Never thought it would be this shit

[Mississippilessly]

I'm currently standing on my own driveway. DH is inside watching The Chase. I am rocking our very over tired baby who has gone to sleep after a walk but keeps coming to - I know if I go inside where there is warmth and light he will really wake up.im standing here so I can use my wifi.
His night sleep is broken to say the least. 3 wake ups is great. We often wake every hr. He is 15 weeks old. I am so so tired. I am so tired of trying to figure it out. So tired of research. So tired of spending my life trying to get him to sleep. So tired of making so many decisions every day - do I try to keep him awake longer/ do I try crib or sling/do I try to carry on doing things or just give in and live for his naps.
I never imagined it would be this hard or this absurd.

Can you co sleep? I used to bf my son and co sleep.

There are ways of doing it safely and might allow you some longer stretches of sleep.

You're doing so well, it will get better but it's so hard at this stage. DD was a "wakes every 45 minutes" baby and I think I spent 90% of her first year reading baby sleep advice on the internet None of it helped. What did help was mastering safe co-sleeping, and accepting that this was normal baby sleep and would improve in time.

Your post at 16.37 made me properly LOL, my Doc's are all over 23 so I have no advice, sorry!.
If you need a laugh, read the first sentence again.

If you can get him off the sling and into the pram, I followed the old school/Scandi approach and left mine sleeping in the back garden during the day. Presuming you have a safe space to leave him, that is and it’s not pouring down with rain!

15 weeks is HARD. You’re off the post birth happy cloud, exhausted and the baby is still a little, dare I say it, boring. But you’ve got this!

I just remembered the only thing guaranteed to make DD sleep when she was little. Going out some where so I could not fucking sleep too.

Co sleeping doesn't seem to work. If i put him on his back he wakes. We have a snuzpod, me keeping an arm on him seems to work.

albert I'm really tempted to try this.

Don't be afraid if he grizzles himself to sleep. I always did naps in cots from the word go, and mine would often grizzle until they settled but once asleep, they stayed that way. I used to leave the radio on quietly so they weren't distracted by background noise.

It's horrendous to be so sleep deprived, but once he's a teenager you'll lament these days when you can't get him out of bed. Keep smiling

My DD is a teenager now. I BF for a year but v quickly inserted a bottle of formula at 7pm every night (BF rest of time). The Health visitor told me the Formula is heavier in baby’s tummy and likely to sleep for longer. No idea whether that’s true but it worked for us! Also gave DH a chance to take over that feed.

The thing that helped me get through these times was thinking of a;l the other women, all over the world, speaking a myriad of languages and coming from all kinds of cultures, societies and ethnicities, all rocking their boobie babies, doing their very best.

‘This too shall pass’

(But in the meantime, do try and get to some local parent and baby groups, having a community network is such a powerful thing)

Ah I feel your pain.

We tried all sorts of madness/nonsense with our PFB as we were so desperate for sleep.

None of it fucking worked.

With our second, she was EVEN worse if possible?! Oh she was.

We had silent reflux, tongue and dairy intolerance to deal with. But what helped was just accepting that all the books about routines were just a tool to make me feel inadequate.

Stop researching, you’ll drive yourself mad working out possibilities.

Go inside. If he wakes, he wakes. A new day tomorrow.

With my second, she got better at naps and settling because I had to leave her every now and then to deal with toddler. I also had to feed and cuddle her to sleep more than I would have liked because of said toddler (easier to stick a baby on the boob at bedtime).

So basically I’d feed her to sleep then put her down and do my thing for a bit. It was kind of like sleep training but not really as I’d be straight back ASAP.

But in short - life had to go on. So try that for a bit. Yes have a loose routine - wake at the same time every day and aim for bedtime at the same time as if you had an older child. But as babies change so quickly (as I found more believable once I’d had another baby), there’s no point getting too hung up on things.

This Too Shall Pass

I had 8 months of sleep deprivation... then suddenly baby slept. He's nearly a year now and it is so much better being able to sleep. You will get through it, and if you are like me you will look back with rose tinted spectacles lovingly thinking of those relaxing times when baby was breast feeding and all cuddly and sleepy.

If you’re tempted to use the Scandi approach, suggested by Albert, but nervous, are you able to get baby listener/camera set up so you can keep an eye, while being in the house? It might even be worth getting one of those security cameras set up that links to an iPhone/iPad that you can have running. It could give you a bit more confidence.

Good luck OP.

I felt exactly the same when DD was that age, you have my sympathy. I was constantly googling 'how to get baby to sleep'. Everyone tells you what a wonderful time it is and i just wanted to run away. It does get better. Keep going

Oh OP I remember it so well.

I actually did hospitalise myself to get some sleep. I was living overseas with very expensive private health insurance. When ds was about 15 weeks I had very bad stomach pains and my doctor told me to go to a&e. I knew it was most likely trapped gas or something. I was so happy to lie in my little cubicle for hours. When they came to tell me there would be a few hours delay to get a scan I was over the moon.

It’s really hard but everything passes. Enjoy the tiny moments of pure joy even though they take hours and hours of hardship to earn xxxx

I think with first babies particularly they often sense our anxiety around them sleeping which makes them anxious and less able to sleep. It’s a horrible vicious circle of anxiety and tension and sleeplessness. I used to take my DD for long pram walks at night in the pouring rain just so she would sleep and I could cry unseen.

Ignore as much housework as you possibly can and just concentrate on feeding and loving your baby, sleeping when they sleep and getting a shower every day. The rest of it will fall into place as they get older.

Stop trying to get him to sleep during the day - leave him to fall asleep if he needs it. The less sleep he has during the day, the better he will be at night.

"This, too, shall pass."

I read that on MN many years ago when dd was a baby. I have said it to myself so any times! It helped me, anyway.

You shall sleep again, but it's hard at first, no pretending it's not. You'll be OK.

jux my mantra!

deep thank you, but I just dont believe that's true. He needs naps. He gets seriously overtired if he doesn't nap. If I just carried on with my life regardless he would never sleep as he doesn't just 'drop off'. He needs help.

@DeepanKrispanEven the total opposite applied to both my children. More sleep = more sleep at that age. As for "leaving him to fall asleep if he needs it" with my first, that literally never happened. He would dissolve into a screaming tearful mess. But never sleep.

This was me too and I think researching it all made me feel worse. It does just get better, slowly but better.

@DeepanKrispanEven

I’m going to take a wild guess.
You don’t have children or it was many years ago that you had young babies?

More sleep cannot possibly lead to more sleep. Take that to its logical conclusion and we would leave babies to sleep 24 hours a day. Children are progressively developing from the moment they are born and progressively need less and less sleep as they get older: trying to force them to sleep a defined amount every day will always be counter-productive, and fails to recognise that they need an increasing amount of time awake in order to learn. Different babies need differing amounts of sleep.

By letting them fall asleep, I mean things like making use of the natural tendency to fall asleep while feeding or when being walked in a pram or pushchair, which never in my experience resulted in the baby dissolving into a screaming mess.

Op you have my sympathy. Dd2 is 18 months and we’re averaging about 3 hours per night sleep and the odd hour here and there. It’s incredibly hard when you look at your life and think about all the plans you had but are too exhausted to do. You just need to remember that it’s a phase and will eventually pass x

Babies most definitely sleep better at night if they have slept in the day!