Exhaustion during night feeds with 7 week old, how to help or reduce these?

[Attheyard]

I have a 7 week old baby (tomorrow) who has had severe reflux since about week 3-4. Things have improved with omeprazole and gaviscon and we’ve had one stretch of a 4 hour sleep which was honestly incredible. But after that first longer sleep at night he will typically only go back down for 45 minutes to an hour, so a typical night will look something like this:
9pm - start bedtime feed, burping, change nappy, give gaviscon, burping, feed to sleep. Sit upright for 20 minutes (he’s asleep) then transfer. It’s usually about 10:30-11pm at this point.
1-2am: on a good night he will wake up for a feed. The process of feed, nappy, gaviscon and sitting upright takes 1.5 hours.
45 mins later: awake. Repeat.

Every now and then I have managed to shush him back to sleep by rocking the next to me but usually I have to get him up because I’m not sure what he wants and if he wants to feed or doesn’t like his wet nappy or he just wants a cuddle. He never feels cold, he’s currently sleeping in a long sleeved vest and 1.0 grobag.

I don’t have help overnight because my husband is back working and really struggles without sleep, so he goes back to sleep immediately. (He does all cooking, cleaning, laundry etc).

I get that he’s still really little but other friends’ babies and babies on the internet seem to be sleeping with just one overnight wake up for a feed. The multiple wakes after hardly any time plus the reflux are really taking their toll on my mental health and I am exhausted. I also can’t really catch up on sleep during the day as he tends to nap on me, in the carrier or in the pram. If transferred to the Moses basket he usually wakes up pretty quickly. Is there something I can change to get him to sleep for longer during the second part of the night? He is EBF, does have a bottle sometimes and no issues with him taking it so sometimes we give him a bedtime bottle but it makes no difference. It also makes no difference what we do in the day, or whether he has a “schedule” and I try to make him nap at specific times or just go with it. I therefore don’t pay attention to wake windows or whatever during the day as it suits us better to be able to go and do things whenever we like, or I’d be absolutely miserable. But I just desperately need more sleep! Co-sleeping and lying down feeding aren’t options for us due to no safe environment for this.

Sorry for the essay, I don’t know anyone who is going through what we are so have no one to talk to in real life.

Your dh needs to be helping in the night so you get some sleep.

Why can’t you feed lying down? Changing your furniture around so there’s space for this may save your sanity!

Mine rarely slept more than 2 hours for the first year, what made it easier was to feed in bed lying down, I would go straight back to sleep whilst they fed, this kicked in about 8 weeks (prior they needed more help) dd2 had reflux but took meds twice a day not every feed

You have my sympathies. Have you tried waiting a bit longer in the night to see if he settles himself? The process of you getting him may wake him up completely and then you’re both awake.

My babies had dreadful reflux, so this is familiar. You have my empathy!

Are you elevating the mattress? Can you talk us through your sleep environmental in case we can problem solve. Are poos green/mucus at all?

Environment, not environmental!

Your DH needs to do the settling after the first feed so you can go straight to sleep. Mine would let the baby sleep on him until 1 or 2 and then I'd do from 2 onwards. That way we'd both get a chunk of 4/5 hours. Or he could settle after the 1am/2am feed. Basically being at work is no excuse unless he is operating heavy machinery?.

Why do you not have a safe place to co sleep?

You need to go to bed after the early evening feed. So say around 7ish, then your husband does the 9pm with a bottle. Then you'll be getting until 1-2am, so a 6-7 hour stretch of sleep.

Thank you! It’s so tough and I feel like a lot of the advice is for “normal” babies and with reflux it’s all so much harder.

Baby sleeps in a next to me but not attached to the bed. We live in a tiny flat so there’s no room for extra mattresses or anything. The cot isn’t elevated because the Lullaby Trust say this is unsafe and ineffective at reducing reflux and I also do have a lot of anxiety about SIDS which doesn’t help. (Getting counselling for this).

I have on occasion managed to re-settle him but 90% of the time he cries himself awake and I can hear him gulping down the reflux so he needs to sit up and off his back and also I suspect some of it is comfort feeding.

Re splitting nights, if we did me going to be at 7pm how would I eat dinner? Husband cooks when he finishes work which means we eat about 8ish and it’s the only bit of time we get together all day. I do understand people say get him to help settle overnight but it isn’t worth it, I can’t sleep anyway when he is doing this due to anxiety and also I currently really don’t do anything house wise except baby and dog and this works for us. So it wouldn’t be fair to have him also take on night feeds.

Definitely try to go to bed earlier. I rarely changed nappies in the night unless they had done a poo. Changing the nappy prolongs the routine and wakes them up. I also fed them in bed which felt less tiring.

Just eat separately for a while until the reflux settles. You need to prioritise sleep. Every baby is different, doesn’t mean they’re normal or not normal

Agree, don’t need to change nappy every hour/45 mins unless wet, this may be waking baby up more.

Baby has to sit or feed upright because of the reflux. If he’s even a bit too horizontal in a cradle hold it all comes back up again and he’s so uncomfortable :(

I have managed this once or twice, but he frequently wakes himself up with his reflux even with all the above, so then he’s awake and crying and I can’t leave him to cry himself back to sleep. I could make more of an effort to do this every time at first and see if it helps, especially the first wake up after his 2am feed because I know theoretically he shouldn’t be hungry a mere hour later.

Well the solution is for you to go to bed earlier and DH to do the 9pm feed etc. Grab something to eat before DH gets home and get some sleep. I understand you might not get much time together this way but that’s not unusual with such a small baby, and it’s not forever.

The anxiety is the killer. I was like this too and I don’t know the answer. My sister insisted I got therapy before second baby and I didn’t. Second was a better sleeper but now he’s started nursery and wakes in the night and it stresses me out! But toddler waking doesn’t bother me, strangely.

I think it gets easier with time. But if you’re having therapy it should speed up the process.

If you really want to work towards 12 hours sleep quickly have a look at Brenda Hart, she’s incredible and saved my sanity. Not everyone agrees with her methods. For me it was a question of being a functioning mother or not.

Agree you go to bed 7pm, it won't be forever. Keep what your dh cooks for dinner to have the following night.

My DS is now aged 32 but I still remember the horrendous night times with him the first few months as he had bad colic and only slept for 30 minutes at a time in the day. It did get better with being bottle fed as I could feed with him being upright. I used to walk him in the pushchair 3 times a day, I think the bumping and movement helped him. I’m afraid that once baby was asleep at night I would go to bed, it’s not forever and I needed the sleep, DH agreed, he tried to take over, but one night I found him bathing the baby as it was easier than cleaning him up, bless him, baby loved his bath, I wondered why it was so quiet, it’s all hit and miss what works.

Agree with this.

Have you had any specialist bf support? It's worth asking your HV. Sometimes there are tweaks to feeding that can help reflux.

Do you have other children? If not you need to sleep during the day a bit more. It will pass.

Sleep is more important than eating what he cooks. Eat the leftovers the following evening. As someone else said, it won't be forever and you don't have to do it that way every single night. Maybe at the weekends he can do the morning. My daughter had very bad reflux and it took around an hour for every feed, I was exhausted - her dad took over Friday nights and I looked forward to that night very very much. The worst of her reflux resolved very quickly once she was 6 months old and improved a lot.

I agree re going to bed earlier too, just eat your dinner at lunch and have a snack before bed. What use is time together if you’re miserable? We call it a reverse lie in. Even now my kids wake between 5.30-6 so we usually go to bed about 9-9.30. I’ve always liked my sleep!

Definitely go to bed as soon as your husband gets home. This won't last forever, you don't need time together - just sleep. You can snack on toast or whatever during the day to keep you going.

I would raise one end of the cot - I guess advice has changed since 2019, but my son had reflux and this was recommended.

I always got Sunday mornings as my day to lie in and catch up on sleep.

We had this - feeding upright and chestsleeping (propped upright) solved it for us.

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