8 week old baby. When does it get better?

[265IceCream]

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.

It's such a shock to the system getting not enough sleep, though saying that I slept horribly for the whole of pregnancy and during IVF, so I still don't know what a full night's sleep is with a 2 year old!

Evening screamy shouties with a small baby is so distressing. They do get past it. I found that if DC went back to sleep for bit in the morning I could just lie down and listen to a podcast, even if I couldn't sleep. Resting is still beneficial.

Going out for a daily morning walk also saved my sanity. I started this at 11 weeks and carried on until DC started to refuse the buggy at 7 months. Rain or more rain, I was out there walking and listening to the Parenting Hell podcast.

And make sure you're eating and drinking lots and lots. Breastfeeding can really take it out of you, especially at the cluster feeding stages.

I feel this so deeply. I had my daughter at 34 and all my friends had teenagers by then. The first six months were absolutely shit, I had such bad PND and exhaustion that I didnt enjoy it at all.

Slowly it gets easier and then suddenly it all clicks together, my lightbulb moment was one day when i did the grocery shop with her and cooked dinner with her by myself and managed to complete both tasks.

I know its awful now but it really does get easier.

If you cant sleep in the mornings then maybe just lay and relax in a darkened room. Its rest at least if not for your mind then for your body. It all helps when youre exhausted

Have you tried baby gaviscon or omeprazole from the GP for baby? My daughter has terrible reflux too. The omeprazole has reduced the reflux although not stopped it, but she no longer screams in pain anymore as the acid is reduced in what she is bringing back up. This then helps her to sleep. Might be worth asking about?

Sympathy! What if you got your partner to go to bed in the evening while you're cluster feeding, and then he gets up at 5/5.30 to take over holding baby etc so you get a stretch of sleep then?
(have a 16wk old. And a 7yo. So tired!!).

I’m not sure why people keep having kids. It’s one big con! They knacker your sleep, mess up your house, leave you penniless, never give you any thanks for anything you do for them and completely fuck up your sex life!

It gets better when they leave home.

As for the sleep, for me it was when they were about 2.

i promise it does get better! I could have written this myself a year ago. It’s impossible to say how long it will last but it will definitely pass, the cluster feeding will stop and the baby will sleep for longer stretches.
I really struggled to get back to sleep when the baby went down at around 5.30, I used headphones, eye mask and a really dull audio book, same boring book on my kindle if I just couldn’t switch off. I found even if I slept for 10 mins more it really helped me to convince myself I was fine.
not sure if you are already doing this but do not look at your phone until like 9am, I found it made me wired and I would end up googling (my search history really shows my mental deterioration) or buying crap I didn’t need.
sorry to repeat what others are saying but it will get better. You are doing an amazing job of keeping a tiny human alive and it is so hard!

I would say it’s a combination of it gets better & you get more used to it. My daughter is 6 months now and still isn’t an amazing sleeper but I think I’ve just sort of adjusted to manage on less sleep! (I really look back at pre-pregnancy me who would get 8 hours solid uninterrupted sleep and still complain about being tired and roll my eyes at myself😂).

Oh dear God I read this and could totally sympathise. My youngest is now nearly 11. But sweet lord didn’t sleep, breastfed constantly and vomited - how I survived I don’t know. My ex husband was a nightmare - in fact he cleared off to our second house for a few weeks to sleep leaving me with an older child, c section and a screamer.

can you get a break and just sleep?

I was deranged due to lack of sleep. I buckled. I managed to mix feed until 5 months but gave myself severe ptsd and wished I hadn’t.

Mine needed to sleep on me - he’s 10 nearly 11 and likes a snuggle even now.

I’m sorry I’m not more useful but I never got to the bottom of it. My only survival was someone taking him and me to sleep for 24 hours and then I got back to it.

I could've written this a couple of months ago. I then found out that she hadn't put any weight on in 8 weeks and so she was just really hungry. She can't have been getting enough breast milk. Is your baby putting on weight well? I began supplementing with formula and she was a different baby.

I found 6-10 weeks the worst. The evening crying was awful. I found from 12 weeks I started to get her into a routine during the day- I made it a priority to be up at 7, no matter what sleep she’d had in the night. So she would naturally fall asleep at 8.30, so that was her first nap. I eventually started popping her in the cot at 830 to nap. I then kept her up til 9 ish when she’d go to sleep for about 7 hours. But eventually she was keen to sleep at 7 ish, but would then wake again at 730,
but I could put her back down for a long stretch. I know all babies are different,
but mine started to settle overnight quite
well from 4 months ish. We’ve had ups
and downs, but it was around then that I started to feel a bit less like death warmed
up.

Try to rest in the day as much as you can. I can't offer much reassurance as mine still wakes up multiple times at 2 but without the long screaming.

Have you tried car trips during evening hours? That often helps them sleep.

It’s very intense and difficult. What method are you feeding baby by? I express and breastfeed and can’t recommend enough giving the baby a big bottle of expressed milk at 10/11pm. Gamechanger for us. Baby is finally properly sleeping through from about 6 months (currently 7.5 months) and was only doing one wake up a night previously if our dream feed was successful. Also, baby doesn’t need to stay fully asleep for dream feed, it can still work if they are woken up for the feed.

EDIT: To add that we’re on baby number three and obsessed with sleep schedules! Our first two started sleeping through properly at 12 months and have remained fabulous sleepers.

We got through this part by DH taking over early evening so I could have a long bath and lie on the bed for a few hours and he would give either expressed milk or formula. That was the only way to remove the constant cluster feeding where they overfed/were sick/hungry again/overfed etc. By our 2nd baby, we realised that by evening they were overstimulated, over tired and a dimly lit quiet room without much noise made for a much calmer evening too. You'll get there, this is the hardest part when the sleep deprivation has built up and do see your GP/health visitor if you feel your mood is taking a tumble too far.

Have you got an infant feeding team you could perhaps contact and get advice from? Mine have been brilliant and they may be able to help with feeding if there's an issue with baby's latch for example they can suggest other positions so it's more comfortable to him so he doesn't take as much air? Is your letdown quite forceful? Does baby look comfortable when you're feeding?

Btw with baby groups I literally just carry my baby in now, I agree the pram etc is too much of a hassle!

I remember this so well with my DS and he rarely napped either. It is bone crushing exhausting.

It will get better. Your baby is still very young.

I think most babies settle down sooner but my DS didn't sleep through the night until he was 3.

Many babies have a witching hour(s) as my Mum calls it.

The fact the sleep has changed, albeit for the worst, shows their patterns change all the time.

Clusterfeeding v normal that age. Keep doing all the wind relief stuff and see about something from the docs for reflux?

Ultimately you might need blackout blinds yourself to get late morning sleep.

I’d persevere with bottles and dummies.

Get noise cancelling headphones and an eye mask and get bed early and on weekends when dp cab do a shift.

get out for a walk every day, you don’t fancy it, but it helps to not mope.

Watch wake windows, ideally babies at 8 weeks should be awake for more than an hour. When they seem tired, they’re actually over tired and then it is so much more difficult to settle them. Go for a walk when they’ve been awake for 55 mins and it might be much easier.

I had one that screamed every evening. It wore off at about 3 months.🙂

Have you considered cows milk protein allergy for baby?

Does your child have CMPA? They sound like my DS, the screaming was awful but he was in so much pain. Omeprazolen and ranitadine helped but the solution was no dairy

It’s so bloody hard my partner used to let
me go to sleep at 7pm and stay up with DD until midnight and then bring her up so I’d at least had a few hours solid sleep - things did get better from 12 weeks for us

OP, I’m sorry you are struggling, it’s really hard being sleep deprived. You NEED mum friends. Please make the effort to get to some groups. I swear I could not have coped without my friend I met at antenatal class. The more practiced you get at doing the car faff the easier it will be, plus car may send baby to sleep.
Your baby’s sleep will improve, but my DC’s were always early risers until they started school then things became slightly better.
I couldn’t sleep when my baby napped either. I lost my mind. But I did get through it and having other mum friends was key to helping me do that.

@265IceCream

My baby was a lot like yours especially around 8 weeks. Have you considered CMPA?
8 weeks was about the time my LOs symptoms started to become more apparent, and often either gets mistaken for reflux or the reflux is being caused by the CMPA. I'm happy to PM if you'd like to ask anything about our journey.

Elongate the torso - I watched some thing on either tiktok or insta

I also second needing mum friends. If you don’t feel comfortable driving yet then depending on where you live there’s probably something locally! Not sure if it’s just where I live but each area has a family hub which does council funded baby groups and there's one walking distance to pretty much anywhere (I think), and then church halls etc usually do some kind as well! X