Can't cope

[mishkamoo]

1st baby 5wks old tomorrow. Will fall asleep and stay asleep if being carried but will only stay asleep for what seems like maximum of 1hr in moses basket. Was going for 3hrs between feeds at night 10days ago but now can be anything from 1.5-3hrs and as it can take over an hr to feed and settle him, that doesn't leave much time for sleep in between! He is generally feeding well althoug often he will fall asleep when feeding and cannot be roused only to wake 10mins later when put in moses basket. During the day I am now trying him in a sling and he will sleep well if lying on me, but this means I can't take a shower, eat, put the washing on....
I feel like we must be doing something wrong. It seems like everyone elses babies are sleeping well, and going longer between feeds, but ours just seems to be getting worse. Am I making it worse by carrying him/letting him fall asleep on me during the day? Should we co-sleep?? I don;t really want to do this as I'm worried about causing probs later on, but is it the only way to get some sleep??
I am SO SO tired, and really struggling to cope. I sometimes regret having him, which makes me feel so guilty and like such a failure. What can I do?

Have you tried tightly swaddling your baby, feeding him and then laying him down to sleep? This worked for mine.

Don't worry about anything you do now causing problems in the future. The world is very new to your baby and it's not odd that he wants the comfort of you nearby. Being swaddled tightly can make a lot of babies feel safe as it copies the tight fit that they were in the womb.

As for washing and cleaning, if your baby is sleeping then try to catch up with yours. You'll feel better if you can catch even a half hour's sleep.

Don't feel too down. You're doing nothing wrong and things will get better.

Hi, I know that feeling well!
Personally I don't think there is any harm in sleeping with your baby especially if you are BF, you need to take what you can get, although don't get caught long term...

My sister bought me an Amby baby hammock, after my 3rd baby was a nightmare....like yours! The hammock is freestanding and you can rock or bounce baby, fantastic, my last baby only came out of hers at 8 months once she was sitting and it was brilliant especially as she was very colicky.

Good luck!

Oh and don't believe everyone when they say their babies are sleeping through. Some are not.
I believed people only to find out several years later that their babies hadn't slept at all. Now they weren't telling the truth somewhere, were they?

Message withdrawn

I remember the feeling so well...I remember sitting at the top of the stairs in the middle of the night and weeping because I was so tired and couldn't bear it any longer.

You aren't doing anything wrong and at this early stage if carrying him and letting him sleep on you is bringing both of you some peace then don't feel bad about it. But don't fall into the trap of feeling like a terrible mother if he's grizzling in his cot while you take ten minutes to have a shower! If he's fed and clean and comfy, you are not harming him in any way! When DS was this little, DH made sure that I had a) had a shower and b) eaten breakfast before he left for work and it made a difference to how positively I tackled the day.

In the end, we took DS to a cranial osteopath which helped enormously, and we also got him into a routine (nothing too inflexible, but we did do a bit of controlled crying). This is not right for everyone and only you can decide whether it's something you are comfortable with but it helped us.

FWIW, DS is now a very happy and contented 5 yr old with no recollection at all of the fact that it took me three months to fall unconditionally in love with him. So please do no feel guilty or a failure - so many of us have been there and you will survive and you will cope

Trust me when I say your baby sounds entirely normal to me - as does how you are feeling. It is such a massive shock to the system when you become a parent and it is not helped by the fsct that most people aren't honest about how crap it can be.

So, firstly, stop feeling guilty. You are allowed to feel resentful of this little person who has disrupted your entire life. You won't feel like this about him forever - the first smile is around the corner and that will help.

Secondly, try to forget about housework if you can. I know that it can feel the only way to keep hold of some normality, but I found that if I went out for the WHOLE day then the house couldn't get more untidy and I didn't use any pots! Take advantage of how portable your baby is and go out and about - take train journeys, go to museums, window shop in the big city - yoiur baby just wants to be with you so go and do some things you want to do. I know you feel too tired but once you are up and out it feels soooo much better.

As for the shower - try to shower before your other half leaves for work. I used to use this time to nap though, so if you don't shower every day so what?

Use the sling all day if you have to - wrap slings are brilliant for holding baby steady whilst you put washing on/cook/iron(!), hoover. I know other people may bang on about the importance of naps in their moses basket but trust me, every baby reaches the ability to be away from their mum at a different time, and yours isn't there yet.

As for co-sleeping, I never fancied it, but did it to get me through the endless nights and now DS refuses to do it, so it is not necessarily setting up bad habits. And every habit can be tackled later when you feel better.

Sleep may not come for a while, but your ability to function without it will kick in soon. If you are breastfeeding it is also worth checking out a website called kellymom to understand why, on some days, they want to feed FOREVER.

I have had two like this, I felt exactly the same as you, and it does get easier I promise.

I don't think this is unusual for a five week old. He sounds exactly like ds1. Swaddling improved things alot.

It may feel like it at the moment when you are sleep deprived but this won't last forever, it does get better as they gets older. You aren't doing anything wrong.

And when everyone talks about how well their baby sleeps/feeds/ etc etc, take it with a large pinch of salt.

Thank you sooo much for all your encouragement and support. I logically know that things will get better but we seem to be going backwards at the moment..
Part of me thinks he is just such a tiny baby and obviously wants to be close and feels secure when he is with us, but another part of me has been so conditioned by 'traditional' parenting, and parents telling me he must learn to go to sleep on his own etc, that I worry so much about causing further problems. If we sleep with him now, will it not just make it harder to get him to sleep in his cot when he is bigger? I am going to try swaddling-the HV said to do it with his hans up by his face so he can suck his fingers if he wants to -anyone tried it like this? When he wakes in the night he makes lots of gurling noises and whimpers and sucks his fists but refuses to take a dummy, which I think would settle him.

Swaddling is a godsend.

Another tip I was given was put your stinky worn all day milky shirt in his cot too. It seemed to settle mine really well.

With DD my dh fed her expressed milk from a bottle so that I could get some sleep and also b/c I was back at work. She got confused if I bottle fed her, but was fine with dh, although I had to be out of the room. DS wasn't quite as good at it.

Don't believe all the people who say their kids are sleeping through.... mine didn't. My DS sounds exactly like yours.... feeding for ages, then falling asleep and waking as soon as I put him down. He grew out of it after a few months ( I know that sounds like a long time at the moment).

Good luck it does get better quite quickly. xxxx

DS wouldn't sleep in a moses basket, we ended up co-sleeping for 5 days while waiting for our Amby nest to arrive, the diference was amazing.

Mine wouldn't go to sleep in a Moses basket either and slept really well in an Amby... I've got an Amby for sale if you are keen! LOL! DS unfortunately grew out of it when he started to turn around to try and sleep on his front and gave me near heart attacks. So he had to go into the cot!

Angel-would be really interested in your Amby. Hadn't heard of them before, and just been looking online. They sound too good to be true... How old was your little one when he grew out of it?

And was it hard to make the transition to the cot?

Hello, sorry for butting in but thought I would say we never had any problem from Amby to cot, also like a couple of the posts, definately reccommend swaddling and mine sucked their hands!
Maybe you wee one is just bulking up his milk supply, my mum always said that she had 8 of us!, once your body catches up he'll settle again... Keep positive, you can cope!

Hi mishkamoo,

Well, it was a combination of events that made us do the transition to cot really. I had to go and visit my parents overseas (long haul flight of 12.5 hours) by myself and though it says on their website that it can easily be transportable, I wouldn't advise it on a flight! We used to take it with us to my inlaws and he would sleep really well in it. This was when DS was 4.5 months. At my parents, he slept in a travel cot and that was fine. He had no problems transitioning from Amby to travel cot. When we came back, he was 5.5 months and we just thought we might as well stick him in the cot as he was starting to fidget a lot as well. It wasn't difficult once he had been used to a travel cot. My DS is a real wiggler though so it didn't last that long for us. I love it though (I'm from another culture where babies sleeping in hammocks is the norm and how I was raised so I bought the idea even before I bought the Amby!) and really want to keep it for the next one but we don't know if there will be next one or when that will be! Email me if you are interested in it... angelineradley at yahoo dot com and I will send you more details. He really did sleep well in the Amby but I couldn't tell you if that was because DS is a brilliant sleeper to begin with or whether the Amby made him one! Who knows?

Ax

hi, absolutely 2nd the joys of amby nest, they are fab.my son hated the moses basket too.if you decide to work with moses basket try rolling towels up and lying hem down the sides.also my son suddenly got lots lots better when he was 6/7 weeks they just seem bigger/hungrier/more sleepy then.so remember these newborn weeks are so so hard but in a few weeks you will almost forget how hard it was. good luck.

mishkamoo we are all the same, do whatever you can to make it thru. They do get better, some nights are good, some bad.

I shouted at my DS this morning (7weeks on Wed) We both have a cold, I had no sleep and was just dropping off when he started to scream and was snorting like a pig. Poor little man, I know he couldn't help it but OMG it was annoying! then I felt bad and was in tears.

Come and join us on the Sept 08 thread and you will see you are not alone!

Hi.
You are doing OK, honesly.
My baby is 10 weeks old and I was in your situation from day one. How did I cope?

-Get yourself a cot mobile that keeps your baby safe ans entertained while you shower and do what you need to do to keep sane.I recommend the Tiny love symphony in motion mobile, works with batteries, baby loves it and keeps them happy for 15 min. I could not do without it. It has worked for me.I bought it cheap on ebay .
I also co-sleep,better to get a bedside cot.(I tried to sleep in the same bed and was a disaster)Now we both sleep and I am not worried about crashing her during the night.
-She has her naps in the sling during the day
I go to bed late, around 22:00 and she stays downstairs with me sleeping on my lap or the sling till I go to bed.
She feeds on demand, but for me the most important thing it is that the sleeps when I do, at night. She wakes up twice to feed during the night and I put her back in her bedside cot. That is the way it works for us

I tried the swaddling, got different blankets and only worked for the first month, she also hated the moses basket.
YOU SEE? YOU ARE A GOOD MUM. IT HAPPENS TO OTHER MUMS TOO.

I forgot! I have my 3 Swaddling bankets, in excellent condition, for sale if you are interested. I am going to put them on ebay soon. I have 2 grobag swaddling blankets (Jungle friends. Unisex) and a yellow miracle blanket. Let me know.

Potxola
Would be interested in your swaddling blankets.
Does anyone know if you can/should swaddle in an amby nest??
Anyone who has used an amby nest-did you do the whole waiting for them to fall asleep on you 1st b4 putting them in, or can you put them straight in after a feed when they are looking sleepy. If we try and put DS straight in his moses basket he just radually works himself up into a frenzy over 5-10mins and we then really struggle to settle him again.
In desperation for some sleep last night, DS slept with me in bed . I don't really want to co-sleep as I envisage all sorts of probs later on but I have to admit he slept the most soundly he ever has, feeding was easy and I slept well. In his moses basket we could usually only get an hour and he would get very gurgly and be very unsettled but we had none of that. I am hoping an Amby nest might be a compromise..??

mishkamoo no you can't swaddle in an amby nest it can be very dangerous, baby must have arms totally free.yes i put straight into nest after feed and rock and bounce a little untill he nods off x

babies are allowed to cry y'know! i wouldnt worry too much about having a shower or having a poo or anything as long as you know he is ok - let him cry.

/well, i wouldnt let him cry, hes so little and not used to existing outside of you!

my little one (now 21mo) was exactly the same and i found it VERY difficult. I think the best thing i did was to cosleep, and also to read the book "What mothers do". It made me feel like i was doing a vital job, and so what if i didnt cook from scratch every day.

It seems like some of us have 'spirited' demanding children. Most of my friends seemed to cope wonderfully and cook/sleep/wash/poo etc at will whereas i woudl get cross with my DH as he didnt understand why i couldnt just leave DS to cry if i wanted a wee. It gets easier. You are not alone, and read the book - it will make yhou feel a lot better. xx

My DS is 7 weeks and sounds very similar. He was feeding every 3hrs like clockwork at 4 weeks and now has gone all haywire again and I never know what he's going to do.

Bear in mind that your DS will have growth spurts around now and that always makes them more demanding for a while. My DS feeds anything from 2.5hrs up to 4 hrs and the amounts he takes can vary quite widely. He's FF and I'm just feeding him when he's hungry and he's starting to go a bit longer sometimes all on his own. Your baby WILL figure it out on his own.

I don't really care what the advice says about the routines that babies ought to have or setting bad habits, etc. DS sleeps where he sleeps. He's crashed out next to me right now on the sofa! I'm not going to disturb him and move him into his basket because that's stupid!

You can't argue with a newborn or explain why he needs to sleep where and when you want. I refuse to leave my DS to scream in order to make him more convenient for me. Of course, I need to take showers, etc, and whilst I try to do these things when DH is there to supervise him, sometimes he isn't and DS just has to wait - if he has to cry once in a while, it won't harm him.

I regularly get teary when I'm dragged awake at 4am and DS is screaming and I have sat in my living room, feeding him whist crying my eyes out. You are not a failure and your baby will be totally fine.

Our first was like that. I was back at work full time by the age you are and I can tell yo both of us closed the door on the house to go to work at 8am with huge relief (I expressed milk at work). I'm not suggesting returning to work will help you but it certainly saved our lives!