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Help, my baby does not sleep!

2 replies

bobbyew · 13/02/2023 20:06

My 6mo dd seems to hate sleep. She slept well until the 4 month regression, and for the past 2 months has not slept more than 3 hours in a row, sometimes waking every hour through the night.

She is breastfed but my husband has started giving her a bottle of formula as her last feed of the night, as I literally had no time to shower or eat (he works 7-7). She falls asleep on the bottle at 7.30pm and wakes after an hour. Then is rocked/fed back to sleep every 1-3 hours through the night. We have tried desperately to teach her to fall asleep without the breast/bottle, but by bedtime she screams if she is put down at all (in cot, on bed, anywhere) until she is fed to sleep. We've tried a routine from 12 weeks but it never works. We even spoke to a sleep consultant who suggested allowing her to fall asleep on our bed with my cuddling her, but she was having none of it. Just rooted for the boob and cried.

She naps 3x a day, only in the pram or car or sling, for an average of 45 mins each time.

My evenings are non existent, I'm totally sleep deprived and my poor baby is exhausted.

Please has anyone got any words of wisdom?

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
MattieandmummyandIs · 13/02/2023 20:33

I feel your pain, my first was exactly the same. Time was the only solution in our case - with age it just got better.

If you can, at nap times feed her to sleep and then lie her down first on a double bed - get yourself down next to her very fast and get a boob back in her mouth so that hopefully she'll just stir and go back to sleep. Then co-sleep for the nap - get yourself some sleep whilst she does too. It takes a bit of practice but I used to be able to feed to sleep and get my first down on a bed with a boob in her mouth whilst I also lay down. Even just a half hour or 20 minute nap for myself made the world of difference to me.

MattieandmummyandIs · 13/02/2023 20:35

Forgot to say I would just keep feeding to sleep, they grow out of it and it's a lot less upsetting and stressful than trying to get them to not feed to sleep. It's also extremely useful at times.

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