to want to get in a night nanny

[Rhubarbgarden]

I know it's cheating. But dc2 is breaking me. I can't get him to settle after his night feeds, and last night was just the pits with him having a feed at 11 then wide awake crying till about half 2. DH and I took it in turns with the jiggling and shushing, but we are still both a wreck today. It's like this to a degree every night.

I have a 2 year old dd too, and I simply can't summon up the energy needed to deal with a toddler with this going on. I've got in extra help temporarily but dd is clearly feeling 'farmed out' and got hysterical when the nanny arrived this morning, and clung to my leg screaming mummy mummy while I was trying to rock the pram to get ds to nap - who was also crying. She's fine once the nanny has got her out the house and off to the park or something, but she's getting increasingly upset on a morning when she realises it isn't a 'mummy day'.

I can't keep going like this. I'm worn to a thread. I remember it being hard at this stage with dd but we got her sleep trained eventually and then it was fine. But I just don't have the mental or physical reserves needed for it this time, so I'm sorely tempted to get someone in to do it, just for three or four nights, to let us get some sleep and get on the right track. But it feels like a cop out...

Valium, you don't know what the OPs couch is like and she's exhausted. It's really not safe.

Then neither is co sleeping bumble

Oh Rhubarb it's so hard when like this.

I totally agree that if you had family here you would have them.

But if you don't, like I don't, then paying for it is just what you do next.

You can always put baby in a sling and kip on the couch if needs be.

I definitely advised not to sleep on the sofa.

But why? Everyone I know and have ever known has done it , you feed baby get settled and have 40 winks

I'm not talking about lying down with baby next to you on the sofa, just to be clear.

They said something about the relative depth of sleep.

That a baby needs to be a little bit less in a heavy sleep. And when inclined that way and very snuggled and relaxed it is heavier.

Valium, sleeping on a couch is not the same as co sleeping safely in a bed. It isn't recommended. There have been a lot of very sad stories about babies being suffocated on couches.

How is that different from being in bed though?

I didn't get the same advice with ds1, and there's a photo of dh with him as a newborn asleep on him. Either relatively new advice or they forgot to say anything.

But then when I had my second I remember thinking oh blimey!

I am talking, feet up, almost sitting up with baby on chest - hard to go to into a deep sleep like that but you can certainly have a good rest.

everlong sleeping on the outside ?

Just to add a bit of personal experience in case that helps - my sister had a baby similar to the OPs in that he was a terrible terrible sleeper and she had unbroken sleep for months on end (as in awake for much of the night and difficult to settle in a cot during the day) and she similarly had another child's emotions to deal with during the day (as well as a nanny). My own first dc used to scream for three hours every night (colic apparently) and woke up at least three times in the night for the first 12 weeks, so I do know the difference between a very wakeful baby and one that has a real problem with sleep!

For her, the sleep deprivation was so bad it led to severe depression to the point of hallucinations.

She also thought she 'should' be the only one to mind her baby in the night, and it would be irresponsible and copping out to have help - she is both a stoical 'non-shirker' type and felt she should be personally involved with all moments of her children's waking hours.

Having witnessed the effect of severe sleep deprivation on someone I know so well, I think some of the more martyred comments are a bit misguided.

At four weeks, the OP should grab all the support she can get/afford. Whatever about sleep trainability or not, this is a flash point for PND.

Sleeping on the sofa is dangerous. Co-sleeping in bed when done properly is not. Lots of cases of babies suffocating on a sofa. There was some research done a few years ago which said that 50% of cot deaths were due to co-sleeping which made a big hooha on the news at the time, but if you read the research co-sleeping included sleeping on the sofa too, and it turned out all the cases of deaths were on the sofa or in bed where a parent was on drugs or drunk.
Sorry you had a bad night OP. Definitely not normal for babies to cry like that. Hope you find some solutions soon.

At four weeks, the OP should grab all the support she can get/afford. Whatever about sleep trainability or not, this is a flash point for PND

completely agree

It is different Valium. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/16/sudden-infant-death-syndrome-children here]] is an article about it.

"Fleming has a particular reason for worry. The study showed that sleeping with the baby on a sofa really is a risk. Yet seven of the parents whose baby died say they had gone to the sofa to feed, aware that bedsharing is said to be dangerous, and had fallen asleep.

"Any advice to discourage bedsharing may carry with it the danger of tired parents feeding their baby on a sofa, which carries a much greater risk than co-sleeping in the parents' bed," says the paper. "Anecdotally, two of the families of Sids infants who had co-slept on a sofa informed us that they had been advised against bringing the baby into bed but had not realised the risks from falling asleep on the sofa."

From the FSID here "Previous studies have demonstrated that falling asleep with your infant on a sofa increases their risk of dying suddenly and unexpectedly by 50 fold. "

I'm glad that nothing happened to your or your friends' babies Valium but I really wouldn't be recommending it.

I do admit to having slept on the sofa, sitting up, with DD on my front, in a sling though. Although I did wake up at the slightest movement from her.

Thats the same study bumbleymummy that I was referring to!

We've always napped with baby lying on top of us. My understanding about the advice about not sleeping with baby on sofas was about falling deeply asleep, baby on one side maybe - basically about risk of suffocation. With your first, getting 40 winks with baby lying on you is a great strategy. With your second, you might not get the same opportunity, but if it arose, I'd not waste time worrying - shut your eyes and recuperate!

Also, my own experience has been that letting baby sleep after feeding in those first few weeks didn't set us up for problems later. People told us it would, I ignored them (one advantage of being an older mum is that you know you don;t have to listen if you don't agree!) and we were all fine. Mind you, I accept that I had easy babies.

Ok, perhaps don't then even though I STILL can't see the difference really

Someone tell me why you don't feed a newborn to sleep

No idea Valium. I fed both of mine to sleep (in bed ). I think people worry that it will mean their baby will never go to sleep on their own or something.

What babies do when they are 4 weeks can be completely different from when they are 4 years old - you just do what you do to get through the day ime, and it seems perfectly natural and normal to feed a baby to sleep so they are nice and full and go to sleep and you can nap on the sofa