Dread each night and feel like a walking udder. Please help.

[workingtitle]

DS is six weeks old and I am struggling with the amount he feeds and sleeps. He nurses between 12 and 16 times a day, won't sleep for longer than a couple of hours in a stretch and is up much of the night.

We had a breakthrough getting him to sleep between 11pm and 2am ish, but tonight like most nights he has been awake and grizzly since then until just now. He's generally awake from 2am til 5 or 6am and then will sleep on and off til 9ish.

I'm exhausted and haven't had more than two consecutive hours sleep since he was born and tonight like other nights he was almost impossible to console. If he would go down between the 2am and 4/5am feeds that would make the world of difference.

He has awful trapped wind and refl ux and I think nursing helps ease his discomfort. He seems to be in worse pain at night . He was also prem/low birth weight so probably still needs to feed more than other babies his age. We had real struggles to establish breastfeeding and I don't want to stop but I dread night times and am really resenting breast feeding.

Has anyone got any advice? I've tried a dummy without success and he has one bottle a day but not in the evenings/ nights as we found he would continue to cry until he got on the breast. With the sleep, he 'll sometimes go down in the early hours if he's on one of our chests but that's not sustainable. We've been advised not to cosleep because he was prem but I have a couple of times. Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't.

Sorry for the epic post

[HoneyandRum]

Workingtitle have you tried heavy hints to help DS set his body clock closer to the rest of the nation? When it's evening, turn all the lights down, cut out extra noise, talk quietly, play quiet soothing music, give him a warm bath, close all the curtains to block out any street light etc. Don't keep all the interior house lights blaring and the TV at full blast and expect him to understand it's time to sleep.

In the morning do the opposite, make sure he's in as a bright a natural light as possible, you can also wrap him up warm and either sit outside together or do as the Germans do and have him lie in his pram outside the backdoor for a while. He needs lots of natural light to help reset his clock.

Try and keep a daily rythym, not necessarily a set routine but by having a regular pattern to your day you start to introduce a vague concept of time to him. Ie Mum has breakfast, than baby feed, change, nap etc. trip out of the house in the morning (even a walk round the block), etc. etc. a rythym will help him start to anticipate the next stage in the day. It takes time but a darkened, quiter house in the evening seemed to help my three. Also a baby rocker, the rhythmic rocking was a big hit with my second and would put her straight to sleep, or also just keep her very happy while I did wild and crazy stuff - like shower.