My ds is a terrible sleeper. Incredibly difficult to get him to nap in the day - maybe the odd 30 mins with lots of patting from me in his cot, or a bit longer in his buggy but he always wakes up if I stop. As a result by the end of the day he is totally overtired and fractious. Usually manage to get him down about 8,30pm (after an hour or so of trying) until maybe 11 if we're lucky, and then again for another 2 1/2 hours, if we're lucky. Then from around 2/3 he wakes every half hour/ 45 mins until the morning and cue napping problems again.
He has also always been a terrible feeder - I'm bfing (apart from his 10/11pm bottle which is either FF or EBM - makes no difference to the length of time he sleeps just a question of whether I had any time in the day when he didn't need me to express...)· Every feed is a fight as he pings on and off, shouts and me and then roots desperately. As a result, its very difficult to tell if he's had enough - our feeds go on for an hour at least because of all this shenanigans - and he's often doing his tongue sticking out thing at the end, even if I can't get him to feed any more. I've seen lactation consultants who have variously told me I have a too fast lset down, too slow or everything is fine. His weight gain is huge (up from 50% percentile at birth to 91% now) and he has plenty of wet and dirty nappies.
Needless to say the cycle of feeding/ fighting and then trying hard to get him to sleep is absolutely exhausting. I think I could cope with one or the other but both is SO hard.
What I'm not clear about is if the two are related? Hes more difficult to feed when hes overtired, but is the feeding linked to his sleep problems, or is he just a poor sleeper?
We gave him a bottle of EBM at the weekend after a bf, which he drank down hungrily (he doesn't always if you offer him a top up), and then slept through a whole two hours. Utterly unheard of.
If giving him a bottle will help him sleep (again regardless of the contents - rather the method of delivery) then I am seriously thinnking about switching from the bfing as I can't stand the fights for much longer. But I don't wnat to give up if the two are unrelated and I end up not bfing, and still with a non sleeping baby on my hands.
Any advice? Is he still too young to expect any sort of routine (apart from a bad one..?). Sorry about the length of this post - just realised how much I need to get it out in the open and vent. People just keep on saying that since he's gaining weight, he's fine and he's just an 'alert' baby that doens't need to sleep much (especially my MIL). I KNOW thats rubbish..!
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6 week old - terrible sleeper - link to feeding??
33 replies
Suchanamateur · 28/04/2010 10:50
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