Help! Not waking up to baby crying

[lamonad]

So baby is 5 weeks old
I am EBF. We had a very rough, sleepless first week (literally.. 3x hospital admissions for baby and reflux left us not wanting to sleep out of fear of him choking). Anyway while reflux is better to some degree, we are getting sleep now albeit as I am EBF I am getting 1-3 hour stretches before waking up to his cries.
I feel better although still exhausted all the time. I guess I’ve just adjusted to the exhaustion and this is my new level of functioning.

I have just had a nap while baby was asleep and we have a family member staying over who has just informed me that he was concerned about baby crying. He was going to knock on my door to see if I needed anything but didn’t want to interfere.
Now this has me worried as I THOUGHT I woke up to his first cries but it turns out he was crying (and family member said screaming at times) for THIRTY MINUTES!!!!!
And I didn’t hear or wake or stir for all that time!!!
I feel awful about this and very worried!
this is my second child who was a very good sleeper and didn’t feel half this tired so my first question is, did anyone else experience this?
and second question is, what can I do to help me wake up? Other than the obvious of getting more sleep which I can’t do anything about right now

You could get a baby monitor. Put it beside you with the volume up loud?

Yeah I was thinking that. Kind of like as an amplifier

Why didn’t the family member come and get you sooner!

30 minutes! Why on earth didn’t the family member wake you if they heard the baby screaming for that long? I would also say a monitor turned up loud next to you.

Are there baby monitors that would have an alert that vibrates or flashes lights if sounds don't wake you? You could put it under your pillow or on a bedside cabinet right next to your head?

This was me! I'm a very very deep sleeper (and sleep talker / walker as well) and especially with DD2, I was sleeping through her crying a lot. She was a low centile and i was doing 3hrly feedings for a long time, and I kept sleeping through my alarm to wake up and feed her. I made sure DH knew to never assume that everything was OK (especially the nights he was in the spare room due to early commute) and that if he woke up, to at least pop his head in and check all was well. I didnt really ever nap in the day as a result. The HV told me not to worry about and if DD was really cross, I would wake up but I really worried a lot that that wasn't the case!

The baby monitor trick didn't work for us as for it to be near enough to my head to make a difference, it caused feedback between the camera and the monitor. Never thought of looking for a vibrating one.

Another vote for a baby monitor!
I have issues with a degree of hearing loss in one ear and am naturally a side sleeper, so if the good ear is to the pillow and bad ear up I always struggle to hear. I thought I'd be fine with baby right beside me in the crib but sometimes I wasn't waking (DH was) if I ended up asleep the bad way around. So I slept with the baby monitor turned up and under my pillow and it always worked thankfully!

Yes I also wondered why he didn’t wake me up. Maybe he thought I was already trying to settle him and didn’t want to seem like he was interfering. Anyway, I’m wondering if it was the neighbours child that was crying/screaming now though. May not be but it’s just a little bit hard for me to believe since my husband said he was lay in bed awake at midnight last night when baby started to cry and I woke up within 1-2 minutes to tend to him. Husband has done this a few times and never been concerned that I wasn’t waking up.
I have set up an accessibility setting on my iPhone that is for people with hard of hearing. It basically sends a notification to your phone when it picks up that a baby is crying so I will see tonight how long it takes me to wake up from the onset 🤞🏼