8 week old baby. When does it get better?

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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.

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. :)

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?

I have 3 and I learnt not to try and put baby to bed until they are tired.
Currently my third is 8 months. She goes to bed at 10pm because that's when she will sleep. If you put her down before that she just screams.
All babies are different. If your baby won't settle till 11 then my advice is to do her bedtime then. At that young you have to work with their own routines to get any sleep yourself.
It does tend to get a bit easier over time.
You've just got to cut yourself some slack and really try to sleep any time the baby is sleeping even if that means you fall behind on housework or you don't get out the house at all.
Can baby's father take baby downstairs at 6am a couple of mornings so you can have a few hours lie in?
My husband does that on a weekend for me if baby wakes early. Because I do all the night wakings at other times.
It is hard. My 8 month old now occasionally sleeps from 10pm till 8am only waking once at midnight...
But last night she woke every couple of hours and I feel like death today!
They go thru phases but it does gradually get a bit better.
My older two now never wake in the night.
You'll get to the other side of it!

It's genuinely tough but your body will adjust. I think I had 2 lots of 2.5-3hrs each night for years. Is he maybe hungry that he cries so much? It's not a fashionable advice, but I would definitely try supplementary bottle feeding if baby cries a lot. 9 out of 10 times it's simply hunger. It definitely was hunger with all of mine. As soon as they got the bottle I haven't heard a peeps.

DD is 12 weeks now. We found sleep was worse at 7 weeks, due to wind, but has steadily improved. I sometimes feed and then pass to DH to sit up with, so I can get some extra sleep. Co-sleeping has also been a life saver for us. Hang in there, it'll get better.

Also, DH got up and gave baby a bottle of formula in the early morning so I had a lie in. That kept me sane!

Just to say, take each day as it comes. Don't look too much into the future or worry about tomorrow. Get through today. Each day will pass is a day closer to things getting a little easier.

I had post natal depression/anxiety and for 3 months wanted to send my baby back. He is over one now, and I look back to those first few months and it's a complete fog. I don't know when it got easier, but it did (although the antidepressants massively helped!)

I remember thinking and panicking about how will never be able to go to even the corner shop ever again, now I have whole days away from baby.

I set myself one thing to do each day, however small, if I was successful at that it was a win. One day it may be a load of laundry, another it may be sit and watch TV for an hour, another day it may be just to stay alive. Just little things that you can mentally tick off as accomplishments.

I think after 3 months it got easier (possibly timed with antidepressants kicking in?!). We went abroad long haul when baby was 5 months. That was completely doable and I wasn't even worried by then.

For your own nerves, get some noise cancelling headphones like Anker sound core from Amazon, you'll still hear him when he cries but it'll take the shrillness away and make it easier to cope with. You can then listen to music / audiobook/ podcast whilst bobbing around with him.

I thought we'd have it down by 8 weeks

What? How?!

Until a couple of weeks ago, I used to go up and get some sleep early evening. But baby now cluster feeds or sits on the boob or SCREAMS in pain from wind all evening. So I can't get any sleep, there is no ear plug that can muffle that cry.

He then sleeps midnight - 4.30 am reliably. Then I have to feed again. DP has to get up for work at 6am, leaves at 6.45 so he can't take baby. And by 6-6.30 when baby goes down again, I'm too awake to sleep again. I just can't.

So I get about 3.5 hours of sleep. That's it. And I'm at breaking point.

Baby will not take a pacifier or a bottle. He only wants the breast.

My mum says I was the same. She got horrible PND and could never bring herself to have another baby. I'm afraid I'm heading down the same path.

8 weeks is the worst. You’ve had no sleep for 2 months and the light isn’t yet at the end of the tunnel. I had a breakdown at 8 weeks! It usually improves a bit around 10-12 weeks, then gets worse around 4 months then you can sleep train from 5-6 months. Hang in there!!! Get all the help you possibly can from DH and family. And let everything go other than survival!

@NellyBarney I breastfeed him on demand, and he does cluster feed in the evening. But the cry seems to be wind related. He seems to be in pain and then lets out a massive fart and calms down instantly. Then 10-20 minutes later he starts again. All the bicycles and rolls into he world don't seem to help. It's really distressing to watch.

I had a tough time with my first and I think he just needed to be closer to me. I couldn't face the same situation with my second so from fairly early on - maybe 6 weeks. I co-slept. It meant I could feed when he wanted and then we would both just drop off after. Co-sleeping is a great option for both mum and baby.

@ItTook9Years I don't know. Silly isn't it? Maybe I couldn't conceive that I would be so sleep deprived for so long?

@Lunarskybox @DeedlessIndeed I was planning on co-sleeping and read loads about it and was prepared for it. But my baby doesn't seem to care about it at all! When he does go down, he goes down fine in his cot.

He has reflux so no chance of lying down to feed. You have to get up with him anyway. And you can't feed him to sleep really, he needs to be helpd up a good 20 minutes. Even then he sometimes wakes up choking on his milk/vomit 1 hour later. So the cot with a bit of an incline is actually more comfortable for him.

I have a two year old and a 14 week old, and feel your pain. My two year old used to scream every evening - he’d cluster feed until perhaps 9 or 10 and then scream until 1ish. DH used to take him downstairs and hold/rock him while wearing earphones - nothing worked to stop him crying. I got some sleep upstairs meanwhile.

All the time he’s screaming and not feeding in the evening then your DH needs to take him as far away from you as possible, so you can get some sleep until he settles. Then DH can sleep midnight to 6. If you can sleep perhaps 10-4.30 then it’s a bit more sustainable.

Where is baby’s dad?

I just can’t believe, in 2024 when literally all the information in the world is being carried around in people’s pockets, that anyone could give birth to a baby and expect them to be sleeping well at 8 weeks.

Read up on the Fourth Trimester.

I was alone with DD 5.5 days a week for 18 months so just had to get us through it. Did whatever got us the most sleep (generally midnight till noon). So I get that it can be really tough. But you’re going f to have to seriously adjust those expectations for quite a while yet.

Ahh, mine also had reflux, but perhaps not as bad as yours. It sucks. It's so hard. The only comforting thing I can say is that in the moment it feels like forever, and then before you know it something has shifted and you have a different set of circumstances. It's a bit one problem solved and another replaces it for the first 6 months. But it will get better!

@Dinosaurus86 that's what we were doing until about 7 days ago and it was working! But baby has moved/extended his cluster feeding to later until 11pm/midnight so I don't get that evening sleep anymore. And DH has to leave the house by 6.45am so I can't get a morning lie in instead of the evening one.

@ItTook9Years I think because the first 3 weeks were AWFUL and then around 4 weeks it was suddenly MUCH BETTER, he was sleeping 2-3 hour chunks but without the screaming so I was actually sleeping a lot more! It led me into a false sense of security 😆

This 8 to 11pm screaming could be his witching hour phase. My babies used to be miserable from like 4 to 8pm every evening. It was the pits. But the good news is it doesn't go on for long😊
But I would say that babies + sleep is not a linear process, lots of ups and downs. It will all get easier some day in the future but no one can say when or what the answer is specifically for your baby.

Ugh it is horrible isn’t it. I used to manage a morning sleep (sometimes) with my first, but now I have a toddler up at the crack of dawn, I don’t get that opportunity. At the moment DD is in a delightful phase where she will sleep 11-3 (great!) but then wakes hourly, which doesn’t give me enough time to get back to sleep. And then DS is up by 7, so it’s been 3am starts for me for the last week. Am really hoping this shifts soon.

But if he is ever just screaming then I would hand over to DH, regardless of what time he has to get up.

I did just push through it with DS but if you absolutely can’t cope then could DH give formula or expressed milk perhaps every other day at 4.30? Ideally in a different room so as not to disturb you?

The thing to keep in mind is that their sleep does constantly shift, especially in the first year, so hopefully this particular phase won’t last more than a few weeks. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

for you, OP.

I found the first few weeks with my DS incredibly hard - but it does get better, or I wouldn't have had DD! The no sleep and screaming combo sent me quite mad too.
It gets better by degrees but IME / from discussions with friends there is a massive turning point at about 12 weeks, around that time the "evening screamies" for colicky babies stop and babies are more peaceable creatures. My DS also got a bit less windy around that time too.

What position are you feeding baby in, do you always encourage a burp after a feed? I don't mean to sound patronising at all, but my DD had awful reflux and changing breastfeeding position helped so much - and people on here say breastfed babies don't need burping but mine definitely did.

I know how it feels to be too wound up to sleep but you must rest whenever you know you are going to get a stretch - lie down and listen to boring radio/podcasts/Headspace.

I cant comment on the driving but getting out and about during the day REALLY helps - some walking & fresh air with the buggy will put you in a better frame of mind and help you sleep.
I hope things get much better soon.

Have you tried infacol?

Honestly, don’t try and put him down until he’s stopped screaming at midnight. We had witching hours 6pm-12am EVERY night. It stopped at 11 weeks. It’s really shit, my husband was also up at 6.30 every morning but we just had to run with it.

It DOES get better. DD sleep through (1am-10am) 10-24weeks. Then since the 11th September we’ve had a huge relapse waking loads and she’s now finally starting to wake just once but she doesn’t sleep before midnight.

It really will get better, I felt horrific at 8 weeks. Get yourself to those baby classes, I also have to drive to mine but it made a HUGE difference. Just having the purpose to get out a couple of times a week. Don’t isolate yourself away. Also don’t worry about being the first in your friends to have babies, I am not the first but everyone forgets how hard it is so the support is shit anyway

Get yourself out. The air and seeing different things will tire him as well.