10 week old with no sign of a routine

[Gemskiola]

Hey,
I’m new to this site and don’t usually post threads in places but late night googling has made me want to ask for advice. I have a 10 week old who is mostly breast fed with my husband doing formula/breast milk feeds (the little I can express) during the 6 hours he looks after our son. Lockdown has facilitated that so far.
I don’t expect a baby to have a schedule per se and I am feeding on demand. What I don’t understand is why his schedule is so varied. I’m finding it so difficult. I read about people saying their baby ‘usually’ eats/naps etc at approximate times and all the advice to help with sleep seems to focus on knowing when your baby is due a nap or a feed. My son has stopped napping altogether (except perhaps 20 minutes on me sometimes) and I have no idea what constitutes a feed. Sometimes he eats and seems happy after 45 minutes and other times he eats for nearly two hours. Sometimes he is happy to go an hour and a half between feeds and other times he only waits ten minutes. I can’t do anything because I need to be near him in case he gets hungry. When my husband does feed him he will just drink an entire bottle and have a lot of spit up (despite my husband practicing paced feeding) and using slow flow teats. Sleep is also so varied. He has stopped napping completely in the day (despite using white noise, and going to a dark, quiet room etc) and at night he will initially sleep for 4 hours but after a nigh feed will wake around 30 minutes after being put down. He will then only sleep on me/my husband. I am stressed about how I will cope when my husband goes back to work. I can’t simply sleep when he sleeps (because he doesn’t!) and I don’t want to co-sleep with him, besides I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I wouldn’t feel safe and I am a Very anxious person.
Any advice would be helpful. Sorry for the long message!

Have you tried a dummy? If he sometimes want to eat again after 10 minutes he might be sucking for comfort?

I think it’s just normal. Most babies don’t stick to a set routine. Same as adults, some days they are more or less tired, hungry, playful than others

My baby is now 10 months. He still has no set routine as it’s just impossible. He does have a routine in that he does things in a similar order and we try and add bedtime routine, but timings are never the same.

Maybe a similar idea might help you. I can’t remember at 10 weeks, but I think baby roughly needed to nap around 2 hrs after waking. So if he woke at 6am/7am/8am, then I would just aim to get him napping around 2hrs after. Some days he would nap an hour later.
A bedtime routine of doing xyz helps, but be flexible of when that is depending on last naps. At 10 weeks they aren’t going to bed alone so don’t worry.

Don't give a dummy at 10 weeks, this is very bad advice for a bf baby. www.laleche.org.uk/dummies-and-breastfeeding/

10 weeks is very early for any kind of routine.

Have you read on breastfeeding websites about cluster feeding? Your son is probably having a growth spurt or needing comfort.

It is a very tiring time.

May I ask why you can't sleep when your son sleeps - I slept quite a lot in the day during the first six months.

Have you tried tracking naps and feeds? I’ve always found that really helpful to determine if cries are likely to be huger or tiredness and act accordingly. I really recommend Huckleberry- if you use it religiously for a few days, it has an extremely good predictor of when you should be trying to get your baby to sleep. Eg for me, if my 11 week old wakes up at 7am, I’ll know I need him in the sling and out the door for a dog walk by 8 in order to get him to sleep for the suggested time of 8.15.

I also bf on demand, but you can gently guide them into a routine through tracking and setting your own expectations. My newborn has gone from napping / eating whenever into a fairly recognisable five nap day, with a feed every 1.5 to 2 hours. Of course a growth spurt or a ‘leap’ will knock all that out of the windows for a couple of days!

At this age there is no routine and you just survive the best you can ♥️💐

Baby is suddenly becoming much more aware of the wider world so naps become much more difficult.

At 11weeks ours just stopped crib napping for longer than one sleep cycle (45mins) so we started napping them in slings. If you’re breastfeeding tho you might be ok with more short 45min naps in the day 👍

As a general rule, babies that age need to be helped back to sleep after 60mjns awake max xx

Thanks for the comments.
The reason I can’t sleep when he sleeps Chameleon, is that because he doesn’t sleep
In the day time and whenever he does sleep it is only when he is in me. If I try to put him in the crib he just wakes up. It doesn’t seem to matter how long I wake, or if he is in a deep sleep. Sometimes he will sleep for thirty minutes then wake and other times he will only sleep for ten.
I can’t sleep with home on me. No judgement, because I know some people do not have someone to relieve them at night (as I do for now) but I refuse to sleep with him in any way because I am terrified of SIDS. I will follow the advice of Nate is best...it just doesn’t account for when a baby refuses to sleep like that

Sorry for the many typos/ predictive text errors.
Meant to say sleep on me/ sleep with him on me and ‘bare is best’

@Gemskiola - do try naps in his pram sometimes. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was around 3 months Ds started being able to be rocked or pushed in pram to nap instead of always being held. That way you might get 30 mins hands free at least.

I don’t have much to say other than my daughter is 7 weeks and exactly the same. ‘Cluster feeds’ all day and night, sleeps once maybe (2-4 hours) and then occasionally for another 30- 45 mins once in a night, doesn’t normally nap, only sleeps seemingly when feeding or sometimes in pram. Wakes up whenever you put her down. It’s hard because people keep repeating ‘sleep when she sleeps’ even though I keep saying ‘she doesn’t’, and say ‘they’ll do that for a few days’ (it’s been 7 weeks and it’s all day long).

Only thing is she does have bad reflux, and had really bad silent reflux which may have been initially why she fed all the time (to soothe it). Doctor eventually prescribed omeprazol which means she isn’t always writhing in pain anymore, but I think maybe now she doesn’t know how else to be/sleep?

Could also be a silent reflux issue?

Until 4 months my lo would only nap on me and was up a lot in the night. Due to my partners commute I get no help overnight or in the mornings during the week.
At the weekends my partner takes her for a few hours so I get a lie in and catch up on sleep.
She now will nap in the pram too but only if I'm walking so I do ~2h of walking a day so she gets good naps which is exhausting some days. My partner can work from home one day a week so he takes her for an hour if I'm too tired so I can nap. Other times he might take her when he gets in from work for half an hour so I can have a lie down.
Due to my lack of sleep and pnd my partner is having to do most of the house hold chores and cooking. I only get by on broken sleep by conserving energy during the day when I can