To leave 4 week old to cry

[Toastmostwoast]

With their dad!?

I'm honestly not sure what other parents do in this situation so want to know whether IWBU.

First baby is 4 weeks old, has recently started a witching ‘hour’ which coincides with DHs weekday ‘shift’ with her while I have a nap.

Since he is back at work and needs to leave early I tend to sleep 8pm-12am and then do the night shift (12am - 6am) as she sleeps relatively well but nosily. However she has started to cry for the sake of crying every night between 8-11. During this time she will only settle if I cuddle or sing to her, she will also not be put down during this time.

For the past week I’ve been reducing my sleep time to support, as I know it’s stressful for DH to be sat with a screaming baby for 3-4 hours straight, I also know he has a tendency to overfeed during this time as he can misinterpret her hungry cues.

I currently have a stinking cold and am tempted to go back to my 8-12 sleep and just leave DH to deal with DD, as I’m knackered, but is that super unreasonable when I know she will be distressed and I can ‘fix’ it in minutes whereas DH will be struggling for hours?

I just can’t see any other way to get ‘solid’ rest, DH can’t do the 12-6 due to work and tbh she isn’t bad overnight, with my 4 hours ‘nap’ and the few hours I get between 12-6 I usually am quite well rested, but now with her 8-11 screaming sessions I feel so guilty even considering going back to sleeping while she is upset.

WIBU, is this what most parents do in this situation? As mentioned she is our first so I have no idea what’s normal.

@Toastmostwoast what does she weigh? Maybe I've taken the wrong impression purely from the amount! My dd was pretty tiny.

Colic and cluster feeding come hand in hand in my experience. DS did a spectacular job of both, 30 minutes of frantic breastfeeding and 30 minutes of screaming at the boob. Repeat.

I am, didn’t think me falling asleep holding them would be considered putting them first, which very nearly happened this morning, hence the post.

@Toastmostwoast - babies without their mothers cope because they have to.

Your baby doesn't have to. She just has a mother who is making her.

I wonder if she has silent reflux, and is feeding more than expected to soothe the burning in her throat? Wanting to be held upright could be another sign of this too. During the day, is she comfortable lying on her back or does she twist around grunting etc?

My daughter had reflux (the kind where she was copiously sick all of the time) and cmpa. She also surprised the midwives by how much she fed, she cried a lot and if laid on her back she would twist her head back in an attempt to get comfortable with the acid rising up. As her reflux was exacerbated by a cmpa she also had eczema and was very constipated. It was a nightmare getting the medical profession to take me seriously and I ended up seeing a paediatrician privately before she was diagnosed and eventually prescribed an amino acid formula and omeprazole to reduce the amount of acid her stomach produced.

other things that helped were using a reflux wedge under her Moses basket and pram mattress and tilting her next to me cot. Best of luck!

Currently 3.7kg.

DD is pretty small too, but just eats a lot, not sure where she puts it tbh (although she does have a lot of output so to speak!)

Everyone I’ve spoken to about it says continue to feed on demand and they’d only start to worry if she jumped two centile lines

Colic is sometimes caused by a build up of over stimulation and over tiredness during the day which released itself via hysterical crying in the evening.

How is your baby napping @Toastmostwoast ?

@closetparty

baby has been fed and changed and getting cuddles from dad

op needs sleep

end of

It's not helpful to hear but I do second this. My LG is 11 months old now so we're past that phase, but I did experience this from about 3 or 4 weeks. I was beside myself. It took me weeks to realise she was tired. She needed to sleep every 1-2 hours at that age and they run out of the sleep hormone at around 2 weeks which makes it harder for them to fall/stay asleep.

My little one only ever cried for food, sleep or nappy changes. I figured out all her 'tells' at 3 months .. I wish I'd known about the sleep tells well before this.

I think you'll all be better off if you try to work out why she's crying, but you do need sleep and she is with her Dad, so he needs to work it out too, it shouldn't all be on you.

@Clymene

this child’s mother is with her hour after hour after hour.

the child is fed and being cuddled by her dad

op needs to have a sleep in that time

baby is perfectly fine and safe with their dad

when you have a baby a woman still needs time to sleep and wash their hair and eat and shower and go to exercise. They don’t cease to be a person just cos they’ve had a baby!

So dads can do what mum does then, as expected.

Considering your frankly idiotic posts on this thread so far I’ll leave you to your perceived issues with my posts and wish you a good evening

We had this, every evening crying and crying, she has cmpa, she was in pain. Once she was put onto prescription formula at 8 weeks she was like a different baby

@Toastmostwoast NHS guidelines are 150ml - 200ml per kg of weight. Even as a hungry baby, she's having almost 500ml more than the upper limit. When we took DD to hospital at 2 weeks, the first thing they asked was how much she was feeding. She was having slightly over the upper limit of 200ml per kg and they didn't like it. I'm not one to blindly follow NHS recommendations and every baby is different, but honestly, that seems a lot. Was she seen by a paediatrician at hospital?

Sorry another thing to add - my baby wouldn't be put down, it was because she had reflux caused by the cmpa so it was coming back up when layed down flat. The gp prescribed gaviscon before they diagnosed the cmpa and it helped alot.
Still didn't get much sleep though as she just would not go in her crib!!
In the end I had to co-sleep, i really didn't want to but had no choice as I was falling asleep holding her, and finally we all got some sleep

Yes, this was DD. Even on the day she was born the midwives were commenting on how alert she was. Little did I know that was a bad thing… She used to nap for 20 minutes at a time then kick off at 4pm because she was overtired and done in. I couldn’t get her to nap more to solve it; just had to wait for her to need less sleep.

It did get a little easier when I figured out red eyebrows = first sign of tiredness. Before yawning, before looking away, before touching her eyes, before the mad jerky evil puppet master movements that signifiers “major wobbler incoming”… Red eyebrows = DEFCON Nap.

Have you checked for reflux?

It might not be that baby wants to be held, it's the being upright that baby wants.

When babies have reflux, acid can come up into throat and cause pain. Car seats don't help because the curving of the seat can mean the acid can come up.

Over- feeding/quick feeding also doesn't help- again, too much milk can push the acid up.

Then, baby lies down and again, the acid from the stomach comes up.

For us, our baby screamed from 6-11 each night as she was in a lot of pain. Feeding slowly, with gentle burping helped. A large book under the cot to tilt baby. Medication can also help. It's worth checking for.

I would second this. I have a 12 week old who has coslept with us since the first night and I honestly feel like I get enough sleep. It's not eight hours but I do think it's so much safer than falling asleep with a baby because you're exhausted.

Any other symptoms? Sounds very much like my eldest who had a dairy allergy!

I know you are bottle feeding so it's a bit different but my babies have all cluster fed for that exact 8-11pm time slot. It often seemed to be more for comfort than anything but I think you've inadvertently picked the worst section of time for your DH to have her. Could you do 8-12and then stick the earplugs in? If she's just noisy but not needy overnight then your husband should be able to have a proper nap and then snooze when he's on duty with the baby.

As with any baby related question you'll get an array of answers. You need to find a way that works for you and your family. I ended up co-sleeping but plenty of others have different approaches. It's brutal trying to cope on very little sleep - you're doing a great job.

You'll learn quickly that sometimes they have to CIO.

YANBU

Sleeping noisily, grunting etc would indicate to trapped wind.

Are you reading the OP the baby is screaming. The baby is not perfectly fine with dad? That's the whole point of the thread.

Not for 3 hours at 4 weeks old. Wtf is actually wrong with people.

My baby always came first, even if it meant I had constant broken sleep. Not sure who
Expects anything different with a newborn?

we all have different parenting styles mines just includes not leaving a 4 week old baby to cry for 4 hours, when all it wants is it’s mother.