My daughter is 8 weeks old and I’m really struggling/panicked with her nights which seem to be getting worse as she gets older instead of getting better as expected. She’s not ever been the best sleeper but has always normally woken every 3 hours in the night for feeding since birth, but the last 2 weeks she’s completely different.
She is not the best at napping during the day. She does sleep but needs constant motion and so is in the sling, pram or more often than not in my arms. Her naps vary, some days she naps 2 hours at a time, other days her naps last 10 -20 minutes. I always try and get her 4 naps a day.
But her nights seem to be bad. She’ll go down at 10pm and wake again at 11pm for a dream feed. She’s very hard to get to sleep so it usually involves me rocking her for 30 minutes. She then wakes at around 1am, 30 minutes rocking and then 2.30-3am, orocking, then she’s up at 5 for a good 2 hours normally wide awake wanting to play/engage. Then sleeps from 7am for maybe an hour or so and we eventually get up at around 8am. She’ll feed twice in the night and is exclusively breast fed. I keep the room totally dark. Every night we do Bath, feed, bed and have been consistent with that. Her last nap is usually between 6pm-7.30pm. I try and put her to bed around 9pm to fit her wake window but to it takes me about an hour to get her to sleep and bedtime winds up around 10pm.
Nappy changes overnight are in the dark with no talking. When she does fall asleep more often than not she’s in active sleep so arms and legs are kicking, she’s grunting and wriggling and almost always wakes herself up, she’s rarely in deep sleep which concerns me.
What am I doing wrong? I feel like a total failure. I try so hard to be consistent and try so hard to get her napping in the day as I know it helps with sleep at night. I’ve also tried not getting her into the bad habit of rocking to sleep but I’m at the point where I do anything to get her down. She sometimes sleep in the next to me cot, sometimes she’s in the bed with me. People tell me she should be sleeping 6 hour stretches at this point, I’m so far off that point. My husband was diagnosed with epilepsy 10 days after she was born, having a major seizure in bed while I was feeding the baby. He became extremely unwell and I ended up doing CPR. So he’s on lifelong drowsying medication and he sleeps all night as a result. So I’m alone overnight and just at my wits end. He works during the day full time. Im up a height worrying about him having another seizure too. I’m Irish and so away from my family. It’s getting to the point I can’t enjoy the baby during the day and I’m getting extremely concerned that she is chronically overtired. She’s extremely attached to me. She is a pleasant baby when awake. All smiles and plateful. But gets cranky at times. I don’t know what to do and would be so grateful for any tips or even reassurance that this does get better because and that I’m not failing my daughter. I’m feeling so bleak at the moment. I honestly don’t mind waking in the night for my baby, just very worried I’m doing something wrong.