How did you ever get any sleep?

You don’t. And yes, my babies slept with me. I know there is controversy about that now but this was 30 years ago.

(I have 3 kids) My wife breastfed and we co-slept, so there was no real reduction in sleep. It was a very minimal adjustment.

We both shared the middle of the night feedings/changings, was a breeze, it works out just fine.

Keep in mind that there are things you can do to improve the sleep you do get, and how you feel after that sleep.
– Note that the placebo effect applies to sleep. This won’t be entirely useful because you will be unable to trick yourself. But just keep in mind that there is a belief component here that influences how you feel when you “wake up” and how you perform throughout the day.
– Avoid trying to “get just a few more minutes” of sleep. There are issues related to sleep cycles that apply to snooze buttons. You will feel worse if you try to just get a few more minutes.
– Try to avoid looking at the clock. There are new parents who monitor their sleep: “I slept from 12am to 1:00am, then from 2:30am to 3:45am, etc”. The problem here is that you are telling your body how tired it should feel, rather than just going on with your day.
– This is temporary. The pup will be sleeping through the night soon. Do not get panicky about your lack of sleep. If you are up and can’t get back to sleep, see this as an opportunity to catch up on some reading. Or meditate.

We both used to work out a schedule which allowed both of us to rest and care for the baby. Sometimes I used to sleep when the baby sleeps. For some months I had to ignore most of the household chores. For the first three months she used to sleep the whole day and stay awake at night. I still remember how I used to hold her and walk around with her till she goes to sleep, this usually works. If not I pass her to my husband and let him try to soothe her. Between the two of us we can usually calm her down after while.

@hominid Oh, I know I’ll be fine. This question isn’t about me. There’s a big difference in a puppy and a kid. He isn’t able to wear diapers, which would solve everything! Just kidding. It just got me thinking that I could never be a single mom, and reaffirmed I have no interest in children.
then again, a baby doesn’t wake up and run all over the house chewing everything…

How is little OdaKota doing besides keeping you up?

I had a healthy supply of ear plugs and let the babies cry themselves to sleep and the puppy we just put her in her crate and covered her with a blanket. Usually it was just a matter of a few days before all parties were sleeping through the night.

We had one baby who was very hard to settle at night. He would cry for hours unless he was jiggled. We took turns holding him and jiggling and walking although I was the only one who nursed…It was a hard few months until it passed.

My daughter slept all night from Day 1. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and looked in her bassinet, and wondered “Is she alive?” She slept from midnight to 5:00 a.m.

I recently got two kittens and they would fly all over the room all night long. I had to cover my head with the blankets so they wouldn’t land on my head. Then I locked them out for a few months. Now they sleep all night, too, like the older cat.

@GloPro Are you crating him at night? You might want to consider that.

My son is five and a half.

So I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in… six years?

Hubby was deployed for a few months and I did a lot of it on my own. She would eat every 2 hours and it would take an hour for her to drink 3 ounces. Because of our financial situation, I went back to work 2 weeks after my daughter was born. I was completely sleep deprived and it wasn’t uncommon to find myself nodding off at work. I don’t know how we made it through. This was a contributing factor to why my daughter is an only child.

@jca My daughter didn’t sleep through the night until she was a year old. Kinda hating you right now. ;)

When my kids were really little, they would sleep in a bassinet on my side of the bed, and in the middle of the night I would take care, if possible, If not, I’d have mom feed them without getting up.

We also took turns, which made it easier. And we learned to sleep when baby slept.

@janbb Yeah, he’s crated. He’s too young to sleep through the night, so I’m getting up twice just to take him to pee. He’s actually very good about crying, and hasn’t messed up inside.
But I feel like a kid would be like @Seek said… Never sleeping again. Whew. Those of you that said it wasn’t too bad either don’t need a lot of sleep already or were lucky!

Nursing my guys saved me time and energy; lean over, pick up bundle from bassinet next to bed, suckle, turn bundle over to husband every other time for diaper changing. I learned to sleep and nap when they did the first year. Baby number two was1000 times easier, though.

Still, during the crying jags, the colic, and the teething, we just soldiered on. My eyelids felt gritty for months.

Of course, for the first year with each of them, I stopped working and had a very helpful mother-in-law near-by. She would have been less interested in a puppy.

(It would not have been a good year for sailing across the South China Sea in IMHO.)

@GloPro As they say to new parents, it will get better.

When my daughter was a baby we would take her for a drive in the car if she couldn’t sleep. Usually though, it was me who stayed up with her because I was a stay-at-home parent and my partner worked. My daughter would sleep during the day and so would I.

One day when she was about three months old I decided enough was enough and moved her into her own bedroom instead of having the cot in our room. She slept through ten hours that night, and that was it, she rarely woke or cried in the night at all after that. We were very lucky.

My experience is exactly the same as @hominid. 3 kids. 2 were good sleepers, my step-daughter has never (to this day) been a good sleeper.
She took the care of four adults who took shifts because she would sleep in only 15 minute snippets in a vibrating bouncy chair for most of her infancy. (We think it was because of medication her bio-mom took during the pregnancy.)
I breastfed the other two – and sometimes we co-slept. We also worked out an arrangement where if the baby woke in the night my hubby would bring the baby to me in bed, I’d nurse him/her and sometimes we’d fall asleep together, and sometimes I’d put the baby back in the crib. That helped a bit. (Or maybe we just both ended up equally sleep deprived? Misery loves company?)

Still, with each of the kids, we didn’t get a good night of sleep until they were about a year old. I have many stories about things I did while I was sleep deprived – but it does get better…just like with your puppy.

@jca

“I recently got two kittens and they would fly all over the room all night long. I had to cover my head with the blankets so they wouldn’t land on my head. Then I locked them out for a few months.”

Did you lock them only out of your bedroom or out of your entire abode?

@Brian1946: I locked them out of the bedroom at night, until recently. They’re now about a year old and can be in the room at night resting nicely and quietly.

I read an interesting article today that suggests there’s more to babies’ night-crying than we might think. The little scamps are doing it on purpose to make mum and dad too tired for sex

^ Mission accomplished.