Can any one share their night time routine/schedule with their newborn. Baby is 7 weeks and I’m struggling at night. I’m up 3 times and each time for an hour and a half. I can’t seem to fall asleep in the day time.

[BoyMumToBe34]

I’m exhausted
recovering from c section (it hurts so much as I get up 100 times a night checking in him or soothing him and it pulls every time I lift myself up.
im so sleep deprived, can someone share how they cope and stay healthy or how they manage to stay awake during the night

Bedsharing. No chance I'd have got through it otherwise. I breastfed so fed lying down and baby learnt to help themselves.

there isn't a routine at that age but I found it helped to have a rhythm. the rhythm goes 'Eat - activity - sleep - you'. so baby is hungry and gets fed. then you do something - in the daytime it might be playmat or walk with baby / chat / cuddle. in the night, it might just be a quiet nappy change. then sleep (swaddle baby if you can), then as soon as baby sleeps you can relax. and when baby wakes up, you do the next feed.

for nights, baby and I would sleep in the double bed with a single duvet and lots of space. DH had to take the camp bed downstairs. but that maximizes sleep.

Do you have a partner supporting you? My husband and I took it in turns. He would hold the baby whilst watching TV in the evening while I went to bed. He’d stay up as late as possible and then bring the baby up to me. He then went to bed and the baby was with me for the second half of the night. As baby got used to sleeping on other surfaces, not just humans, we tweaked the routine. Also if he was working the next day he wouldn’t stay up as late.

i found it hard to sleep during the day but would try and see it as resting - lying down and listening to something and I would zone out for a bit. Even a very short forty winks would make a difference to how I felt. I found Audiobooks and sometimes white noise would help, especially if there was noise around outside.

try different things and see what works for you. It’s really tough but call in all the favours you can!

How are you feeding?
Where is the baby sleeping?

I had a bedside cot and just tried not to get up in the night, fed baby lying down and scooted them back over to the cot where possible.

I would also feed baby and go to bed, then dad would keep hold of the baby til the next feed.
Same in the morning, I'd feed in bed about 6am, dad would get up with baby so I could sleep another couple of hours.

I think seven weeks is peak fussy baby time. They are a bit more alert and resist naps which means overtiredness and crankiness. I remember being in tears with both mine around this point.

i did find the love to dream swaddle really, really helped, though - we had one like this and it really settled them. Both hated traditional swaddles too. I don’t work for them or anything but I do like this product!

Cosleep if breastfeeding, for sure. I also used to go to bed at 8 or 9pm as that's when my newborn would do her longest stretch of sleep - it sucks not having an evening but it sucks more being sleep deprived so I'd follow her routine as much as I could. Is there any way baby's dad could help more? My DH used to pass baby to me at night for feeds and then change her if needed etc. so that I would only have to feed her and then get back to sleep.

I think its quite hard to have a routine with a newborn. My 8 week old went from sleeping all the time first week to waking up every hour for a feed. However we noticed in the last few days she is sleeping longer between feeds at night and we started establishing more of a routine.

bath at 6-7pm depending on the last feed, then bottle and some play time until she falls asleep. Then around 10-11pm she is up for nappy change and another feed. And then at 2-3am. She then wakes up around 6am. We tried different swaddles and she likes ergo pouch and definitely made a difference.

my partner usually helps me and does the second half however he does work 2 night shift every week and these nights are the hardest. She usually sleeps on me during the day so I don’t get much sleep during the day so we tend to go to bed quite early. She is small for her age so we don’t want to co-sleep but have next to me crib. Also owlet sock helped massively with my anxiety especially during first week when we had to wake her up for her bottle