To ask for reassurance that dh and I won't die of sleep deprivation with newborn ds....

[Wigglewoo]

Or at least any tips for coping with it?

Ds is 9 days old. He is formula fed and feeds every 2 hours, day and night. Sometimes he might go three hours but yesterday he woke every hour for about 5 hours having an oz and going back to sleep again!

We have a dd aged 9 (so big age gap- this is dh's first baby, dd is mine from previous relationship). So I have forgotten what is "normal" - although I suspect this is- and dh is new to all this. So most of the time we are sitting there in a babyfog shrugging at each other without a bloody clue what we are doing.

Ds seems to have wind. So we burp him. So nothing comes up. Not even sure if we're burping him properly! He falls asleep in our arms, we realised if we swaddled him we have more chance of being able to put him down to sleep but often he wakes up. Yesterday he was sick twice after we put him down- I'm guessing trapped wind maybe. Dh changed ds and the moses basket soaked with sick at 3am. Nice. :) ds then had a bottle and went down till 6am- longest sleep yesterday.

We just feel so clueless about everything. And so fucking tired :( I'm lucky that dh is on leave for the next 2 weeks but he is suffering with a urine infection and I am recovering from my caesarean for placenta previa (which was undiagnosed until they opened me up!!!another story!)

We are just so so knackered and not sure what we are doing with burping, feeding, sleeping arrangements - ds is in with us as per the reccomendations but he's so noisy (not upset noisy but just fidgets in his sleep, coos etc non stop random grunts - he's asleep but we're not!!!)Dh thinks thismeans he's waking p and nearly got up to him at 2am last night but I said maybe wait as he's still asleep and he went till 3ish..

Just to be clear, of course I'm not expecting a tiny baby to sleep through or any thing silly like that.... Just wondering how others cope with a newborns sleep patterns. Neither dh or I can sleep during the day, just can't. And struggling to instantly sleep when ds goes down to get the full 2 hour block!! Dh is particularly struggling. I am a bit better at it.

It wasn't so long ago we were both sleeping all night and its been like a bomb going off having ds although he is absolutely lovely :)

We are also finding even though we are taking turns with night feeds that as ds is in our room the other person is being woken up anyway! So might as well be doing all of it!!

We do take turns one of us doing the first feed of the night downstairs so the other gets a head start and as dh was up cleaning sick at 3am I have taken ds downstairs with me this morning to give him a lie in....

Any ideas re winding / sleeping / surviving appreciated!!!!!!

Oh yeah, Reflux-remember it well!
I used to prop ds on his side with blankets, which helped a bit. Ok, I know they should sleep on their backs, but Miriam Stoppard said it was OK.
As soon as he could roll over onto his tummy, he slept much better. Some babies just hate being on their backs, and reflux doesnt help.

true Katespade...but I also used to tell myself over and over "tonight will be better".

I also found my body got better at coping with it. In fact OP - got much much better at 3 weeks which is only just over a week away... :)

Oh me too. I used to go to bed really positive, then cry at the wide 4am wide awake baby. Phew, look how many other great things we have to look falward too. Toddler tantrums, school nits...

oh yes Katespade.... I used to wake up and refuse to look at the clock and "guess" the time based on light through the curtain, traffic, birds and tell myself it was nearer 5am...

then, magically, you wake up one day at 6am and baby has slept through (trying to cheer OP up here...)

It's the closest you will get to knowing what it is to be a Zombie. But it will pass. What is critical is to get sleep, given you are FF you need DH to take 2 feeds in a row to get 6 hrs yourself.

Thanks all ... We sleepwalked into town and stared at a costa coffee for half an hour in a daze before purchasing some infacol and cow and gate comfort milk... Since then ds has napped for all of an hour (4pm till now!) And fed on and off taking about 6oz over that time in total... !

He's literally only just gone down in the moses basket in a proper sleep after dh and I walked the length of the living room with him 60000 times....

We'll see. Thanks loads x

Oh yeah, and I would say-ditch the moses basket and get a cot. Moses baskets are really hard and uncomfortable imo.It may help-who knows..

I kind of don't get why you all went into town together ... tag team! When one of you is with the baby, the other one should be sleeping!
And I say this as someone who did what you are doing alone-it nearly killed me, so not bragging here, but I would have given my left tit to have had the chance for a sneaky sleep!

Take my hat off to you NowThenWreck - don't know how you managed it alone..

but i would also say that sometimes you want things to feel normal in all the chaos. Sometimes I should have gone to bed but I'd want to phone a friend/check emails or my whole life was about trying to go to bed.

my DDs sleep was transformed by getting rid of the swinging crib with its thin little matress and putting her into a proper cot with the thickest, comfiest matress we could afford

Congratulations Wigglewoo and you have my sympathy regarding the sleep deprivation.
My DS is now 14 and I can still remember how awful it felt to get so little sleep when he was little. Our little bundle of joy didn't sleep for more than an hour or two at night. I really wish that I had sent DH to the spare room (I was BF) but I think in our sleep deprived minds it just never occurred to us to split the sleep. We didn't get much sleep for 12 weeks as DS has colic - he cried all day and all night.

I remember people saying it would pass in a few weeks/months etc. but to be honest that didn't help, the thought of it lasting any more than a few hours was bad enough! However at exactly 12 weeks of age he stopped crying all the time and we got a little more sleep. 14 years later I still wake up in the morning and rejoice at the fact that I got a full nights sleep!!

I like a lot of suggestions here especially taking shifts at sleeping and using ready made formula for night time feeds.

Good luck with trying all the suggestions you've been given and hang in there!

For the love of god woman, I implore you to get some of this shizzle yes it costs a bomb, and yes the ginseng or something in there will add to the lightheadedness for a day or two but after that, you're seriously operational!

These supplements got me through the first three months after my second birth with far more energy and dignity than the first time round. No more weeping in supermarkets and people telling me I had a breast pad stuck on my arm. Sadly they don't do one for dads so he'll have to try a Berocca or some Pharmaton or something!

Lots of brilliant advice on here for coping with logistics, but trust me, Zita is your frieeeeend....

Big congrats x

p.s. feeding on a pillow means when they fall asleep, you can gently slide said pillow off your lap without baby clocking a change of surface or temperature and you can sneak of and treat yourself to a wee or a cup of tea!

Oh, don't do that inlove-I wouldn't say I managed all that well!

I know what you mean about feeling normal. In fact, later on, even when still knackered (I was knackered until he was 18 months!) I found that a night out sometimes actually energised me.

Don't worry OP, I remember sobbing to the doctor "he doesn't sleeeeeep" and she told me that she had had three of those, and that it's the extra bright children that are like that.

I have a 10 week old but for the first 6 weeks I had to sleep with her on me cos she was sick after feeds otherwise...it then dawned on me that she liked sleeping on her tummy cos when I put her back in the Moses basket she would wake up instantly...then one day I put her down for a nap on her tummy in desperation and she slept for 3 hrs! Now I put her down on her tummy and we get 6 hrs followed by 4 hrs....I know its totally against what you are meant to do but jeez you gotta sleep...she is happier and so are we...don't tell my HV though!

Love reading all these replies... Thank you so much.

Yeah I guess one of us could have stayed at home while the other went to town but I think both of us wanted to feel there's more to life than a screaming baby and the four walls of the house! :) I hadn't been out since my c section so needed dh with me for reassurance as I'm still a bit wobbly...

Well last night ds woke every hour screaming, we'd get a bottle ready and he didn't want it (!) And then fell asleep again !!! He had about 3oz at 3am, went back to sleep till 4am and did the hourly thing again!!! Seems to just want to be held! I might try as someone suggested sleeping with him on my tummy... Bit scared he might roll off though... I'm quite a heavy sleeper (or was!!)

This morning he got up at 7, had a 3oz bottle and fell asleep - still asleep now! I raised the moses basket on some books a little and it seems to have helped with his wheezy noises (sounds a bit like a dog toy?!) ...

Thanks so much everyone for the advice.. I'm going to use a lot of it.

If you are scared he might roll off I have seen some people use their bump band as a sort of sleeping sling to hold their babies in place on their chest.

I think I should also say though that bedsharing is not recommended for ff mums for some reason :(

I had some lovely slightly stretchy cotton knit blankets from greenbaby.com which I put over ds when he was on my chest, and then tucked the ends under me to strap him on.
He did slip once, but I woke as soon as I felt him slipping.
The only thing I would worry about that is you don't want the baby to get too hot.
I only did it out of desperation!

Oh do look into the reflux thing if he's screaming on the hour but doesn't want food. Some reflux babies begin to reduce feeds as they realise the link with milk and the heartburn. Some babies do the opposite because they want the temporary relief that a feed gives before the heartburn. (My dd did that - bf continuously - she looked so healthy, HV's thought I was mad when I tried to say things weren't right)

It will get better - but I second the poster who used to find this advice depressing - I used to think "yes but it's not better TODAY. I won't get sleep TODAY or TONIGHT!!" And for the poster who used to guess the time she woke up - I remember at its worst, dd would drop off finally at midnight having cried and fed all evening. Then she would wake crying, and I would be praying that it wouldn't still be 12 something (but it generally was!)

Difficult days. But here I am posting advice years later, I have aged many years and lost many brain cells. But I get much more sleep now. It will happen!

It is difficult, I struggled with my ds at first. Try noting down each feed, how much he had, what time it was etc. you can establish a routine that way. Re getting wind up, we found the best way for our ds was to lay him over our lap (like tummy time) then gently rub and pat! If all else fails, try infacol, was a life saver for us!

HTH

Poor you X We had prem twins who needed feeding every 2-3 hours. The first two months was horrific and I did think I was going insane. The lack of sleep made me see flashing lights and pretty much zombified me! Being on Mat leave, I did Sun-Thurs night and DH did Fri and Sat. The girls would sleep longer in the day but rarely at night in between feeds and I could not, for some reason, sleep in the day. Sharing with DH was the only way i could get any sleep.
Good luck with whatever you try, but just know, it will get better XX

Agree with sleeping separately occasionally...maybe every few days one of you takes charge of ALL the night feeds, that person sleeps in another room/living room and the other one gets a good night's sleep then swap over the next night.

It's not forever but I do remember being horrendously tired with ds (am bf so dp can't help) he is 11 weeks now and it's so much better. You just have to go with it at this stage.

Ooh and also, I sometimes have to persevere with getting a burp after every feed or else he will spit up, guaranteed!

Also...sorry keep remembering stuff...ds wouldn't sleep in his Moses basket for weeks. He just hated lying flat so he slept in his rocker chair (not one of those bouncers they're not suprtive enough) so his head was raised slightly. I think all babies have acid to some degree.

Glad he has had a good sleep now, makes all the difference

Even as a night nanny I wasnt prepared for the total sleep deprivation a newborn brings.

I ebf and my little one is now 22mths old and he fed every 2hrs for an hr-1hr 15mins so sometimes only 45mins sleep in between at night for about 6wks then slowly stretched to 3hrs, 4hrs etc. At 12wks was going 8pm (after a 1hr 7pm feed) - 4am and then did 45mins stints til 7am when we got up.

When 2hrly feeding I used to feed propped up on pillows and often doze whilst he was feeding although does weird things to your mind often used to wake and think he was there and he wasnt or wake and think oh shit how long have you been there!!

we used to do bath time bed routine and start a feed at 7pm from about 2wks old and then tried settling from 8pm and took a few weeks to get the settling down at 8pm every night but was by 6wks and then he went til midnight and then 3/4am so it does get better.

at 15wks was in own room and slept 8pm-6am and by 16-17wks was going til 7am.

My advice would be 2-3hrs in first 6wks is normal, try not to go to baby for every snuffle wait for a good loud cry - obv dont leave to scream.

As you are formula feeding whilst husband is off work do alternate nights once he is back at work make a friday or sat night his and also try doing an 11pm dream feed which husband can do and you go to bed at 8/9pm.

Can you trying taking it in shifts to give each other a chance to sleep a few hours? DH and I used to do that. I would take care of DS during the day, bf-ing as much as I could and then hand him over to DH at about midnight. Then DH would stay up with him till about 4am / 5am as he is a night-owl anyway, feed him a bottle of formula and then I would get up at 4/5am and he would go to bed and get up at 9/10am. So we both were getting about 4 hours sleep, which was enough to survive (I'm still only getting about 5/6 hours now, 8 months later!).

For formula, we used to sterilize the bottles in advances to have them ready and then just buy readymade formula in cartons and pour out as much as he wanted to have, depending. It is slightly more expensive than powder but if ti gets you through then it's worth it for the first couple of months.