No routine. No hope.

[justtryingtodad]

My son is now 4 weeks old. He doesn’t have a pattern for feeding or sleeping. I can’t get anything done other than look after him badly when I’m not at work. Won’t go down anywhere to sleep for more than about 20 minutes. I’ve just gone back to work. My wife is pretty much broken from dealing with it during the day. What are we doing wrong? I don’t think I can take many more days of this. I’m viewing my own sleep as a pointless waste of time.

You need to be sleeping in shifts. So wife goes to bed very early and you deal with baby. Then you swap and you get the sleep you need for work. Maybe you take baby for a little while after you're ready for work in the morning so that your wife can have a shower in peace. Then she needs to be sleeping when baby sleeps and leaning on family or friends for all the support she can get.

Try swaddling and dummies although neither may work for your baby. Try white noise. Research safe co-sleeping and read up on the 4th trimester.

Get the tongue-tie seen to and your wife should go to a breastfeeding support group with a lactation consultant. Health visitors can advise what's available in your area. New mothers' groups are invaluable for meeting other mums and sharing experiences and advice or just to let off some steam around other women who understand what you're going through.

At 4 weeks though there's no rush to get out. Get whatever support network you have to rally around and set up a strict sleep schedule so you are both getting sleep. You might be like ships in the night for a while but that's life with a newborn. It's a relatively short period of your life and things will get better.

If it really starts to become too stressful I'd personally stop expressing and just switch to formula. I successfully breastfed but it's pure luck. I swore to myself that if trying to breastfeed was impacting my mental health I would switch to formula. You both need to look after yourselves.

By the way, it gets a lot better! At this stage I was in a black hole of despair thinking we’d ruined our life. Little by little things improved and we even chose to have a second…

I appreciate that things have changed a lot and I will be criticised for what I am going to say, but when I had my first baby in the 90s, you only had about six weeks paid maternity leave after the baby was born, which focused the mind somewhat.
I have had three babies and all three were in a routine from around a week after birth.
All three were sleeping in their own rooms with a monitor from very early after coming home - as in just days. I firmly believe the advice given now of keeping baby with you at all times actively discourages sleep. If I had another baby now, I would do exactly the same as the risk of SIDS is so vanishingly small I would accept the risk in the same way I accept the risk of driving a car.
Our night time routine when they were tiny was bath at 5.30pm, bottle then bed at around 6.15pm, In their own room with the light off.
When they woke for a feed, we went in, did not switch the light on, changed them if needed and the fed them. No talking or playing. Just fed and back in cot.
We were rewarded with three children who slept through (6pm-7am) from three months at the latest and knew what bedtime meant.
During the day, we ensured the lights were on and we did not tiptoe around them, so they knew the difference between night and day pretty quickly.
I know this is not the modern way and is deeply unfashionable, but I really hate the way MN sneers at routine for young babies. My experience is that it is a good thing for them whole family and it certainly saved my sanity.
I really don't 'get' this endless dialogue of how difficult newborn babies are, how you can't get on top of housework or cook and how spending day after day in chaos is in any way beneficial to anyone. My babies would certainly not 'refuse' to sleep in a cot because I simply would not allow it.
I might of been lucky but I was lucky x3. So there you have it - I will don my hard hat

You are in the thick of it at the moment at only 4 weeks, that is still so brand new, very very normal to not have a routine and for baby to sleep for short bursts - and you’re feeling it more now that you’ve had 4 solid weeks of sleep deprivation.
As pp have said, it’s about survival at this stage - supporting each other to get chunks of sleep when you can, in shifts. Better times are coming, they really are, with both of mine there was a definite shift starting at about 6 weeks where things gradually and by very small degrees got better each day - definitely more of a routine settled in to by 8-9 weeks with longer stretches of sleep as well. And this wasn’t down to anything we did or didn’t do - it’s purely the baby’s brain and digestive system maturing.

I see your point about a bedtime routine, but the rest doesn’t sound like a routine to me, just encouraging good sleep habits. The rest of what you said, making modern parents feel like idiots for following safe sleep guidelines, could be said in a less patronising way to a father who is clearly struggling with being a parent for the first time.

I did the same as you with my second from about three weeks, but I wouldn’t call it a routine. Routine implies feeding and sleeping are scheduled; feeding to a schedule is definitely not advised with a baby so young.

Also, some young babies just really don’t like lying down in a cot no matter how much you think you can “not allow” it.

Like you say, the 90s were very different times. But don’t patronise the poor man who is desperate for some help. This isn’t AIBU.

I certainly didn't mean to be patronising. I am just used to being torn apart every time I post on this topic that I get my caveats in early on!
However I thought this post was about routine generally with particular emphasis on sleep, which is what I commented on. I would not and do not advocate feeding on demand although I would think about it if I was pinned to the sofa feeding constantly as some I have read on here are.
I suppose my way is the complete opposite of 'baby led'. I needed routine ensure I could get back to work for my first baby and the next two (12 year gap) needed to fit around the rest of the family.

Katypp your way will work for a fairly large percentage of babies who do not have any feeding issues or (temporary or permanent) medical issues. However there are a significant number who do have such issues and that will not work for.

If I had tried that with mine who had undetected tongue tie plus an immature gut from being born early, it would not have worked. You say “when they woke for a feed” - how would you have handled a baby who woke 10 minutes after going to sleep, due to discomfort from wind? And who woke very frequently during the night? Just let them cry? If yours only woke every few hours you were one of the lucky ones.

Please accept that you were lucky rather than having some magical solution that others are too stupid to try. What keeps a lot of babies awake is nothing to do with SIDS advice.

@minipie But I am not talking about your baby. I am talking about mine, and sharing how I got my babies into a routine, which is what the OP's post was about.
I did say I might have been lucky. But tbh, all of the friends did pretty much the same thing (it was the 90s and we all went back to work very early compared to now) and three months was the accepted age when a baby was expected to sleep through. Now I read that it's 'completely normal OP' for a much older baby to wake many times. It was not regarded as normal in the 1990s but I think the emphasis back then was more on the mother's wellbeing whereas now the mother seems to be regarded as a facilitator to her baby, which I do not agree with.
Every time anything is posted on MN, I am pounced on by posters asking 'what if' with a list of increasingly niche issues that disprove my theory. The starting point for any routine has to be no issues as clearly you can't second-guess what problems everyone's baby may ir may not have. My post was not an attack on you.
And finally, I fundamentally disagree that today's SIDS guidelines do not promote unhealthy sleep patterns. I remember reading a post on here from a mum desperate for sleep who posted her night by hour with her six month old. It was an endless round of getting up to go to the loo and waking baby, opening the bedroom window and waking baby etc. That would nit be for me I am afraid.
Another side effect of today's guidelines seems to be that the mum's relationships with anyone else have to sacrificed. I looked forward to my evenings once baby was in bed. We had a family dinner at 7pm then evenings with my husband and other children. I cannot imagine doing any of that with a baby on a crib who I was trying notbto wake.

What you need to make life better and being able to start enjoying your baby more:

• Tongue tie refer all from health Visitor

• Breastfeeding support to feed direct from breast (far less work, more easy to settle and soothe baby, more sleep for all) - there will be a free local group you can go to, check your local council website. Le Leche league also have them.

• Safe bedsharing - far more sleep for everyone, better for establishing direct breastfeeding too

• skin to skin with baby, from you and your wife. Calming and bonding and great for baby’s sleep and development and natural feeding instincts, fourth trimester etc.

• A sling.

• self-belief - you are the ones that bay needs a wants and you’re doing a fantastic job. They can feel your unease. Google co-regulation.
• Adjust your expectations, they are very unrealistic. Sarah ockwell smith his great on real and healthy normal baby sleep.

Your baby is going and won't be in a 'routine' as such yet, but that shouldn't mean you can't get anything done.

My first baby was a bit of a unicorn sleeper, but my second certainly wasn't, was very colicky etc, so believe me I've been through it.

But equally, it's just a tiny baby. It can't get upto mischief, can't argue back, can't throw things on the floor or run away from you. Think about the basic things that a baby needs to feel happy and then see if you can provide them whilst doing the other things in life.

My best piece of advice when I had my first was to try to treat her as my second. You might think now that you 'couldn't possibly' have time to cook food, have a shower, pop to the shop, whatever. But if it were your second you'd find a way because you can't just let them starve, not take them to the loo etc. If they are at school she, you'd need to juggle school runs. The 'I can't' turns into 'how can I'.

This meant that I don't think i missed a single meal when they were tiny. I just made a sandwich with baby in the sling, or popped something in the microwave with baby in the sling.

Tidying etc was again done with baby in the sling. Obviously there were things that weren't practical (ie some cooking, cleaning under things, carrying piles of laundry upstairs, but I managed about 90%. It was a lot easier to keep tidier then than it is now they are 4&6. I remember waking from a lovely nap when my baby was about 2 weeks old, to find my husband had properly sorted, tidied and cleaned the entire downstairs and kitchen, all with a sleeping baby on him.

Swaddling also helped a lot for our first (second hated it), but you have to wrap them much not tightly than you think. It's meant to be like a tight hug.

Keep on persevering on putting them down at night at least. Even with tricky colicky baby she never slept on us at night. That was never an option, and we certainly weren't going to sit up half the night and hold a baby. You might need to experiment with finding the best time in your baby's sleep cycle to put them down. Longer isn't always better. For us, it was usually when you could lift their arm and drop it 3 times in a row without stirring 😂

This is a while new life, and it's going to take some time to get used to. It might sound ridiculous, but also try to make the most of this period. Go to the places you want, eat out at the restaurants you want, sit together and play games and talk. In 6m time those things will be harder. In a year a lot of them will feel impossible. This is an amazing 'interim' stage, where as long as they are with you, cuddled and fed, you can do whatever YOU want to in life. Also, because they don't have much routine, you weren't stuck to the house in the evenings. I took my baby's to a LOT of parties at that age 😃. I miss the social life I had then tbh.

You'll find your rhythm soon, and the challenges now will pass. They'll be replaced with new ones, but at least they'll be different. I'm not going to say it gets easier, because personally I found the opposite, but it definitely doesn't stay the same.

@Katypp I thought I would have a baby I could feed then put down, I thought the early days would be as you describe. But not everyone gets a baby like that! Our baby had feeding issues, he couldn't sleep as he was never full enough to sleep. I don't really have any photos of my baby from that first month as he was just feeding (or more accurate to say trying to feed) constantly. I didn't leave the sofa never mind the living room or the house that first month apart from medical appointments. My baby screamed all the way to and from those appointments - on one journey I passed a woman who muttered 'that sounds like a hungry baby'. I had just finished feeding him twenty minutes before and that feed had lasted 7 hours (all night). I will never forget how that made me feel. And I know I'm not alone - out of 12 mums in my antenatal group, three others had similar difficulties. But we're not the mums you see in the park or in cafes with our newborns. We're the ones at home, barely surviving from day to day. I didn't know newborns like mine existed. But for anyone in a similar situation, your baby is not broken and they will likely improve. A difficult newborn doesn't mean you will have a difficult older baby or toddler. Beyond the newborn stage my baby slept pretty well and he's a very easy going 4 year old. OP, hang in there.

@justtryingtodad I know this is an old thread but commenting in the hopes of an update - we are in the same position with our 4 week old DD. It's currently 3am and she has been crying all night, the only way I can get her to sleep is on me and with a breast in her mouth. My husband and I are broken, we have had no sleep since she was born and we also have an older daughter, 3 and a half years old, who wakes at least once a night too! So exhausted - did you manage to get your DS to accept his crib eventually? How long did it take? Any tips?! We've exhausted every tip we can think of/been advised!!

So exhausted - did you manage to get your DS to accept his crib eventually? How long did it take? Any tips?! We've exhausted every tip we can think of/been advised!!

Can I just ask what you've tried so far? If they won't go into their crib will they sleep next to you in bed? Have you tried using a T-shirt that DH has worn as the sheet in their crib so that it has a nice, reassuring smell? Babies are very sensitive to smell?

How often are they feeding in the daytime? I'd be offering every 2 hours to try and tank then up.

It's a tricky age as they've not yet worked out the difference between night and day plus all of those early morning feeds are programmed into them to increase your supply. You can try and help it though by getting them outside as much as you can in the day, I'd say at least twice and like I said before, trying to tank them up as much as you can when it's daytime

@TinyMouseTheatre thank you for replying - so far we've tried:

• using my clothing as a sheet around the crib
• dabbing breast milk on the sheet
• warming bed with a hot water bottle
• putting the bed up at one end to help with reflux
• white noise
• lights off, quiet and "settling" time in the lead up to bedtime
• swaddling, even bought one of those love to dream bags in desperation. Waste of money as she hates it and seems to get more cross!
• tried with a dummy but she refuses it every time and gets more upset the more I try to get her to take it
• we've tried co-sleeping but it's the same issue, and just doesn't want to be laid flat so she won't settle even next to us in bed. She just wants to be on us, and on my breasts!!

She is EBF and feeds on demand, I'd say she's feeding every 1 and a half to 2 hours in the day. It's now 7am and she hasn't slept at all all night other than for short bursts on me when she's feeding. She has wanted to be on my breast all night long but this is purely for comfort and to soothe.

My husband and I are both broken this morning, and he's now got to drive to work on no sleep!! I'm fairly certain my DD has painful reflux and wind - she gets stuck hiccups when lay flat, it doesn't seem to matter how long I hold her upright after a feed. She swallows a lot and squirms, arches her back and fronts and the within minutes she's crying again. It becomes impossible to settle her as all she wants is to go on the breast again as it's the only thing that soothes her.

We try and get out each day for a walk, admittedly there are some days this doesn't happen as I feel sick with exhaustion. I can't even nap during the day as she simply won't sleep unless on me or moving in the pram!

We've got an older DD (3 and a half) and this is now also waking her so night times are becoming a nightmare!!! Sorry I feel like I'm turning down everything everyone is advising us, but we genuinely have tried it all and none of it seems to make a difference 😞..I really appreciate any replies or advice we get though xx

The hay does sound difficult abd you have my sympathy as my first was like that.

I'm not sure having clothes that you've worn or milk in the crib work as they just smell of milk and make them want to feed. Much better to use some of DH's used clothing.

If you think that LO has reflux, have they been checked for Tongue Tie?

@TinyMouseTheatre thank you ❤️ Will definitely try DH shirt instead. She's been checked the tongue tie and we were told she didn't have one. Can I ask how long your first was like this? Our first DD was a pretty awful sleeper too, but she would at least do stretches in her next to me! DD2 is a while other kettle of fish!!

@TeainanIV Some tongue ties are difficult to diagnose. My daughter was checked 3 times but I think a tie was missed. Now she's older we can see that she has good mobility in and out but struggles to lift the tongue. She's 4 now and I think it's naturally stretching with age as she had more mobility with time

She has silent reflux and multiple food allergies both of which caused massive sleep issues. We had a rule that there was no point us both being awake so one of us would sleep in the spare room. Predominantly my partner but sometimes I did too. She started on omperazole at 8 weeks but needed the highest dose to get the effect and I removed dairy and soya from diet before identifying all of her other allergens

,@Superscientist my first DD was similar - she has dairy and egg allergies. With DD2 I've not cut dairy out yet because she hasn't had any other symptoms other than the silent reflux. I'm hesitant to cut anything from my diet when she's still so young, but reaching breaking point now so might have to. We were sleeping in shifts downstairs (we've no spare room unfortunately 😞) but had wanted to start getting her used to her next to me. After last night I think it'll be a return to split shifts downstairs again!!

@TeainanIV I understand, two things I would consider doing is keeping a food diary and varying the amount of dairy maybe having a high amount of dairy one day a week or see if that changes the balance of good/bad days. Alternatively
you could do a couple of days with no dairy and then normal dairy intake. This was how we got through our list quicker. It was just longer to give us a hint about whether a longer removal would be worth trying if we went from a couple of better days back to worse days. Given this history it possible that there's something going on.

Soya was worse than dairy for my daughter. We were mostly vegetarian and on tricky days we resorted more to frozen veggie sausages for dinner which then gave us more bad days which sent us to the freezer for more meat replacements rather than eating whole foods we would normally love to eat. I kept a food diary and the link with soya was really clear. This was at 17 weeks having started with difficult reflux at 3 weeks!

4 weeks is too young for a routine. Plenty of skin to skin to help you both regulate. Enjoy the snuggles. Don't worry about a routine til new year at the earliest. Sleep when the baby sleeps.

@Wittow I'm not sure if your reply is to my post or the OP, but I really struggle with the sleep when the baby sleeps as my baby only sleeps on me or when I'm walking her around in the pram 😞.

@Superscientist that's a great idea, thank you - I should really start logging what I'm eating. I don't feel like I'm eating much dairy at the moment, we tend not to have much in the house because of DD1. It's such a minefield isn't it?! I've had allergies in the back of my mind before she was born because of our firstborn, I just didn't think it would appear so early. I'm now questioning tongue tie too - I know it can be really difficult to assess and I don't feel like the midwives I did speak to about it really gave it much attention/didn't really look at my DD properly to know for sure. Having read up on it more she is presenting with a lot of the symptoms of it. My brain is fried, I don't know what's for the best and feeling like such a failure at the moment

@TeainanIV in retrospect my daughters symptoms started week 1! It was only months later that we realised feeding aversions were a symptoms of a reaction. It turned out to be our earliest warning sign. Add everything to the diary another symptom of my daughter's was being harder to keep occupied and at 4 that's still a sign she's not well or having a reaction.
It might be worth seeing if there's a local tongue tie specialist near by.
I hear you, I have cows milk in tea and cheese but otherwise dairy free because of my daughter's still allergic. I have stuck with oat milk in coffee and other swaps.
How's your HV? I've been fortunate to have some really helpful ones. They have been good and ideas to manage on my own and encouraging when I need to be heading to the drs

@Superscientist I'm going to look in to a tongue tie specialist in our area I think, I know there's a local lactation consultant that my HV has shared with me so I'm going to go to one of their drop ins too and get some advice. I naively thought I'd find things easier this time around!! Oh how daft I am!! Thank you for sharing your experiences 🙏🏼

There's a list of Tongue Tie Practitioners here.

I'm another one who was told several times "definitely no Tongue tie".

I wish that Health Practitioners wouldn't pass an opinion if they haven't had to formal training to assess for Tongue Tie.