Sleep deprived and sad - My one year old keeps waking up at night

I set this blog up in an exhausted stupor so it seems fitting for me to write a post on sleep, or rather the lack of it.

I know I’m not alone when I say this, but my 11-month old hardly sleeps.

He slept well until he was 3 months and then, boom! Up every 1-2 hours to comfort nurse during the night and his naps during the day are barely an hour each.

Thankfully, most of his night feeds are brief and he stays asleep for them. But there is always one pesky one, usually around 2am, where he rouses to full alertness and stays awake for at least an hour and a half.

I'm pretty shattered. Physically, emotionally.... mentally.

Some days, like today, I’m so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. I stumble around the house in a daze with baby in tow. Stained clothes, greasy and dishevelled hair and generally feeling like rubbish on legs.

Even as I write this, this description sounds like one I have read before. New mum? Not sleeping? What’s new? But you know what? I didn’t think it would be this bad. I didn’t think it would last this long. And I didn’t think I would feel this awful.

I expected I would have snapped out of it long before now. I would feel more settled. He would be sleeping better. There would be lots more walks in parks, meeting up with new mums and sipping flat whites in coffee shops.

Why did I think that? Is it because I seem to be zeroing in on images of well dressed, well rested ‘insta-mums’? How can they look like that and possibly not be getting enough sleep? Their babies must sleep through.

I don’t know what’s going on, on the inside, but I am worried I’m going/have gone loopy. I don’t really trust my judgement anymore. Did that really happen? Did they really say that?

Even when well-meaning family members reassure me that my non-sleeping baby is, ‘TOTALLY normal’, in my sleep deprived state I translate that too, ‘why are YOU finding this hard, it happens to everyone and we all just GET ON WITH IT!’

But they aren’t really saying that are? And even though in the moment I get annoyed at what I THINK they are insinuating; I am aware I don’t fully believe it.

Sleep is an essential bodily function that we can't do without it. FACT.  Just like we can't do without food or water. So, if we aren’t getting enough of it, whatever that is for us, of course it will affect our physical and emotional well-being. That IS hard to deal with.

But what I seem to be realising (and accepting), following brief discussions with relatives, consulting baby sleep books and incessant googling is that multiple night wakings really ARE normal. Doesn’t mean it’s not physically and emotionally draining, but it is normal. At least until baby is 18-months, but often well into the toddler years from what I have heard.

Many people might say I am being a martyr for announcing my tiredness because I exclusively breast feed instead of mixed or formula feed or because I haven't tried any sleep training techniques with him.

Maybe he would sleep better if I switched to formula or gave him the opportunity to fall asleep by himself (even if it is preceded by tears). I don't know.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try. Because even though I feel really tired, I don't really feel the need to do those things. I think in my heart I know he will come to sleeping through the night and by himself when he is ready to.

Maybe that is naive, but it is a feeling fuelled mostly by instinct and partly by the brief discussions with said relatives, baby books and baby sleep internet threads.

I'm just going to wait it out.