3 week old is a terrible sleeper

[Blondiejay24]

I know it’s early days, but I am shattered. I’m not new to this so you’d think I’d be more prepared but I’m not. I ebf, and my LB feeds 1-2 hourly in the day and the same at night. By the time I drop off he’s awake again. I rarely nap in the day as I have a nearly 3 yo who is passed napping. She just won’t nap.
Every night he wakes and just won’t go back to sleep, I spend an hour-2 hours up and down, feeding, rocking soothing, feeding again. Eventually he goes back down by which time it’s 6.00 am and the suns up so I’m lucky if I get another hour.

It’s making me horrible person. I’m jealous of my husband who sleeps through it all and I’ve no patience with my little girl because I’m so tired and angry.

I live bf but thinking of introducing some formula if it might mean I get more than an hour and a half’s sleep!
Just feeling so down.

I'd try a dummy. If you think the baby isn't hungry and just likes to suckle, it may work very well.

Secondly, your husband should be helping at the weekend as a bare minimum. You need to sleep! This is non negotiable.

@FlightofAV we don’t use a dummy as we’re currently treating thrush and it’s a nightmare to shift. The thought of sterilising dummies just puts me off as we’ve already cleared it once and it’s come back!
My husband has helped a bit. He was away Friday with work but he helped with bum changes last night.
Granted.. I wish he’d help more. But breastfeeding makes it hard as you can’t just hand them over. It was the same with my daughter the first 6 months. Once we started introducing foods my husband helped out a lot more. And more still when I weaned off night feeds where he’s help with the wake ups. He does put our daughter to bed pretty much every night, and he gets her ready for nursery every morning so I can get an extra hour. So he is trying!

At that age, I think we introduced an 8 o'clock bottle. I'd go to bed at 7pm, my husband would look after him and bring him up to me at 10.30 or so. If was really lucky, DS would be asleep when DH brought him up and I could get a good 4 hour block of sleep. If it was a really bad night, I'd hand him over to my husband at 5am. I think that he did rocking and shushing duties at weekends too.

But we weren't successful at BF, I don't know whether an evening bottle contributed to this. He's a hungry boy and I think it would have have worked out regardless, but I just wanted to mention it.

Thanks @sewinginscotland I’d not considered an earlier bottle. I might try this if things don’t improve. I’m going to bed early myself but sometimes it might take me an hour to get DS settled into a deep sleep.