2.5 week old won't settle or sleep without feeding / sucking or being held

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I am a first time mum and my 2.5 week old son needs to feed, suckle or be held in order to fall asleep. I feel like I spend all day breast feeding, rocking, comforting etc... to help him sleep. He won't settle in his basket or pram even if we go for a walk. I have a baby carrier which at least means I can be hands free when not feeding but the whole sleep / feeding thing is making me so anxious. Sometimes even when I hold him he seems so desperate to suckle that he gets worked up and cries himself in to a state (I am sue he is not hungry or needs changing). I don't want to suckle him all the time and I'm desperate to find a way to help him settle in his moses basket or pram. Has any one else experienced this? Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do? I have thought about trying a pacifier but I am worried it may cause problems with breast feeding. Any thoughts / ideas appreciated!

place all thoughts of imposing your routine on hold for at least 3 mos and go with the flow. anything else will make you crazy.
oh, and congratulations!
all sounds perfectly normal.

"I think a bf baby knows when they've had enough"

Not IME. Both my girls would feed until they had sore tummies in the very early days. I used a dummy with each of them to stop this happening.

They're only learning how to deal with food in their digestive tract, and it's easy for them to overdo it, particularly if you have a good supply.

OP - I read your post as s.5 years initially, and had a few suggestions. Then realised you were talking in weeks :o

There's nothing weird about what your son is doing, it's totally normal.

"People have said to me that I will be creating a longer term problem if the only way my son will go to sleep is by being fed, cuddled, rocked"

Feeding, cuddling and rocking your baby to sleep are your tools to help them drift off. What else is there? When he's older he'll stop sparking out while your feeding him, but will just get all drowsy and then you can put him down. But at 2.5 weeks falling asleep on the breast is just what you want (as long as they're having a good feed first, or in between sleeps).

shecutofftheirtales - sorry, I wasn't very clear in my meaning. Bf babies tend to be better at regulating how much they need because they have to work harder to get the milk than ff babies do.

I didn't bother with any kind of routine until about 6 months with mine. DD got herself into a nighttime routine quite quickly, but ds laughed in the face of routine! Now they're 3yo and 5yo old I really miss the cuddling and rocking phase.

jetgirl - yy very true

In fact it wasn't that my two were not regulating their intake well, it was that they were sucking for comfort but overfilling their tummies as a consequence.

I remember the feeling of 'not wanting' to suckle my baby all the time. With my first I was shocked by the unending feeds. With my second I never fought him on it, and just fed whenever he seemed to want it. I'm with plantsitter and pretty much everyone else... "if in doubt shove your boob in his mouth". Worry about the rest later.
I also agree that babies who have their needs met quickly are easier in the long run, maybe it's about trust and security. I expect you feel like a dairy cow now, but it won't last long really. And feeding to sleep is your best friend!

Just a word of warning. MN is very anti-routine. Don't take the views on here as gospel because (in my opinion anyway) you probably will make a bit of a 'rod' if you continue to feed and rock to sleep after say three weeks. I would start trying to set a good sleeping and eating routine in place around about now. The Baby Whisperer's suggestions really helped us. In a nutshell:

• Always have the first feed of the day at 7am (despite when the last one was)
• From there on, follow a pattern of Eat (20-40mins), Activity (30-45mins), Sleep (30 mins - 1.5 hours) on a 2 - 3 hour cycle throughout the day.
• Wake baby for a dream feed at 10pm before putting down for the night.
• Put to bed when you see 'tired signs' (e.g rubbing eyes, touching ears, grizzling)
• Always follow the same bedtime routine, but never feed to sleep. E.g. change, cuddle, swaddle, and gently put down. Warming the bed with a hotwaterbottle before putting our DD down really seemed to help.

I would definitely try the dummy. Yes, it helps soothe them. No, it doesn't interfere with BF. We took the dummy away successfully at 6 months and haven't looked back. It was great in the early days. Just try it and you'll be converted. Babies love them :)

My post probably isn't that helpful for your immediate situation, though, which is a really fussy baby. A couple of things to consider:
Are you sure you're burping him properly after each feed?
Have you tried swaddling for sleep?

Yes, it sounds normal. However, I think what kiwi says is a useful guide. I took it further and was a Gina Ford devotee. I started with her routines from about 6 weeks. Different things work for different mothers and babies. I would have had a nervous breakdown without a rigid routine. My DS has done great on it and is still a fab sleeper (though will only sleep in his cot, won't suck himself to sleep and rarely sleeps in the car or buggy...I call it the "Gina Effect").

The thing is about newborns, is that they are relatively easily comforted by cuddling and feeding, sometimes even when something else would work. if you could identify what that is (winding, changing, too hot or cold, bored). So by having some sort of a routine (even a loose, baby whisperer one) it makes it easier to identify exactly what they need. Not so important now, but more so in a couple of months time when feeding won't solve as many problems.

Babies can be a bit of a mystery (as can all people). The nice thing about babies is that they change so fast. This is one of many phases, and like all those to come "this too shall pass". Enjoy your cuddly little bundle, before you know it your DS will be scowling and pushing you away as you kiss him goodbye to go to university!

jsp5 I'm seriously not trying to be smug (okay maybe just a little bit) but our DD was "sleeping through" from 7pm - 7am (with a 10pm dreamfeed) at 12 weeks. And has continued to do so. I don't want to start a bunfight but there's quite a big difference in lost sleep between 10 weeks and 13 months.

It is possible to make mothering a lot easier for yourself. I'm not sure why people are so reluctant to try basic routines when they so clearly work. It's odd to me. Why make it hard for yourself?

BTW I know tonnes of babies, some of whom have been fed to sleep, rocked etc and others who have been on GF or BabyWhisperer. All of the routine ones have been brilliant sleepers and sleeping through by 4-5 months. None of the rocked/fed ones were good sleepers and all of them had sleep trouble until they were well over one year old. One is still in her mother's bed at 1.5 years, waking at least twice a night for a comfort feed (this is not a situation that the parents wanted)!

If I'm proved wrong with the next baby, then so be it.

I thought that small babies 'sleeping through' is a constraint that parents put on them for their convenience and not what they are naturally programmed to do.

Still, as long as she didn't disturb your sleep...

The baby in the op is barely out of the womb. Actually, this thread is getting on my nerves.

kiwilinkits i'm with you. I only have one DS. So far. He was doing the 7-7 with a 10 pm dream feed from 8 weeks (2 weeks after starting Gina Ford). 7-7 with no feed from 6 months. I know for a fact he wakes in the night, I can hear him chatting and playing. But he puts himself back to sleep. Even with a heavy cold, by the time I'd got the calpol out he was back to sleep. I know routines are not for everyone. Some people find them very very limiting. I find not knowing what is happening next limiting. Horses for courses. Yeah, I am a teeny little bit smug, but this also took some work, controlled crying (OP don't even think about it before 6 months!) was horrid (for all 2 nights of it).

I think maybe you've got cause and effect the wrong way round Kiwi - easy babies will be easy babies on whatever routine you put them in, yours or theirs. Difficult babies won't fit into a routine you try to impose.

Leaving my baby to cry for me would have been very distressing for both of us, and unecessary - my ds is a very happy 10 month old and sleeps well at night (in his own cot, despite co-sleeping til 5 months), will sleep anywhere, is still fed on demand and also loves his food. He'd have probably been an easy baby on a routine too, but it would have been stressful getting there.

I agree with the baby whisper / gentle rhythm approach too. My DD2 is 11 weeks now and only wakes once between 10pm and 7am. She won't take a dummy but swaddling is wonderful for helping us all sleep. I've never left her to cry to sleep - if you watch for when she is sleepy then it just seems to work (at least for me).

I also really didn't want to end up with a baby who will only sleep in their own cot, in a dark, silent bedroom - I was a nanny before I had ds and know what a pain in the arse those babies are

My ds sleeps 2-3 hours in the day and it's really limiting if you have to stay in for naps. I like to go out and about in the day, take ds out with us in the evening, on holiday, go to dinner/stay over at other people's houses etc, so it was important that ds can sleep in a buggy/carseat, on a sofa, in bed with us, in my lap, in a sling on my back so we don't end up juggling a tired, fractious baby and rushing to get home.

I love how on MN it's totally wrong to want a baby that sleeps at your convenience and to do anything at all to make that happen IF you want them to sleep at night so you aren't a sleep-deprived wreck.

But it's totally fine to force an unwilling baby into fitting in with your life (not selfish, as it would be if you used a routine) as long as you are using their sleep patterns to be out and about.

Either manipulating how your baby sleeps is OK, or it's not.

DD1 liked sleeping in the dark and quiet. I responded to her clear preference by not forcing her to be out and about all the time. Should I have let her be miserable until she learnt that my need to go out for lunch was more important than her need for uninterrupted sleep? How could I have convinced her to sleep when the pram wasn't in motion?

From the day she was born she was super-alert when awake. She never dud that drowsy thing a lot of newborns do. And she needed dark and quiet to sleep. That's who she was.

DD2 was an entirely different baby. Hated the dark, liked music and noise to sleep, would happily sleep beside me during lunch. So I got to be out and about more.

Work with the baby you get, and ignore people who think nannying makes them a parenting guru and that all babies are the same.

PS it's way better to get an "out and about" baby first - toddlers limit your choices of lunch venue even if their sister sleeps like a dream :o

Completely normal. Enjoy it while it lasts, and just keep carrying baby.

SheCutOffTheirTails - was that aimed at me? Don't think I mentioned forcing a baby to do anything

You get the baby you get - both of mine slept like angels and slept 10 hours from 20 days and 22 days respectively and they have/are both fed on demand. Some BF babies just need to cluster feed all evening in order to sleep through and if I'd tried to impose a routine on mine they wouldn't have slept through and so I would have made a rod for my own back that way.

The best thing to do in my opinion is to go with what your baby needs in order to give you as much sleep as possible if this feels right for you. If you really can't cope without a routine then at 3 months look at it again but if you are doing it because it's what others have told you you should do then just ignore them and do what feels right. There will always be people telling you what you are doing is wrong as a parent, you just need to start ignoring them.

Try not to worry, you can't comfort a baby too much.

Oh, and my DS had a dummy from 23 days as he suckles like your little one and it never effected breastfeeding but did allow me to get DH to settle him.

I just would only give him it if he was dozing on the breast after feeding for half an hour or so so I knew he wasn't hungry. He still fed constantly though.

Hi OP, I am a first time mummy too (DS is 18 weeks now), and I so know what you mean about the shock of your baby not wanting to be put down AT ALL! I assumed that newborns just ate and slept, and that when they slept they would sleep anywhere- so wrong!

I second the tip about using a hot water bottle in the moses basket to help them feel cosy, and if we had a night where DS wasn't settling whatsoever then I would bring him into bed with me so I could get some sleep. Not a fan of co-sleeping to be honest, nothing against it in principle, but DS sleeps like a dream and I end up squished in the middle of DS and DP and going numb on one side! Came to a head the other night when we brought DS into bed (rare thing these days, had a cold so was feeling sorry for himself and waking up lots in the night) and he immediately fellasleep spread out like a starfish and took up most of the bed leaving me with no space- was promptly (and gently) moved back to own cot and me and DP have agreed we just can't do that anymore! Hats off to anyone who has managed to co-sleep for a year or more!

Don't think about routine just yet, but I did start a bedtime routine from 6/7 weeks and it's worked well- DS is bathed, fed and goes down well in his cot (was moses basket at first) by 7pm and sleeps the whole evening, giving me and DP some time together and just to rest. I am a routine-type of person, but I try not to be too strict as to where DS sleeps during the day, which I think is good as he can sleep in cot, pram or car seat, but still prefers to be close to me- he's currently napping on a pillow next to me on the sofa! No sign of sleeping through the night just yet even with routine, but generally he only wakes once and then goes straight back to sleep after a feed, which we're cutting down on. I find Gina Ford a bit too restrictive for my liking, but I do agree with her principles of bedtime routine, feed times and that a young baby will most likely need to sleep after being awake for 2 hours a useful guide. DS is on the way to sleeping through the night with the help of this rough routine, and I don't think he's naturally an easy baby sleep-wise. I think I will go mad from broken sleep if he doesn't sleep through the night by a year old- the tiredness has just been starting to get to me and DP the last month or so, so the thought of another 4 or more months of waking in the night does not appeal!

Good luck OP and enjoy your baby- I wish even now that i'd chilled and snuggled more with DS during the first few weeks!

Oh and a dummy was a godsend- I was keen not to use one before he was born, but after he wouldn't settle at all for the first two nights at home, DP suggested a dummy at 4am (we had a couple just in case), popped it in DSs gob and twas a miracle- all hail the dummy gods!

DS has now rejected dummies and uses his thumb to self-settle instead, so I don't think all babies will always want them.

shecutofftheirtails "I love how on MN it's totally wrong to want a baby that sleeps at your convenience and to do anything at all to make that happen IF you want them to sleep at night so you aren't a sleep-deprived wreck.

But it's totally fine to force an unwilling baby into fitting in with your life (not selfish, as it would be if you used a routine) as long as you are using their sleep patterns to be out and about."

Bloody well said. Could not put it better myself, so I copied and pasted yours. Thank you