My DD is five weeks tomorrow, and is a pretty good sleeper at night, going 12-4, 5-7/8. She is in a bed nest (NCT), and is 80% bf, with ff top ups.
However after about 8am, she basically won't sleep. She won't sleep on me, she won't sleep in her crib, she won't sleep in the basket, she won't sleep in the sling. Sometimes she sleeps in the pram if I take her out, but she doesn't stay asleep when the pram stops. She might nap in the bouncy chair sometimes, but just as often it will make her batshit crazy with rage.
She maybe has a couple of 40 min stretches here and there, and on a good day, will go for 3 hours once in the day. This can't be right! All the books say they need hours and hours, she's getting maybe 8 hours on a good day (in 24).
The rest of the day is me rocking, singing, feeding, walking, bouncy chair, anything I can think of that might settle her. She's constantly overtired,but when she refuses sleep, I don't know how to get her to be not overtired. She's frantic half the time, totally unsettled and unhappy.
With a huge amount of work I can get her to catnap, but hardly more. The time it takes to get her to sleep means there's barely time to do anything else ever.
The evenings are worse, it's hours of screaming. Unless she is walked and bounced constantly, she screams, beetroot faced and ironing board rigid. I've tried dummies, singing, music, white noise, Hoover (this will silence her, but only temporarily), every hold I can conceive of, she gets endless winding, I cannot think what it is she needs.
Both DH and I have bad backs already from walking and bouncing her (she was 10lbs at birth, is now well over 11), and tonight I lost it with her, and sat, letting her scream and scream, just saying 'no, I'm not doing this' over and over to her. She won.
I know, I do know that a five week old can't have tantrums, but it really feels like that's what it is.
Any advice, or do I have to suck it up? I'm losing my temper with her constantly and feel like a dreadful person.