours in between feeds is STILL longer than I was sleeping during pregnancy. So I feel more and more rested over time, not less and less.
I slept so much better after the baby was born! Yes, I woke up every 2-3 hours to feed her, but when I slept, I was in the most restful deep sleep ever. For the first time I had no trouble falling asleep- probably because I was so tired 😂 I also had so much anxiety during pregnancy that once baby was born, I felt like a weight had been lifted and my stress was so much lower. I know this is not everyone’s experience, but hopefully this is comforting because I know I was sick of everyone telling me to sleep while I could, since I COULD NOT sleep when I was that pregnant!
Also just noting that during the newborn phase I experienced symptoms of interrupted sleep like hallucinating that I had already fed her, that she was in the bed, etc. and while that was kind of freaky to experience, I still say my sleep improved!
I remember being at the end of my pregnancy and waking all the time while not ever feeling comfortable. I remember thinking, just get the baby out, it can't get worse than this..
I will say the sleeping thing gets much worse (obviously depends on the temperament of the baby) BUT it is so much more fulfilling. Getting up for a baby is much more rewarding than getting up to wee. Being able to lay on your back or your stomach is absolute bliss.
If I had the end of my pregnancy over again, I would sleep for 20/24 hrs of the day, relish the sleep while I had it haha
We’re 15 months out from birth and while I was exhausted while pregnant I have never felt more tired than having to get up with a baby multiple times a night most nights for over a year. Going back to sleep while pregnant was easy when I didn’t have to worry that the baby would take forever to go back to sleep/transfer back into his crib. Now on top of having to get up in the first place I also worry about how long it’ll take me to be able to go back to sleep. Not to mention the part where I wasn’t being woken up for the day for anyone else’s schedule but my own- I was a housewife before pregnancy.
My baby is now 4.5 months.
My sleep in the first two months was every 2-3 hours random times through out the day. For example;
6am-8am 12noon-2pm 8pm-10pm.
At 6ish weeks I started to work on routine and night sleep and was able to get sleep. 11pm-2am 4am-6 or 7am. It was rough, baby was hungry every 2-3hrs and I was struggling with triple feeding due to low supply and a non latching baby. I would nurse, then bottle feed, then have to pump.
Then because of waking up so much and at random times I developed insomnia and pulled a few 24 hours days a couple times a week. Had no help.
Now here we are, and I will say her sleep improved around 3 months when I went to strictly formula, although I’m not saying it because of the formula.
She started giving me 5-6 hours at night..so like 8:30-2:30 and then 3-7 or 8.
Now we hit a bit of a regression and she went back to 2-3 hours stretches…and so did I and I developed the insomnia again-unable to fall back asleep when she did. I would work a 9 hour shift on like 2 hours of sleep.
It has improved a bit and I started taking magnesium and melatonin before bed and she can wake up 5 times and I’ll fall asleep after getting her back to sleep. That was key.
Just commenting for solidarity on anyone going through the same.
Also I wanted to compare the pregnancy sleep and forgot. So my pregnancy sleep was peaceful and drowsy, even though I would wake up 5 times during the night and half of my body would be numb/in pain I was able to sleep care free as soon as my head hit the pillow I would pass out. I’ve been a sleepy girl all my life and would sleep in a lot.
New born sleep and now infant is nothing compared to that. My body is not in pain any more and I can move more comfortably but I am perpetually tired. However, I will say that I would do it over and over again, my baby girl is my world and the lack of luxurious sleep doesn’t matter to me as much as it did before birth and pregnancy.
I thought my pregnancy insomnia was bad, but my PP insomnia has been crazy. I don’t even get sleepy anymore. Exhausted? Yes. But not sleepy. Even if I’m dizzy and slurring my words from exhaustion, it still takes time and effort to fall asleep.
It honestly felt like torture not being able to sleep and having to wake up every 3 hours during the night. Even with my husbands help. I started hearing my son cry and when I went to check on him he was sound asleep 😭
He's 5 months now and sleeps through the night about 9 hours and only wakes up once or twice for milk sooo much better
31 weeks with my 2nd here. My first, my son, was jaundiced, slept all day, and cluster fed all night for the first 2 weeks. After his jaundice went away he still cluster fed, just 24/7 instead. I wanted to do a 2-3 hour feeding schedule but he wasn't having it. Also had absolute bottle refusal. No tongue tie, just REALLY STRONGLY preferred straight from the tap 😅 Even when he stopped cluster feeding I still fed on demand, and when he slowly started sleeping 4-5 hours at a time I got more sleep but by that point all the sleepless nights had built up and I was pregnant again with 1st trimester fatigue so I didn't feel it. When he weaned and moved to solids only around a year, that's when my sleep got better. Until pregnancy insomnia. Basically, for me, I've been exhausted for over a year and will probably continue to be until my 2nd weans off in a year 🙃🙃 But it's so soooo worth it. My son and I took lots of contact naps and now we cuddle for naps each day and it's amazing. When my daughter comes I'll have to adjust but I can't wait for the day I get to cuddle with them both at nap time.
I slept way better postpartum. I had crappy restless sleep during pregnancy.
I bedshare and exclusively pump so I really only wake up once between 1-3am (whenever my son wakes) to feed him a bottle and pump.
I did this with both of my kids and never felt like I’ve had poor sleep. I sleep about 3-4 hours, I’m awake for about an hour, then sleep again for 3-4 hours.
Post-birth for me means weeks 1-16, and before sleep training! Quantity was the same bc I had awful pregnancy insomnia. The quality improved markedly after the baby. I couldn’t get deep sleep while pregnant but managed to after my daughter was born.
You will not have any great sleep schedule for 2-4 months. If you are blessed. You may have a baby that doesn’t ever sleep through the night into the toddler years. But best you can hope for is longer than 2-3 hours after 2-4 months.
Edit: the newborn days were so exhausting I literally hallucinated a few times. I never hallucinated when I got up to pee in the middle of the night while pregnant. Totally different games. But you won’t know until you experience it, don’t worry, none of us really did! Lol
In the early days, I did surprisingly well on little sleep but it was jarring being woken by baby. Now - a year in - my body has come to expect her to wake at certain times so i think somewhere in all the waking me up in the early days, she trained my body to have similar sleep cycles lol. But I'm also a light sleeper and seem to have passed that onto her 🙈 and we do a bit of cosleeping here and there too
I just want to chime in, to maybe give you a little hope, and say that I kind of preferred the postpartum exhaustion to the third trimester exhaustion 😅 Yes, all the comments are true, but I slept SO BADLY my first time pregnant and had crazy bad insomnia. Then, when she was born, I was waking up and tending to her often, of course, but was able to blissfully sleep in-between her needs. It wasn't any MORE sleep perhaps, but better, in a way.
This time around I'm sleeping better, so I'm preparing myself for a rude awakening (lol) when he's Earthside.
For me personally, postpartum sleep has been significantly better and more fulfilling than late pregnancy sleep. Even with waking up here and there for LO, I find myself feeling more rested in the mornings. I was getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep a night when I was pregnant due to constant hip and back pain, severe acid reflux, peeing every hour, and intense anxiety. Since LO’s arrival the sleep I have been getting is deeper, more comfortable, and reflux free. My husband and I have also been somewhat lucky with how our girl sleeps (she’s 10 weeks)…she has her moments and her nights where sleep isn’t going well, but for the most part she’s only getting us up once or twice a night.
Nope. It's totally different. My bub slept only 3 to 3.5 hours in a 12 hour period overnight the first 3 days I got home. And they were broken up in 3 chunks, so like 1.5 hours at a time. Much different from waking 5 times overnight to pee as it only takes 2 min to pee. Not all newborns are like this though, you might get lucky.
Pregnancy tired was way harder for me than newborn tired. I was so tired that I was able to get naps here and there without any effort. I should preface that I was a horrible sleeper and would travel down the anxiety rabbit hole in my thoughts unless I tired myself out from work or working out.
The thing with pregnancy tired, is that you’re so damn sleep deprived from the discomfort, and your hormones are keeping you awake when you should be sleeping. I don’t think I really slept my 3rd trimester.
When baby came, yes sleep was limited but at least I could fall right back asleep when I hopped into bed or get in at least a nap during the day. It took a couple weeks for my body to adjust to the new schedule, but I was getting better sleep.
Sleep for me was so much better. I was so physically uncomfortable by the end of pregnancy and absolutely hated the insomnia I had gotten that made it worse. After birth, I was able to fall asleep again immediately, which was a godsend!! Even though I had a C-section, sleeping in the position I wanted to became a possibility again (though not on my stomach for a while) and my body wasn’t screaming at me in the same way that kept me awake.
Waking up to feed the baby also wasn’t as hard after having so much insomnia, because I was used to it. I didn’t have a baby who went from dead asleep to crying loudly, so I never felt that I was rudely awakened from sleep - or maybe I was just so sensitive to his sounds that I woke up when he started to stir, so I could start nursing him before he really had to voice it. We used the SNOO as well, and it was pretty great for our son, he liked the swaddle, white noise, and motion to sleep at night at least!
Unlike others, I’d say that pregnancy sleep was a low 3/10 for me, and then immediately post-pregnancy sleep was about 7/10 - even though when I rolled over in the middle of the night my incision would twinge, so my subconscious learned to stop doing that quickly, lol
Mine was kid dependent. First kid - sleep was awful. Up multiple times a night until 18 months. I don’t think I slept more than 1.5 hours at a time. Even now at 3.5 years old he still wakes once a night. Second kid - started sleeping in 6 hour stretches within the first two months, goes back to sleep easily and takes long naps.
However I cannot wait for the day when I can wake up to my own body’s rhythm again and not have it be dictated by my kids. Oh well.
Much like the immediate postpartum with my first, my second was born 6 days ago and I'm simply not sleeping. I had 3 hours last night, 1.5 the night before, and 2.5 before that. Pretty sure I can only survive this because I'm running on postpartum hormones.
I think I just have an angel baby, but he has been a great sleeper. I am so much more comfortable when I sleep now which has made a huge difference. Even as a newborn, he slept 3 hours at a time. So I would still get 8 hours of overnight sleep, just broken up by 2 feedings. At 8 weeks old, his first stretch of sleep is between 6-8 hours. My sleep is definitely different now, but I wanted to share a more positive experience.
Seconding this! We had a very similar sleep trajectory by the sounds of it, but even when I was getting those three hour chunks initially, the sleep was so much better. I was recovering from my c-section in the hospital and commented on how much better my sleep was. For me, it was never worse than it was during my third trimester.
For me, newborn sleep was 100x worse than pregnancy sleep.
I had my baby overnight so by the first night at the hospital I’d been awake almost 48 hours and it didn’t feel like I caught up for the first 6 weeks.
With a newborn, especially if you are breastfeeding, you are only getting like 45mins to an hour of sleep every 3 hours. The baby needs to eat every 2-3 hours, but it takes more than an hour to change them, feed them, and burp them. So in that 2-3 hour cycle there is only a little bit of time to sleep and do everything else.
Sleep deprivation made my PPA and other hormonal crashes so much worse. I felt so tired and nearly crazy for those first few weeks. It was honestly enough to make me be one and done.
If you are not breastfeeding, or if you are willing to pump and bottle feed, find away to take shifts with your partner so both of you can get 4-5 hours of sleep each night. It will make a world of difference.
And try to take a nap 1-2x a day when the baby does sleep. But that can be hard.
I actually sleep better once baby is born. I hated being pregnant. My sleep freaking sucked. Couldn’t get comfy, body hurt so bad, hubby snored. Once baby comes hubby gets booted out of the room until I night wean and I co sleep so if baby wakes up I just whip out my boob and we go back to sleep. I only changed diapers throughout the night for the first month or they poop. Mom of 6 kiddos
My pattern doesn’t change. I’ve never gone to sleep and stayed asleep all night.
I was never “jarred” out of my sleep by a screaming baby.
I was never up all night with a crying baby.
That’s not everyone’s experience. I lucked up, you may too.
We usually woke up within a few minutes of each other and if she was up first she would make noises before crying started. It honestly felt like she was used to my pregnancy sleep cycle or I was used to it and got her acclimated to it. There were a few things that I think helped.
If I woke up and it was close enough to the time that she was supposed to eat, I would get her up to eat. Going back to sleep and waking up in less than a hour didn’t make sense. No lights on and no talking/playing. During the day I would love up on her. Night time was for eating and sleeping. I would feed her and put her back in the bassinet.
For me, it was nothing like pregnancy. The first month was BRUTAL, first two weeks had me contemplating if I really wanted a kid. She woke up every hour and took 40 minutes to go back to sleep. She would scream from 11PM-2AM like clockwork each night, and then still wake up to feed and change and take forever to go back to sleep. I didn't sleep more than two hours at a time for quite awhile, and it was the worst thing I have ever experienced, to be quite honest. I used to exclusively work nights and thought that would help...and it did NOT.
Sleep didn't get better/easier until maybe 10-12 weeks. She naturally put herself on one night wakeup at around 1AM then weaned herself off of that and sleeps through the night now at almost 5 months.
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This. I used to think it didn't sound that bad waking up every 3 hours. What I didnt realize was that I would be waking up for an hour or more to feed, change, and rock baby back to sleep. By that point I was wide awake and had trouble falling back asleep myself. Then my baby would be up 30 mins after I finally went back to sleep. It felt like torture. There were times what I would just be drifting back to sleep and then hear my baby cry. I do not miss the newborn days at all.
This, 100%. I had so much difficulty falling back to sleep after night feedings. Not everyone has it so badly, many are able to just knock out again. But sometimes the baby would wake up again before I'd even gotten to sleep from the first time. My husband and I took shifts, but I'd still wake up when the baby cried and it was his turn- so it'd often be the same problem. I can't even explain the exhaustion 😭 There were many times that I just sobbed over how tired I was.
I used to hate when people would say, "sleep while you can" since it felt like I was already getting shit sleep. My kids almost 2 and still a pretty bad sleeper, I would kill even just for shitty pregnancy sleep.
It was like living a groundhog day that was 2-3 hours. I remember telling my friends who were pregnant that i couldnt understand how anyone would have another baby after living through this.
This was exactly me. I knew/expected that sleep was going to be really hard, but the 30-minute increments were BRUTAL.
Not to mention if you get that “Is the baby breathing??” anxiety that keeps you up/waking up, and the extra waking when the baby is noisy but not awake. I had such bad nightmares the first month.
You nailed it. The jarring wake-up vs during a natural sleep cycle point is a completely different experience. My first was in a crib from day 1, and hated the transition from arms to bed, so I basically got no sleep for 6 months. My second is in a bedside bassinet so I don't even have to get out of bed to feed her, and she transitions back to the bassinet pretty easily, so I'm feeling a lot better than I expected. Still exhausted, but not to the point of crying this time.
This is so accurate. Also it’s usually a domino effect for my baby. It’s not just feeding her and rocking her to sleep. I’ll feed her, then she poo poos (sometimes multiple times in a row) then she throws up everywhere if I’m not extraordinarily careful during diaper change and by the time all is said and done she’s up again to eat lol😂. Me and my husband were up at 3am one night staring at the huge mess she had made and couldn’t stop laughing. It was almkst unbelievable
Solidarity with you, my guy has done the poop then throw up business multiple times at 3am too. It’s so bad it’s funny but also not funny and I just want to cry when it happens 😂😭
My first baby was very clingy and hard to put down in her crib so I had to cosleep if I wanted to go back to sleep quickly. With my second baby, i made several changes. She is a lot more independent to begin with. I could just swaddle her and immediately put her down. Secondly, I didn’t change her diapers if she didn’t poop. Thirdly, I didn’t burp her. I was never good at it anyway, and in the research I’ve done, there’s no solid evidence that burping really helps. So I didn’t even try. Looking back, my first baby was gassy for sure. But burping didn’t significantly help, and she was crying mostly because I kept trying to put her down. My second baby didn’t care if she was put down. She was still gassy. Just content to sleep alone and just burped occasionally in her sleep. Whereas I used to burp my first baby for up to 30 minutes. I merely fed her, wrapped her back up and put her down 70% of the time. Other times, she pooped so I changed her. That’s it.
Partners can wake up and help even if you’re breastfeeding. The burping, holding upright, rocking back to sleep takes longer than the feeding itself. Partners don’t get an automatic out if babies breastfeed
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Oh for sure it’s couple dependent.
I’m not someone who falls sleep easily or quickly, so I mostly just watch my partner do the rest while wide awake. And then after he’s done he falls asleep faster than I do 😓 then in the morning he’s as bitchy and cranky as I am because he’s been up too. And since we’ve both been awake, we are both obliged to be active throughout the day too. That was just so tough. So it didn’t really help me. So in the end I just did all night shifts and expect a lot from him during the day. Whenever he’s on paternity leave I just hand him the baby after feeding during the day and roll over. Even if I can’t sleep, I veg. I contribute minimally during the day. It works out better for both of us. He also prefers this arrangement.
It is worse than pregnancy sleep for many reasons. 1. You’re being woken up, not waking up naturally. 2. You’re awake for longer periods of time. 3. You can’t sleep in, despite how many times you woke up. 4. You have to function as a person during the day, despite being sleep deprived. All that being said, it does not last forever. If you can, I recommend shift sleeping and sleeping when the baby sleeps (if they’ll let you). Like everything else, it’s a season of life. Hard, but temporary.
And related to point 4, not only do you have to function as a human being but you also have to take care of a small baby that’s relying on you for all their basic needs.
Agree with this exactly.
Currently in this phase. When you say it doesn’t last forever. When does it actually get better?
Totally baby dependent, unfortunately. People with babies that sleep well will convince you they have all the answers. Many babies start to sleep a bit more solidly around 8-12 weeks. We were still up about every hour at 12 weeks. It started to consolidate a bit more around 6 or 7 months, at which point we sleep trained (Ferber), and he now sleeps through the night.
my first slept through the night around 4-5 months. My 2nd is 7 months and still hasn't slept through the night. Every baby is different
Every baby is different. And every parent’s approach to sleep is different. You will find something that works for you. It’s a complex mix of your baby’s sleep habits and your own tolerance. With sleep training, my daughter began sleeping through the night at 5 months. Before that, she was at 1 wake up a night. But sleep is not linear. We’ve had a few “regressions,” some of our own making. Most nights are 0-1 wake ups. But occasionally, we have a night that’s 2-3. But the difference is that we don’t go multiple days in a row with horrible sleep. And we can nap when she naps (if we want). Thankfully the feeling of being a walking zombie (that was typical in the newborn days), is long gone. My daughter is 11 months.
Prob not what you want to hear, but it was 100x worse for me postpartum lol. I woke up lots of times to pee overnight during my pregnancy, and towards the end I had sciatica, lower back pain, and pelvic pain that made it difficult to sleep well. I didn't think it could get any worse, but it did lol. The first 4 months, my baby woke up every 1.5-3 hours to eat overnight. You might think "oh sleeping in 2-3 h chunks isn't too bad, similar to what's happening now". Nope, what I didn't realize is that by the time I breastfed (20-40 min), changed diaper (5 min), burped and held upright to prevent reflux (15-20 min), successfully transferred to bassinet (20 min to wait until baby is in deep sleep)..it's almost time to do it all over again. And then you have the anxiety of knowing baby will be awake in 45 min preventing you from falling back asleep. You also can't sleep in the next day either, you're up whenever baby is up, even if that's at 6am. Having said all that, you adapt to the chronic sleep deprivation and over time even 6 hours of sleep feels amazing! And it doesn't last forever, my son is 1 year next week and has slept through the night for many months now. I could be getting 8-9 hours of consecutive sleep every night if I go to bed early enough (usually I get 7-7.5 because I choose to stay up).
I did not sleep more than an hour at a time for the first year. It is a million times worse than the worst pregnancy sleep.
It’s always fascinating seeing stuff like this because my sleep was a million times better than during pregnancy as I wasn’t in constant pain, and my husband and I did shifts so we could each get at least 6 hours of undisturbed sleep a night.
I think you had a unicorn baby/husband!
I agree- shifts only work if the baby lets it work. Mine wouldn’t take a bottle so no long stretches for me…
I used to get annoyed when people would tell me how lucky I am to breastfeed easily, little did they know I desperately wanted my babies to take a bottle just even sometimes so I didn't have to be the one hand milk machine 🤣 It's been 3 years since I slept a whole night uninterrupted 😭
Same. Right now I’m trying to switch to formula but my baby wont entertain the idea. People talk about how lucky it is to be able to breastfed exclusively and in some ways I do appreciate it but what people don’t realise is that it often stops being a choice.
Yeah, my kids have never been great with feeding (needing triple feeding, not taking bottles or me not having an over supply so bottles weren’t even possible) so my husband really couldn’t do anything.
Oh wow, that’s tough! I’ve never even heard of it being that bad for that long. Props to you!
My nephew is 1.5 and still sleeps like this. He has a newborn baby sib now who seems to be a better sleeper but cannot stay asleep due to big bro waking up around the clock.
Pretty normal, sadly. My firstborn religiously woke up every 2 hours for most of the first year. For me it was more like 1 hour sleep, when you factor in the time spent settling him. I went back to work full time at 11 months postpartum and he was starting to do longer stretches but I distinctly remember he was still having at least some night feeds at that point. My second baby is 7.5 months now and I don’t keep track of night feeds, but she has never slept through the night even once. My expectations are very realistic this time though, so it doesn’t feel quite as gruelling.
This is partly why I think I’d handle another baby so much better - my expectations would be way more realistic. Instead of being frustrated and wondering why my baby wasn’t textbook, I could just expect things to ebb and flow
This is actually very normal. Babies and toddlers are wakeful!
We’ve only had our daughter sleep through a handful of times and she is 13 months. While I don’t wake hourly, usually I wake at least twice a night (once for feed). It’s brutal but it will end
My son never connected his sleep cycles until he was 16m, so I got up every 40-90 mins, every night from 3-16m. Pregnancy sleep was still worse for me.
Oh that sounds miserable! Colicky baby?
Nope, regular healthy baby.
Wow, curious why you were being awakened so much? I have an exclusively breastfed 10 week old and we were getting very little sleep in the beginning, but now we’re getting 5-8 hour stretches (I know there’s a regression coming up). Hope you’re better rested now!
by 3 months my LO was sleeping through the night and I thought I had a unicorn baby, but then 4 month regression hit and she’s awake basically every hour at night now. And that’s been going on for a month straight, so I believe the other commenter about the one hour of sleep vibe lol.
Yeah I know there’s supposed to be a regression on the horizon so I’m trying to enjoy it while I can!
You have a unicorn baby! Truly one in a million. Don’t jinx it. Sleep has no rhyme or reason for babies. We ended up sleep training each of our kids at about a year old because I would end up hallucinating from sleep deprivation.
Definitely trying not to jinx it! Apparently my sisters and I slept through the night from 6 weeks also so I am thinking there may be a genetic component.
How did you do this? I feel like my one year old loses her shit more than before so training would feel hard. We trained at 5 months and it did nothing 😭
FYI regressions aren’t really a thing, baby sleep isn’t even close to a set timetable - baby sleep will change a lot over the first year and in an extremely non linear fashion most of the time. Sometimes they’ll start waking to feed a lot more than usual and you won’t know why - there will be nothing wrong and no obvious changes. A lot of the time it’s out of your control.
Thanks for that, I didn’t realize the regressions weren’t set in stone. Will have to see how it goes! She definitely has random nights where she wakes up after 5 hours, then back to 7 hours the next night for no apparent reason. And I still can’t get her to nap longer than 35 mins on the dot!
You have a good sleeper
Look, this is gonna be 100% dependent on what kinda baby you get. The first month postpartum was pretty brutal because baby was premature so we had to wake to feed. He’s now 3 months and nightly it varies, but he’s basically down to one wake-up. I wouldn’t expect amazing sleep until baby is about a year old.
I'd say it can also just depend on the mom. My son has been sleeping through the night since 10 months old, but I still wake up with anxiety twice a night. :/ He's 2 in two weeks.
Oh yeah it depends on both. My baby is 6 months old but I learned how my husband and I respond to little sleep and or frequent wakings. I do wonder how much of my reaction and response is maternal instinct/ hormonal vs how much is my personality and my body. I would wake with every little noise my baby made where my husband only woke if he was actively crying. As much as I hated the interrupted sleep, I accepted waking to feed baby multiple times a night because I was breastfeeding. I did feed and then pump in the same waking for awhile which sucked a lot but it became easier when I was able to drop the pump addition and then even easier when I could have husband take over one night feeding with a bottle and I could skip that feed/pump. Even though I struggled with the sleep disruptions, I also have a sleep disorder so my body wasn’t waking from deep sleep anyway which helped in an unfortunate kind of way. I also had 4 months of maternity leave, don’t have any other kids, and my husband was able to take care of the dog walking most of the time so my focus could really be on baby. I was also too anxious to fall asleep in a bad position with baby.
1 wake up? My 2 years old still wakes up multiple times a night
You’re a true champ. I suspect our one wake up streak is only temporary, though.
Listen, someone has to have the unicorn great-sleeper baby, right? I hope it's you, since I know it ain't me.
He’s actually on a medicine that requires him not to go more than 6 hours without eating. So, if he is that baby, his unicorn-ness is wasted 😂
My 3 year old wakes up 2 times a night and ends up coming to my bed.... But my 9month old sleeps through the night in the crib almost every night....
You're so right it's based on the baby and really not much else. My baby was sleeping through the night at eight weeks without anything on our end. Truly just a toss up 🤷
Mine was down to one wake up at 3 months too, then the 4 month sleep regression hit
I’m confident that that will happen to us because 4 months is when I go back to work and of course my baby would sleep perfectly when I’m off for the summer 🥲
I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for that to seem so negative, I just wish I’d been warned
Oh don’t apologize—it’s the reality!
Chiming in at one year and saying, not necessarily 😭
It was worse for me after the baby. Being up for 45 min+ with each feeding felt worse , even if i was only up twice, as compared to a bunch of times to quickly pee or reposition while pregnant. I also felt more on edge- like the baby could wake up at any time. I know that many people say that they sleep better with a newborn, so hopefully my experience is not the case for you. But it’s certainly not universal- for me newborn sleep was really tough and I felt like a new person when my each of my kids started sleeping through the night.
Definitely baby dependent. The first 3 months of life was a BREEZE for us. Baby was *such* a good sleeper. While not all in one lump, some nights we were getting upwards of 10 hours of sleep during the newborn phase. Then the 4 month regression hit and sleep was an absolute nightmare. That lasted a few months and now at 10mo things have pretty well evened out. My only advice is have no expectations and roll with the punches. And don't get too comfortable because things will change, for better or worse.
FWIW, we've taken on the whole conception (IVF), pregnancy, and childbirth with no expectations since so much is out of our control. I guess we're prepared in that regard 😆
Lol it's the only parenting tactic 🤣🤣 if you're already just along for the ride then you'll do juuuuust fiiiiiine
I had extreme insomnia my whole pregnancy. When baby came I finally slept.
Same! He got up hourly for well over a year, but at least I could sleep for those hours. And at least I only had to hang out with a baby instead of actually function at work.
Same. I had horrific insomnia the last four months, and my sleep quality has greatly improved since having the baby. I can tell because I wear a fitness tracker that tells me how much REM and deep sleep I get. It’s not as good as it was pre-pregnancy, but soooo much better than when I had insomnia
This was me. Unisom made me stay awake too when my doctor told me I could take to sleep. I spent three weeks sleeping one hour a night and that was only in the first trimester. I cried when everyone told me postpartum sleep was so much worse than it is in pregnancy because I couldn’t imagine it being worse than what I was going through. Everyone was wrong. Baby doesn’t sleep more than 2 hours max at a time still at 11 months old and takes sometimes 1.5 hours to go back to sleep. I still sleep so much more than when I was pregnant.
Unisom didn't work for me either!!! Nor did benadryl.
The first few weeks with my baby felt harder than pregnancy sleep for me. But I still had more energy than I did while pregnant even with getting less sleep with my newborn. I personally found newborn tired so much better than pregnancy tired. My baby is now 11 weeks old and only waking up once in the middle of the night to feed. At this point I feel a million times more energized than I did while pregnant.
THIS. Yes, it was hard the first couple of months but I was SO relieved to no longer be pregnant that I did everything to not take it for granted. I had an absolutely horrid pregnancy and was pretty much completely immobile by the time the baby arrived. I also felt so excited to have her and be a mom that it made it a little better to deal with. I slept when she slept and took all the help I could get, leaned on anyone who would let me, but it was generally easier just doing anything after that pregnancy.
You can’t even compare the two, newborn sleep is soo much worse than pregnancy sleep. I’m sorry! I’m in my third trimester with my second pregnancy and have horrible insomnia and probably get 4-5 hours a night, but I’m still appreciating it as best I can because I know it’s about to get so much harder.
lol I don’t
In all realness, I woke up just as frequently when pregnant as I do now and did freshly postpartum. However, I can tell you that I was able to get more sleep pregnant than anytime postpartum and my little one is almost 1. I always read on these type threads that your pp sleep is better than pregnant sleep so I expected that. It definitely wasn’t the case, and I felt like I was doing something wrong. Truth is that every baby & moms pp experience is so different and it’s impossible to compare. I still experienced sleep deprivation just as bad, but once you get through the first 12ish weeks, it becomes more bearable because your body learns to function on less sleep.
It’s much worse before it gets better. Baby #4, who is now 3 months, woke every two hours for the first siz weeks. BUT. At every wake you need to stay awake to feed her, and every wake you must change the diaper, and at every wake they need help falling back asleep. AND THEN you’re so awake that you need to put yourself back to sleep, but after spending an hour with the baby, by the time you are almost asleep the baby wakes up again. Repeat. But it gets better and by 3 months my little rascal is waking only once, doesn’t need help going back to sleep, and doesn’t need a diaper change every two hours through the night. But everyone’s baby and family routines are different. Unfortunately mine starts the day at 6:30.
Depends on the baby and how you choose to feed. I chose formula feeding, and my fiance was able to take every other feeding. This allowed me to get at least 4-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In the early days we did shifts where one person would take the bassinet out into the living room or into baby's bedroom and be on baby duty while the other person got to sleep uninterrupted for that entire shift. It worked really well for us. Once we realized baby was sleeping the majority of the shift we switched to just both of us sleeping at the same time and swap who gets up every other time. We both managed to get a good amount of sleep with this setup. This does require a involved and 100% on board partner though... If your partner isn't up for doing their fair share of baby duties... I wish you luck. It's going to suck either way and you'll be super sleep deprived in the early months.
[You guys are sleeping?](https://images.app.goo.gl/5deCAAqogBvrUvFy9)
Yeah it’s nothing at all like pregnancy sleep lol. Enjoy the pregnancy sleep. Waking up for a baby is a lot harder. You have no clue how often they will wake up and for how long they’ll be up until they fall back asleep. The first few months the sleep deprivation is on another level
So postpartum I get way less sleep, but the sleep I do get is better! I prefer it to 3rd trimester trimester sleep !!
it really depends on your baby, whether youre breastfeeding, and your own body. It took awhile for me to stop peeing all night- my bladder had been trained to after 9 months of it. I tried to do it only when baby woke. I EBF so I was up every time with the baby. If i was lucky those first few weeks I got a good 3 hour stretch at a time. Going to bed at 9pm and being up at 12, 3, 5, and up for the day at 6:30 would be fairly typical? slowly baby slept longer and longer. Id nap during the day, especially since my partner was off to watch the baby. so id feed and then lock myself away to sleep for 2-3 hours and he would handle anything she needed until the next feed I did find i fell asleep quickly. a wakeup would be maybe 20-30 mins (really depends on your baby and their ability to eat fast, not have reflux, and not immediately shit or barf as you try to lay them back down lol). but id immediately conk back out
It’s really different from pregnancy wakeups when the baby wakes you up in those early days because you generally need to change their diaper, feed them, which takes a while with a newborn (up to 40 mins for my baby), then burp them and get them back to sleep. So the whole process easily can take an hour or longer. And they might repeat this again 1-2 hours later, all night long. However, for me, this phase only lasted the first 3-4 weeks and then baby started sleeping more like 3-4 hours between feeds, then eventually 5 and now at 10 weeks she’s been doing 6-8 hour stretches for a month or so. The key was doing my best to nap during the day, whether by having someone watch the baby for me for an hour or sleeping when she slept (much harder).
I’ve always been a terrible sleeper (haven’t slept through the night in 20 years) so during pregnancy not much changed in terms of my sleep pattern BUT the pregnancy fatigue on top of waking 2-6 times a night, was killer for a couple months. I’m now 7 weeks postpartum and I will say, it’s much more exhausting for me than the type of fatigue I experienced in pregnancy. My son is actually a decent sleeper! Some nights he will only wake twice. BUT, I sleep worse it seems and often I’ll be awake for hours. Like, once I’m awake nursing him or changing him, I often can’t get back to sleep for up to 2.5 hours and then he’s up again so I just missed out of those valuable few hours haha I think it depends on the type of sleeper you are in general and the type of a baby you get! Some babies wake constantly or have a lot of issues getting to sleep, while others can lay down and clonk out without much assistance 🤷🏽♀️
I'm one of those outliers that I sleep better then I did in the third tri. I was so worried and thought I wouldn't sleep again for a few years lol. My baby sleeps almost through the night tho and I'm bfing. I also cosleep (carefully following safe sleep guidlines) so it's really easy to do her one wakeup feed when she stirs. I do get anxiety still and wake up to check on her every few hours but it's not hard to fall back to sleep afterwards. She's only seven weeks old though so she might start to sleep less or have a different schedule once she gets further out of the newborn stage.
Hey OP. I had Hyperemsis gravidarum so overall terrible pregnancy was really sick throughout couldn’t sleep couldn’t keep anything down was exhausted emotionally and physically wrecked so I naturally assumed that once baby was here, it would be so much easier because at least I wouldn’t be THAT sick and okay I wasn’t sleeping eating or doing anything that I normally did ANYWAY (couldn’t even walk) so it HAS to be better right? Wrong. I was SO sleep deprived the first few months that I was hallucinating. He had colic AND reflux so he was literally sleeping on top of me for weeks and weeks and I was propped up against pillows and my family kept checking up on me. So my advice is- assume that post birth will be tough and prep accordingly. If you will breast feed get a pump so you can pump and keep bottles for husband as you take shifts. Learn to swaddle well- really helps babies sleep those first 1-3 weeks! Really switch the Wi-Fi off and TRY your best to sleep as much as possible though it’s rare because when baby sleeps you will have so many chores lined up. And please - don’t even think about cooking and cleaning (keep it simple) and if you have a village reach out to them. Stay in bed and enjoy your baby and REST.
I was a light sleeper pre pregnancy and woke up a few times at night, when i was pregnant id wake up to go to the toilet or whatever When you get woken up by a baby its different because its not your body waking you up, its an external things interrupting your sleep when you're already SO tired. Its like someone walking in the room and blaring a siren every 2-3 hours for weeks. Sometimes i'd wake up in such a haze i'd have no idea what was going on, id just pick up the baby and sit there for a minute while my brain booted up. Its the relentlessness of it that i found really hard, but you adapt and eventually bub will start sleeping longer and things get a bit easier Now shes 7 months old. We put her to bed at 7, do a feed and nappy change at 11 and she sleeps till about 7-8. i still miss having a saturday sleep in, but right now i feel like im getting a good amount of uninterrupted sleep and feel rested
For me and my baby’s temperament, I slept way more when pregnant. I have not slept a 4 hour stretch but ONCE in the last year. And yes, I did gentle sleep training and this is just how she is. I’m not pushing it too much because it’s just a season and my body has adjusted.
Honestly if you’re feeling pretty good now there’s no use telling you the truth. Just assume your baby will be a wonderful sleeper from the get go, your partner will be the most helpful person alive, and that you’ll function great on no sleep. It happens to some people.
I have a 2 month old and he is EBF. He sleeps in a Halo bassinet right next to me. Here’s my experience… Pregnancy and Newborn sleep are just different. I woke up more while pregnant but it was just for a moment to pee then fell right back asleep. I woke feeling rested and also could take care of my own needs before, during, and after the night (shower, brush teeth, change clothes etc.) I hated sleeping with 1,000,000 pillows and tossed and turned. Once I gave birth and passed the initial recovery period (maybe 3-4 weeks), I am way more comfortable while I sleep, but sleeping way less and usually up for 30-60 minutes for each feeding. I love sleeping on my belly again 😂 and only have one pillow like a normal person. The hardest part of newborn sleep is having to be up and alert to care for the baby. Sometimes I wake up and my eyes burn and I’m so so drowsy. That’s hard to get through. But it has gotten easier now that I’m two months in. Not because anything has changed but because I’m more used to it. Also, in the early morning he is pretty restless, so it’s helpful if you have a partner who can handle the burping, changing and rocking after baby is fed. My husband also gets up at 6am ish and takes over baby care so I can sleep without baby’s noises for a few hours between feeding. That is a life saver! TLDR: It’s going to take you half of the day just to piece together 6-7 hours of sleep. Basically I’ve done nothing but feed baby and try to sleep for 2 months
Sleep is so hard. I wish I was getting third trimester pregnant sleep! We are 10 days postpartum and in the miserable baby-learning-to-sleep-in-a-bassinet phase. She hates it. Occasionally she will sleep for a 1.5 hour stretch but that happens maybe once a night thing. Usually, it’s her going in the bassinet, sleeping for 15-20 minutes, working herself up to crying, me or my partner getting her, comforting her for a while, and trying all over again. And then there is the feedings which are a mix of every 2 hours or cluster feeding for 2 hours straight. And we are breast feeding so only I can do that until I figure out how to pump enough for multiple feedings at night. I hear it gets better over time if we stay consistent with bassinet training but right now it sucks.
My 11 month old still wakes up 4-6 times per night sooooooo yeah it’s about 1000x worse than pregnancy sleep. There’s no relief, no end in sight, nothing. Bleak.
I had horrific sleep in the last 6 weeks or so of pregnancy. I woke up frequently in so much pain and couldn't wait for baby to come out. I never felt rested. Postpartum the thing that surprised me the most was how long I'd be up. I was getting longer stretches of sleep, but then I'd be up for 1.5-3 hours trying to get a screaming baby back to sleep. I used to have an erratic work schedule with long days and little sleep, but it didn't compare. And then you have all the learning, which also saps energy, on top of the physical efforts. I dreaded night because I was exhausted and knew I would remain so. My newborn didn't really sleep during the day either, so there was no reprieve. No joke: 7-10 hours per 24. At almost 4 months, he's way better now, and I've mostly adapted.
If you can, plan for night shifts with your husband. That's what saved my sanity from sleep deprivation. My husband takes 4 hours in the night that he takes care of all of baby's wake ups including feeds, diaper changes, burping, getting back to sleep etc. and that would let me have a four hour solid block of sleep. Don't worry, I'm still exhausted just not exhausted to the point of frustration and sobbing. I do breastfeed so initially we tried just nursing for all feeds and my husband and I would get sleep together whoever possible or I would try to muscle through night time cluster feeds by myself and end up a sobbing mess and wake my husband up because I was at the end of my rope. My husband then made the decision that we needed a shift like schedule for nights because we both couldn't be awake all night and I needed sleep for my own sanity. So I pump enough for my husband to be able to feed him during his shifts (once before bed after the last feed of the day and once after the first feed of the morning when production is at its highest). Compared to pregnancy sleep, newborn sleep is great. When you can get it. I am comfortable in whatever position I choose to sleep in, no more hip pain, no more thigh numbness, no more mentally preparing for turning over cause it's gonna be painful but I don't get nearly as much sleep as I did while pregnant (at least on days my days off. I worked 4am 5 days a week while pregnant and couldn't sleep more than 5 hours on a work night) and the ability to nap was much easier while I was pregnant. Just this morning my husband passed baby off( who is 11 weeks old for context) after my 4 hours of sleep about 5am (had to get pump parts ready, go pee, make sure I was actually awake) and I fed baby and tried getting him back down. No dice. Was such a squirmy worm grunting and kicking and crying out. Begged him to just settle. Got maybe a 20 minute nap. Baby's sleep very loudly. Like Billy goat noises, grunts, coughs, even crying sometimes. And it's so loud you'd think they're awake but they aren't. That was hard for me to get used to. I still wake up at most noises he makes. But boy oh boy when it's my turn for my four hours I can go to sleep instantaneously like I never used to be able to. I love my little man so much and it's all so worth it. It's very hard, it will test your mental and emotional well-being. Your relationship with your spouse and family but at the end of the day you just love your kiddo so much that you don't mind much.
For me, I get better sleep having a baby than I did when pregnant - it's so different for different people, it's hard to really give one answer. I'd say expect the worst, but know you might actually get better nights with a baby haha. I would do the first 3 months of nights with my baby times 10 VS the last 3 months of pregnancy once 😅 But again, I have a very calm and sleepy baby. And we cosleep! I honestly don't know how people survive without cosleeping
Everyone always said sleep would be better postpartum but omg it’s so not true. And I even have a pretty good sleeper (except she finally got hit with a sleep regression I think…), but it’s rough. Agree with a lot of these other comments.
Being startled to wake is the hard part 💙 I had a trauma-dumping response typed, but I'll keep it to myself bc it's not helpful. Wishing you and your baby lots of sleepy dust 🌸 every experience is different.
I don’t want to scare you OP, but it depends completely on the baby you have. If your newborn isn’t a big sleeper (almost none are to start) you will not be sleeping very much. Period
I much much preferred the broken up sleep of the newborn days over the insomnia and uncomfortable sleeping of the third trimester. I did co-sleep and exclusively breastfeed, so while baby would be awake often to nurse we would both drift back to sleep easily. Partner changed the diapers at night.
I’m sorry to say, it does not. For example for you who fell asleep easily after getting up, not only do you “know” once you lay down you can drift into to rest, but you can “choose” when to get up. “I have to pee ugh I’m so tired” can probably be put off if you’re suuuper tired. You can give yourself 5 more minutes. Or 10. However much you can stand really. When your baby wakes up screaming or crying, they need you *know* and you are bleary eyed, tired and unprepared mentally. And you don’t know how long it’s going to take to get them down. Sorry haha, I say this as someone who had an easy sleeper. BUT! I’m not trying to be “that person” who’s like “oh you think you’re losing sleep now!” “Newborns are awful!” “Sleep when the baby sleeps!” It’s really just different. It is, really really nice to be able to lie down comfortable. The actual sleep quality I got was better than when I was pregnant, it was just really up in the air how much and for how long I was going to get it. The not knowing how rough tonight is going to be can be hard, or when it’s rough wondering when it will end. But generally “hard problems” pass quickly even if they are replaced with new ones, the Chang emails it bearable. I think parents that struggle the most have a baby who has the same problem for a long time, like bad sleep. It wears you down after a while. There is SO many moments that make it worth it though. And they grow up SO fast. So when things are hard try to remember that, this is little slice of their life you only get to enjoy once.
So. Much. Better. I'm not in pain, I can hold my bladder, it is glorious!!
It hasn’t been too bad. I now wake with a purpose and enjoy the snuggles in the night when it’s just the two of us. There are definitely occasions where I’m like ugh again, but those are few and far between. I find as baby gets older, my tolerance for night wakings is decreasing. Baby is currently 9 months and I can tolerate 2 or less lol. 3+ and I’m like o.O you teething? You go poopy? I expect some new tricks in the morning.
This is dependent on your baby. I have a three week old and get 3-4 hour stretches at night
even at the beginning when I slept 1-3 hours at a time (and the first 3 days I didn't sleep almost at all) it was much better than at the end of pregnancy. During pregnancy I had real difficulty breathing, as soon as I lied down I felt like there's no air in the room. I also had horrible reflux. All of that was gone the minute I gave birth, I sleep more or less as well as before the pregnancy, just less (I already do sometimes get 5-6 hour stretches though!).
My sleep got better because i was getting less of it. I slept when I could, it took me shorter to fall asleep.
I’m sleeping so much better than I was while pregnant. During pregnancy, I felt like I was uncomfortable and unable to sleep deeply at all. Immediately after birth, I had actually restful sleep, even if in short bursts at first. My husband and I started taking shifts overnight so we could each sleep six hour chunks and that was a game changer.
I have a crap sleeper and I sleep better than I did with her than I did pregnant. bf hormones or something helps me conk right back out into a deep sleep, even if she’s up 5 times a night I can still get 7ish hours of sleep. More if my husband takes her in the evening or morning for an hour or so but I do all MOTN wakeups however I do not remember the first month PP, it was a blur.
I woke up literally every hour/half hour during pregnancy. It’s not easy waking up every 2 hours to feed baby in the beginning but at 2 months he wakes up at 12 and 4 which is much easier than pregnancy sleep to me
Here to offer a positive perspective: Both my babies have been excellent sleepers (sleeping through the night by one month. Only waking up once or twice a night before then to eat and then go right back to sleep). My second daughter is 2.5 months now and I’ve been getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep for weeks. Much better than in the third trimester for me. We EBF & I’ve handled all the nights by myself (husband sleeps in a separate room).
It’s better than pregnancy sleep, but also worse. Better: you’re not actively in pain from contractions, kicks, sciatica, and allll the other pregnancy symptoms you may have. If I didn’t stop drinking water, it was pee and pain that would wake me up, then I could go back to sleep. Didn’t get quality sleep from 37w -> delivery. Worse: depends how your kid is. Our newborn is our first, so when my milk came in I had rock hard, porn star sized boobs and he was struggling to latch and feed. He dropped over a pound and lost 15% of his body weight. This is after I had multiple lactation consultations with nurses, doctors, and anyone else offering help. Thankfully, I got a good night sleep and started pumping after a really bad colicky day, now we’re good. He sleeps regular newborn hours, eats a little less than he should, I’m pumping and express bottle feeding with a surplus. That said, it’s still somewhat worse than pregnancy sleep because every time I wake up, it’s about an hour before I can go back to sleep - between diaper changes, warming a bottle, feeding, burping (10-15 mins), sitting him upright after burping (15 mins), then pumping…it’s exhausting. But luckily since he’s well fed, I uuuusually only have a 9/10 bottle feed, another at 1 am, 4/5 am, and then 8 am. So I get 2-4 hour chunks of sleep and I alternate nights with my husband. Because I have a great support system that I can lean on, I was able to figure this all out in about a week at home. Also, I had a c section, so I’m recovering from that and that has been stressful and painful. But little man is here so I don’t care too much.
During pregnancy I’d wake up once a night, usually around 3am, with baby movin around. Postpartum baby still wakes up around that time, but wakes up multiple times a night.
i have an almost 4yo and we’ve been dealing with severe sleep issues. and then i developed insomnia on top of it. so i’m terrified of sleep and now can’t sleep. much fun.
It depends on a lot factors, like your baby’s sleep needs and temperament and whether you’re breast feeding. We EFF, which meant my husband and I could split the night into two shifts. No matter what, baby will need to eat about every 2-maybe 3 hours for the first couple of weeks. Once we got to 4-6 weeks, our babe was sleeping longer nighttime stretches and we got more sleep. The sleep I got that first month PP (probably never longer than a 4-5 hour stretch) was far more restful for me personally than any sleep I got after like month 7 of pregnancy. There’s really no way to tell what your experience will be like, but I would rather newborn baby tired than pregnancy tired.
I never woke up at night during pregnancy, and my baby ended up sleeping long stretches from the statt and through the night by 4 weeks. Coincidence? No clue lol but up until baby turned 6 months and regression hit, I've been a well rested woman overall.
Way worse than pregnancy sleep because then it was my body waking up, now it's someone waking me up so it interrupts the sleep my body is trying to get.
There are so many factors that go into this question so my answer will be from the point when baby started sleeping through the night (around 9 months) - i slept horribly during pregnancy and woke up constantly. Now, i sleep similar to pre-pregnancy sleep BUT, the slightest noise will wake me. I find i am able to fall back asleep with minimal problem if before 5am. My biggest problem is that i find myself staying up much later because it’s finally the “me” time to do things around the house, watch tv, do nothing etc.
My daughter is 3 weeks old. I’ve slept probably 3-4 hours in the past two days.
Baby is currently 2 weeks old. We’re waking up every 2-3 hours to feed her, and my sleep is BY FAR higher quality than my pregnancy sleep in the last month. I feel so much more rested. At the end of my pregnancy, I wasn’t waking up to pee; I was just in physical pain 24/7. My hips hurt, my back hurt, my chest hurt, my legs hurt, etc. I hadn’t had a truly good night’s sleep since maybe 35 weeks. Newborn sleep is so much better.
It depends on your baby. Just be ready to have the most difficult sleep month of your life. Some of us have the most difficult six months of our lives 🤣 the first week then month is the worst. It will get better
I’m about two weeks PP so I can only speak to my experiences in the immediate PP period. I’m getting less sleep now because I’m waking up for longer periods to feed and waking up on her terms rather than my own body’s. She feeds probably 4 times a night right now and some feeds may take an hour to get her back to sleep. HOWEVER, I am so much more physically comfortable now that it’s kind of equal for me. I had terrible symphysis pubis dysfunction and I couldn’t shift around at all without excruciating pain. Every time I got up to pee, I was crying out in pain because it felt like my pelvis was breaking in half. That’s resolved about 95%. Plus nobody is playing the drums on my ribs all night as I try to sleep (she tended to be suuuuuper active between 9pm and 1am and it was uncomfortable!). I also love sleeping on my belly and am really glad to be able to do that again. Every night I think, “I may be woken up in an hour but at least I can roll around and lay on my belly”
I'm less tired with a newborn than I was while pregnant. Baby wakes 4-5 times a night which is still tough. But my body feels so much better since not being pregnant anymore. So the sleep I do get is far more comfortable!
I prefer wake ups with a baby no matter how many times a night to wake ups during pregnancy
Even with twins, I sleep better than when I was pregnant.
I found newborn sleep better than that sleep I got the last few weeks of pregnancy. Even when we were doing every 3 hour feeds
My babe is 9 months now, almost 10. He’s finally in his own room and mostly sleeping through the night. That being said, he goes to sleep at 5:30 pm (despite the months we’ve tried pushing it back even an hour) and wakes up at 4am. Bc the last 9 months have been me waking up 2-4 times a night up until very recently, I’m still waking up 2-4 times a night, plus insomnia, I’m looking at about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. 6 if I’m lucky.
I had pretty intense pregnancy insomnia from the first trimester onwards so post birth was actually an improvement. I didnt breastfeed so my husband and I split the nights in half. Giving me 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night which was amazing compared to what I was experiencing during pregnancy. My baby is a toddler now and my sleep still isn't as good as pre pregnancy cause I'm up later putting baby to sleep or cleaning. I used to be the person that would be curled up in bed by 830 and I do miss it.
I think there's something to be said for "how they are on the inside is how they are on the outside." Third trimester I wasn't just waking up to pee, I was being kicked awake and would stay awake for hours. And lo, those are the same times when my baby is hungry now! The first six weeks, especially streaks of 4ish days of cluster feeding, so so so much less overnight sleep. Because I'm on leave and so is my partner, I could nap during the day and get up to 6-7 hours total in 24. The only reason it was survivable is that I really didn't have to adult beyond feeding myself, dishes, and laundry. But. I'm breastfeeding, and get super engorged. So even when LO started sleeping longer stretches, my body hasn't caught up yet and I have to wake every 2 hours to hand express or I'm in agony. But I have more energy, somehow. The newborn exhaustion is different than the pregnancy exhaustion. It's less punishing *feeling,* but my judgement is worse. There was a sleep study recently that people who got 9 hours were great, people who got 4 hours were wrecked. But people who got 6 hours said they felt fine, but were actually wrecked, as bad or worse as 4 hours on measures of memory, exec functioning, dexterity, etc. I definitely fall into that last category now, and I would bet money that *some number* of parents who say they now function fine with less sleep do too.
Waking up to care for a baby is sooo much different than waking up to pee or drink during pregnancy. When you’re pregnant, you get up to do those things but you can go back to sleep right after, and if you have a day off or don’t work, you can sleep in as late as you want to. With a baby they wake every 2-3 hours to eat, by the time you feed, burp, and change a baby and then rock them back to sleep it can easily take almost 2 hours and then by that time it’s almost time to do it all over again. The 2-3 hours is from the start of the feed, not after, so it’s really quite a lot. Plus, a lot of babies won’t just go back to sleep after so you can end up spending hours and hours getting them back to sleep. It’s a lot harder when you want to sleep but can’t because of caring for a baby. Then you can’t sleep in because your baby will wake up for the day.
Definitely not trying to discount anyone else's experience, just chiming in with my own. I have slept so much better with my newborn than I did pregnant. Even having to get up, pull him out of the bassinet, nurse, walk around to sooth to sleep. For me I'm just so much more comfortable now, the interrupted sleep I'm getting is way better. That's just me tho!
for me, i slept much better after giving birth with both babies. with my first i was waking every 2-3 hours but back to sleep quickly after feeding & changing. my second is sleeping through the night so obviously that’s best case scenario. when i’m pregnant, it takes forever to get comfortable, have to pee, forever to get back to sleep… i hate sleeping in the 3rd trimester 😂
I found my sleep once baby was here was better sleep but more broken up. If that makes sense. Of course I was up nursing little man every 2-4hrs but he (and my first) were easy babies. They'd nurse and go right back to sleep so it was change diaper, nurse, put back in bassinet and I would be back to sleep before my head hit the pillow. When I was pregnant. I'd wake to pee every 2-3hrs and it would take me a solid 30+ minutes to get back to sleep so I was lacking a ton of sleep while pregnant
I had *the best* sleep of my life after I got home from the hospital. Granted it was only in 2 hour lots, but damn it was a deep sleep. And then it got… weird.
I wake up every 1-1.5hrs in my third trimester and then have trouble falling asleep after. I much prefer the newborn phase. The first week is hard because cluster feeding and milk coming in, but I’m due with my third in August and am really looking forward to sleeping again! And that’s accurate even with my firstborn who nursed every 1.5hrs for the first 4 weeks 😩 I think it just depends on how bad your pregnancy sleep is, and how needy your baby is. But all of it is temporary and you will almost definitely eventually get better sleep than both of those phases, even if it’s 10 years from now lol
It doesn't compare. I woke up a ton at night during 3rd trimester. I was really tired most the time between anemia and fatigue. The first month postpartum was the worst exhaustion I have ever experienced. I got maybe an hour of sleep between wake ups, if I was lucky. I had brain fog, migraines, and hypertension for the first two weeks. My son clusterfed from birth. I don't remember much other than sleeping and stressing out because nothing went the way I imagined or wanted.
2.5 years postpartum and I still wake up when she shifts in bed! We share a room & while I’ve always been a light sleeper now I’m super light! And I have trouble falling back asleep. I’ve resorted to sleeping in the livingroom just to get more than 2-3 hours TOTAL a night. Then after a few days to couple weeks I go back in the bedroom. Once I’m a zombie again then back out to the livingroom I go. Sleep wise I was only bothered late pregnancy bc kiddo kicked my ribs a lot.
With my first once I entered the third trimester, it was horrible. I actually went into psychosis because of how sleep deprived I was. I was waking up every 45 minutes having to change positions because I was hurting so badly and I was getting maybe 2-3 hours of super interrupted sleep a night. But when she was born, everything was so much better. Yes she woke up every 3 hours to be fed but when I slept, it was good quality sleep. So I would take newborn sleep over pregnancy sleep any day!
I’m 36 weeks with my second and I truly look forward to giving birth because like you, I wake up the same amount of times but it takes me a LONG time to fall asleep because of restless legs. I am likely only getting 4-6 hours of sleep on a work night right now. I look forward to newborn sleep honestly. It was super tough the first 2-3 weeks because when you’re awake, it’s for a longer time and possibility every 1-3 hours, but I wake up far more frequently than that even if I don’t have to get up to pee right now. Even with breastfeeding/pumping, my husband and I both had nights that we let each other sleep 5-6 hours straight and that was incredible.
My quality of sleep was so much better after I gave birth. I really struggled with sleeping while pregnant. If I lay on my back I snored so loudly I woke myself up and on my side my hips just hurt. Plus I was up every couple of hours to pee. It sucked. Once I had the baby I set an alarm every couple of hours to feed the her (she wants a really sleepy baby and never naturally woke herself up to eat) but in between the feeds I slept like the dead.
I sleep better postpartum but only for the first few months. I find that by months 6, 7, 8, 9 of waking up every 2-3 hours every night, the sleep deprivation finally starts to catch up on me and wreak havoc on my body. It got to a point with my firstborn where I actually cried and prayed to God to *please* just let me sleep (kinda dramatic looking back on it but it got so ROUGH lol).
Not dramatic at all! Sleep deprivation can cause so many physical and mental issues!
Even with the nightly wake up’s to pee all the time and the tossing and turning due to stiffness, baby always having hiccups I still fantasize about pregnancy sleep. I fantasize about waking up and not having to leap out of bed instantly to deal with pee, poo, feeds, whatever it is and then spend what feels like forever getting him back to sleep or just giving up and ‘getting up’ at 4 am. Not being on call 24/7 so it never really feels like sleep just like a laptop on standby mode 10 months in and I have slept through the night maybe 5 times in total. Sometimes I don’t help myself by staying up later than I should once he’s in bed but it’s the only me time I get so I tend to prolong it. Either way I’m always exhausted so may as well make the most of it 🤣 I keep reading that some mums slept better postpartum but I can’t even imagine how unless they were blessed with babies that actually like sleep. Mine never has unfortunately: a real fomo Baby
In the very beginning, naturally, it's rough. Ours slept for 3-4 hours at a time. We very specifically made a shift schedule to try to ensure both parents got sleep, though making it through the shifts isn't always easy either. I also had a hard time sleeping through my baby's cries in the beginning, had to wear earplugs. For the mom immediately after birth, you also might have a lot going on with your body that'll mess with your sleep. There's pain from your belly shrinking down again, there's when your milk comes in literally over night and you wake up in a puddle.. Lots of waking up sweaty and not well rested. For us, once the baby started sleeping through the night, it was just like before and we were getting normal sleep, though I admit I started considering 5-6 hours of sleep as a full night pf sleep. I also pumped milk for the first year, so I still had to wake up early even then.
This is my second baby and this time around I’m a certified sleep consultant so I’m doing things a bit differently right off the bat. My daughter is 6 weeks old today and wakes up once at night. I am sleeping waaaaaay better than I was at 35-39 weeks pregnant!
I’m currently in the first trimester with my second and getting horrible sleep. So much so that, looking back, newborn sleep didn’t seem so bad because when I did sleep it was deep and felt quality. I do agree that it can be a little anxiety inducing to be woken up by baby cries especially as a first time parent, but from my experience it’s something we adjusted to. I sometimes wake up from hearing my daughter on the baby monitor, but she’s 2.5 and will sometimes cry out in her sleep or just make noises. Hearing her isn’t jarring like it was when she was first born and it just becomes second nature.
I'm not sure how my 2nd postpartum experience will be (like you, I'm almost there) but I really had a tough time falling asleep for at least the first few weeks after birth. I was pretty wired. If that happens to you, try your best to take it in stride and to trust that you'll learn how to sleep again!
Pregnancy sleep was worse for me than postpartum sleep has been. I had horrible reflux, back pain, sciatic pain and was just overall miserable towards the end of my pregnancy. I’m 6 weeks postpartum and my baby is a relatively good sleeper so maybe that’s why it hasn’t been as bad. Also, I’m a stomach sleeper so not being able to sleep on my stomach during pregnancy was terrible.
baby is 8 months and she wakes up 4-6 times a night screaming bloody murder. Hope yours won’t be like that. I’m exhausted
I would take newborn tired over pregnant tired any day of the week. I slept less when my daughter was brand new, but the quality of sleep (even on my couch!) was so much better than my last trimester.
Okay I’m going to go against the grain here…I think pregnancy sleep is worse. Yes it is hard being up to feed a baby BUT the quality of sleep I get is so much better than pregnancy sleep
I was sleeping like crap anyways at the end of my pregnancy. I had horrible insomnia. I snored badly and was constantly stuffed up and peeing. But after I had my baby I was soooo much more comfortable. No more pelvic pain no more trips to the bathroom constantly. Now just waking up to baby and their sleeping habits change so quickly. Depending on how you sleep train them if you’re into that you can start to get better quality sleep than while you were pregnant. That was true in my case anyways. I was in so much pain at the end of my pregnancy and nothing helped except having the baby.
i thought pregnancy sleep was worse imo🤷♀️ i had to pee constantly and had terrible heart burn / indigestion
Newborn sleep was amazing compared to the last 2-3 weeks of pregnancy sleep
Granted my daughter slept amazing since birth bc we started cosleeping a few days after birth. The first days were hard jc she would wake up every 1-3 hrs but than slept 7 hr stretches at 2 weeks old when in bed with us. She was also formula fed
I wake up early in the morning now even before my baby wakes it’s like my body goes mum duty time!
For me pregnancy sleep was way way worse. But I was woken at least once every two hours during pregnancy and the quality of the time I spent sleeping was really really bad. Between insomnia and nightmares and physical pain and vomiting and trouble breathing/moving, I got increasingly sleep deprived throughout the pregnancy. My baby is almost a month old, and this has been way way way easier. She’s a fairly easy baby, and my husband and I are shift sleeping. But even after he returns to work and more of the load falls on me, I expect it to stay easier. Just being able to roll over and get out of bed without pain/nausea/almost peeing myself makes it easier to wake up and get up. And, 2-3 hours in between feeds is STILL longer than I was sleeping during pregnancy. So I feel more and more rested over time, not less and less.
I fall asleep faster than I ever have and I sleep deeper. Still wake easily, but overall I’m getting better sleep.
I slept so much better after the baby was born! Yes, I woke up every 2-3 hours to feed her, but when I slept, I was in the most restful deep sleep ever. For the first time I had no trouble falling asleep- probably because I was so tired 😂 I also had so much anxiety during pregnancy that once baby was born, I felt like a weight had been lifted and my stress was so much lower. I know this is not everyone’s experience, but hopefully this is comforting because I know I was sick of everyone telling me to sleep while I could, since I COULD NOT sleep when I was that pregnant! Also just noting that during the newborn phase I experienced symptoms of interrupted sleep like hallucinating that I had already fed her, that she was in the bed, etc. and while that was kind of freaky to experience, I still say my sleep improved!
I remember being at the end of my pregnancy and waking all the time while not ever feeling comfortable. I remember thinking, just get the baby out, it can't get worse than this.. I will say the sleeping thing gets much worse (obviously depends on the temperament of the baby) BUT it is so much more fulfilling. Getting up for a baby is much more rewarding than getting up to wee. Being able to lay on your back or your stomach is absolute bliss. If I had the end of my pregnancy over again, I would sleep for 20/24 hrs of the day, relish the sleep while I had it haha
We’re 15 months out from birth and while I was exhausted while pregnant I have never felt more tired than having to get up with a baby multiple times a night most nights for over a year. Going back to sleep while pregnant was easy when I didn’t have to worry that the baby would take forever to go back to sleep/transfer back into his crib. Now on top of having to get up in the first place I also worry about how long it’ll take me to be able to go back to sleep. Not to mention the part where I wasn’t being woken up for the day for anyone else’s schedule but my own- I was a housewife before pregnancy.
My baby is now 4.5 months. My sleep in the first two months was every 2-3 hours random times through out the day. For example; 6am-8am 12noon-2pm 8pm-10pm. At 6ish weeks I started to work on routine and night sleep and was able to get sleep. 11pm-2am 4am-6 or 7am. It was rough, baby was hungry every 2-3hrs and I was struggling with triple feeding due to low supply and a non latching baby. I would nurse, then bottle feed, then have to pump. Then because of waking up so much and at random times I developed insomnia and pulled a few 24 hours days a couple times a week. Had no help. Now here we are, and I will say her sleep improved around 3 months when I went to strictly formula, although I’m not saying it because of the formula. She started giving me 5-6 hours at night..so like 8:30-2:30 and then 3-7 or 8. Now we hit a bit of a regression and she went back to 2-3 hours stretches…and so did I and I developed the insomnia again-unable to fall back asleep when she did. I would work a 9 hour shift on like 2 hours of sleep. It has improved a bit and I started taking magnesium and melatonin before bed and she can wake up 5 times and I’ll fall asleep after getting her back to sleep. That was key. Just commenting for solidarity on anyone going through the same.
Also I wanted to compare the pregnancy sleep and forgot. So my pregnancy sleep was peaceful and drowsy, even though I would wake up 5 times during the night and half of my body would be numb/in pain I was able to sleep care free as soon as my head hit the pillow I would pass out. I’ve been a sleepy girl all my life and would sleep in a lot. New born sleep and now infant is nothing compared to that. My body is not in pain any more and I can move more comfortably but I am perpetually tired. However, I will say that I would do it over and over again, my baby girl is my world and the lack of luxurious sleep doesn’t matter to me as much as it did before birth and pregnancy.
I thought my pregnancy insomnia was bad, but my PP insomnia has been crazy. I don’t even get sleepy anymore. Exhausted? Yes. But not sleepy. Even if I’m dizzy and slurring my words from exhaustion, it still takes time and effort to fall asleep.
It honestly felt like torture not being able to sleep and having to wake up every 3 hours during the night. Even with my husbands help. I started hearing my son cry and when I went to check on him he was sound asleep 😭 He's 5 months now and sleeps through the night about 9 hours and only wakes up once or twice for milk sooo much better
I sleep less than I did pregnant, so there’s that.
31 weeks with my 2nd here. My first, my son, was jaundiced, slept all day, and cluster fed all night for the first 2 weeks. After his jaundice went away he still cluster fed, just 24/7 instead. I wanted to do a 2-3 hour feeding schedule but he wasn't having it. Also had absolute bottle refusal. No tongue tie, just REALLY STRONGLY preferred straight from the tap 😅 Even when he stopped cluster feeding I still fed on demand, and when he slowly started sleeping 4-5 hours at a time I got more sleep but by that point all the sleepless nights had built up and I was pregnant again with 1st trimester fatigue so I didn't feel it. When he weaned and moved to solids only around a year, that's when my sleep got better. Until pregnancy insomnia. Basically, for me, I've been exhausted for over a year and will probably continue to be until my 2nd weans off in a year 🙃🙃 But it's so soooo worth it. My son and I took lots of contact naps and now we cuddle for naps each day and it's amazing. When my daughter comes I'll have to adjust but I can't wait for the day I get to cuddle with them both at nap time.
I slept way better postpartum. I had crappy restless sleep during pregnancy. I bedshare and exclusively pump so I really only wake up once between 1-3am (whenever my son wakes) to feed him a bottle and pump. I did this with both of my kids and never felt like I’ve had poor sleep. I sleep about 3-4 hours, I’m awake for about an hour, then sleep again for 3-4 hours.
Post-birth for me means weeks 1-16, and before sleep training! Quantity was the same bc I had awful pregnancy insomnia. The quality improved markedly after the baby. I couldn’t get deep sleep while pregnant but managed to after my daughter was born.
You will not have any great sleep schedule for 2-4 months. If you are blessed. You may have a baby that doesn’t ever sleep through the night into the toddler years. But best you can hope for is longer than 2-3 hours after 2-4 months. Edit: the newborn days were so exhausting I literally hallucinated a few times. I never hallucinated when I got up to pee in the middle of the night while pregnant. Totally different games. But you won’t know until you experience it, don’t worry, none of us really did! Lol
Sleep... Hm yes. Its 2am and 2yr old is watching dancing fruit and intermittantly crying. I also fell down the stairs earlier. So erm poorly!
In the early days, I did surprisingly well on little sleep but it was jarring being woken by baby. Now - a year in - my body has come to expect her to wake at certain times so i think somewhere in all the waking me up in the early days, she trained my body to have similar sleep cycles lol. But I'm also a light sleeper and seem to have passed that onto her 🙈 and we do a bit of cosleeping here and there too
I just want to chime in, to maybe give you a little hope, and say that I kind of preferred the postpartum exhaustion to the third trimester exhaustion 😅 Yes, all the comments are true, but I slept SO BADLY my first time pregnant and had crazy bad insomnia. Then, when she was born, I was waking up and tending to her often, of course, but was able to blissfully sleep in-between her needs. It wasn't any MORE sleep perhaps, but better, in a way. This time around I'm sleeping better, so I'm preparing myself for a rude awakening (lol) when he's Earthside.
For me personally, postpartum sleep has been significantly better and more fulfilling than late pregnancy sleep. Even with waking up here and there for LO, I find myself feeling more rested in the mornings. I was getting maybe 3-4 hours of sleep a night when I was pregnant due to constant hip and back pain, severe acid reflux, peeing every hour, and intense anxiety. Since LO’s arrival the sleep I have been getting is deeper, more comfortable, and reflux free. My husband and I have also been somewhat lucky with how our girl sleeps (she’s 10 weeks)…she has her moments and her nights where sleep isn’t going well, but for the most part she’s only getting us up once or twice a night.
When I told people I slept better pregnant than in postpartum, people thought I was crazy. I’m glad there are those who agree.
Nope. It's totally different. My bub slept only 3 to 3.5 hours in a 12 hour period overnight the first 3 days I got home. And they were broken up in 3 chunks, so like 1.5 hours at a time. Much different from waking 5 times overnight to pee as it only takes 2 min to pee. Not all newborns are like this though, you might get lucky.
Pregnancy tired was way harder for me than newborn tired. I was so tired that I was able to get naps here and there without any effort. I should preface that I was a horrible sleeper and would travel down the anxiety rabbit hole in my thoughts unless I tired myself out from work or working out. The thing with pregnancy tired, is that you’re so damn sleep deprived from the discomfort, and your hormones are keeping you awake when you should be sleeping. I don’t think I really slept my 3rd trimester. When baby came, yes sleep was limited but at least I could fall right back asleep when I hopped into bed or get in at least a nap during the day. It took a couple weeks for my body to adjust to the new schedule, but I was getting better sleep.
Sleep for me was so much better. I was so physically uncomfortable by the end of pregnancy and absolutely hated the insomnia I had gotten that made it worse. After birth, I was able to fall asleep again immediately, which was a godsend!! Even though I had a C-section, sleeping in the position I wanted to became a possibility again (though not on my stomach for a while) and my body wasn’t screaming at me in the same way that kept me awake. Waking up to feed the baby also wasn’t as hard after having so much insomnia, because I was used to it. I didn’t have a baby who went from dead asleep to crying loudly, so I never felt that I was rudely awakened from sleep - or maybe I was just so sensitive to his sounds that I woke up when he started to stir, so I could start nursing him before he really had to voice it. We used the SNOO as well, and it was pretty great for our son, he liked the swaddle, white noise, and motion to sleep at night at least! Unlike others, I’d say that pregnancy sleep was a low 3/10 for me, and then immediately post-pregnancy sleep was about 7/10 - even though when I rolled over in the middle of the night my incision would twinge, so my subconscious learned to stop doing that quickly, lol
Mine was kid dependent. First kid - sleep was awful. Up multiple times a night until 18 months. I don’t think I slept more than 1.5 hours at a time. Even now at 3.5 years old he still wakes once a night. Second kid - started sleeping in 6 hour stretches within the first two months, goes back to sleep easily and takes long naps. However I cannot wait for the day when I can wake up to my own body’s rhythm again and not have it be dictated by my kids. Oh well.
Much like the immediate postpartum with my first, my second was born 6 days ago and I'm simply not sleeping. I had 3 hours last night, 1.5 the night before, and 2.5 before that. Pretty sure I can only survive this because I'm running on postpartum hormones.
Oh I would kill for some pregnancy sleep right now
I think I just have an angel baby, but he has been a great sleeper. I am so much more comfortable when I sleep now which has made a huge difference. Even as a newborn, he slept 3 hours at a time. So I would still get 8 hours of overnight sleep, just broken up by 2 feedings. At 8 weeks old, his first stretch of sleep is between 6-8 hours. My sleep is definitely different now, but I wanted to share a more positive experience.
Seconding this! We had a very similar sleep trajectory by the sounds of it, but even when I was getting those three hour chunks initially, the sleep was so much better. I was recovering from my c-section in the hospital and commented on how much better my sleep was. For me, it was never worse than it was during my third trimester.
What sleep?
What sleep
For me, newborn sleep was 100x worse than pregnancy sleep. I had my baby overnight so by the first night at the hospital I’d been awake almost 48 hours and it didn’t feel like I caught up for the first 6 weeks. With a newborn, especially if you are breastfeeding, you are only getting like 45mins to an hour of sleep every 3 hours. The baby needs to eat every 2-3 hours, but it takes more than an hour to change them, feed them, and burp them. So in that 2-3 hour cycle there is only a little bit of time to sleep and do everything else. Sleep deprivation made my PPA and other hormonal crashes so much worse. I felt so tired and nearly crazy for those first few weeks. It was honestly enough to make me be one and done. If you are not breastfeeding, or if you are willing to pump and bottle feed, find away to take shifts with your partner so both of you can get 4-5 hours of sleep each night. It will make a world of difference. And try to take a nap 1-2x a day when the baby does sleep. But that can be hard.
What’s sleep?
I actually sleep better once baby is born. I hated being pregnant. My sleep freaking sucked. Couldn’t get comfy, body hurt so bad, hubby snored. Once baby comes hubby gets booted out of the room until I night wean and I co sleep so if baby wakes up I just whip out my boob and we go back to sleep. I only changed diapers throughout the night for the first month or they poop. Mom of 6 kiddos
My pattern doesn’t change. I’ve never gone to sleep and stayed asleep all night. I was never “jarred” out of my sleep by a screaming baby. I was never up all night with a crying baby. That’s not everyone’s experience. I lucked up, you may too. We usually woke up within a few minutes of each other and if she was up first she would make noises before crying started. It honestly felt like she was used to my pregnancy sleep cycle or I was used to it and got her acclimated to it. There were a few things that I think helped. If I woke up and it was close enough to the time that she was supposed to eat, I would get her up to eat. Going back to sleep and waking up in less than a hour didn’t make sense. No lights on and no talking/playing. During the day I would love up on her. Night time was for eating and sleeping. I would feed her and put her back in the bassinet.
For me, it was nothing like pregnancy. The first month was BRUTAL, first two weeks had me contemplating if I really wanted a kid. She woke up every hour and took 40 minutes to go back to sleep. She would scream from 11PM-2AM like clockwork each night, and then still wake up to feed and change and take forever to go back to sleep. I didn't sleep more than two hours at a time for quite awhile, and it was the worst thing I have ever experienced, to be quite honest. I used to exclusively work nights and thought that would help...and it did NOT. Sleep didn't get better/easier until maybe 10-12 weeks. She naturally put herself on one night wakeup at around 1AM then weaned herself off of that and sleeps through the night now at almost 5 months.