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Original poster

8 week old baby. When does it get better?

77 replies

265IceCream · 18/10/2024 14:23

Please please tell me when I will get slightly more sleep? I thought we'd have it down by 8 weeks but I'm actually sleeping less now than at 3-4 weeks. He sleeps longer stretches (4-5 hours at night) but he SCREAMS 8-11pm and I'm so wound up, I can't fall asleep right away. He also gets very loud (grunting, thrashing about) in the last 1-2 hours of his sleep. Then by the time I have fed him and held him up long enough (he has reflux), it's 6am when he goes to sleep again but I can't. It's morning and I can’t just sleep. I try, I really do.

Then when I could nap in the day, lunch time onwards, he's wide awake.

There's nothing wrong with the baby other than some wind and reflux.

I KNOW every mum probably goes through this. But I have no mum friends. I'm the first in my friendship group to have a baby (I'm 34 so not exactly young). Any mum groups require driving and I can’t do it all by myself (faffing about with the buggy, car seat, too much faff). I feel too tired to drive safely.

OP posts:
Dumptytree · 18/10/2024 14:34

Full sympathy. I know its awful, cliche but are you sleeping when they sleep? I had a next to me crib and my other half knew all I was doing was keeping me an baby alive, bare minimum. I let sooo much go

Things like car seat and pram do get easier with practice. If your friends don't feel comfortable babysitting would they help out in other ways? Any family?

YonderTweek · 18/10/2024 14:30

Ohhh it's so hard isn't it. Mine was colicky and when he was that age I felt like I had made a massive mistake and wanted to go back to work! DC would not sleep longer than 45 minutes and I was tearing my hair out. I do remember saying to someone that having a newborn was hard work, but that "it was worth it", and DC was around 10 weeks then, so I must have had a little bit more sleep at that point and felt more positive. 😂Mine was such a bad sleeper but by around 5-6 months ish I feel like I was more functional. It was a slog, but by the time DC hit 10 months, they were somehow sleeping 12 hours a night, and 2 x 2-hour naps in the day. It was bloody glorious! Since then it's been ups and downs, but things certainly got better eventually.

Good luck! It's hard but it WILL get easier. :)