Think I'm expecting too much from my newborn

[messylittlemonkey]

Hi

Just want to vent really.

I have an eight week old DD and a four and a half yo DD.

The older one was a pretty easy baby, although she was small at birth and had an infection which meant we spent a week in hospital so we always erred on the side of caution with her in terms of our expectations of what she 'should' be able to do at certain stages. We loosely followed the Gina Ford routine and it worked for us.

When DD2 came along, we wanted to get her into the same routine having had success wiht it previously so we started with it pretty much straight away.

In the past couple of weeks it has started to come together fairly well, but then over the last few days it seems to be unravelling. The main area of 'trouble' seems to be naps and sleep. Until very recently she was napping really well and going to bed at night quite easily too. She is formula fed at around 10.30pm and can last as long as five hours from that feed.

As I said though, she has started to become difficult to settle at nap and bedtimes and requires lots of intervention all of a sudden.

I'm a bit frazzled by it TBH and trying to work out what;s going on, but then it dawned on me that perhaps this is all perfectly normal and I've just been expecting her to slot into our life more easily than she is able to.

She has just this second woken after being in bed for about 30 mins and I can't work out what's causing that.

got to go anyway, but advice/thoughts gratefully received!

You're right- you are expecting too much I'm afraid. I think babies sometimes sleep much better at the newborn stage when they are very sleepy all the time but it's normal for them to sleep less as they get a little older. It's also normal for a baby to want to be cuddled to sleep.

So yes, all normal I'm afraid, but tiring.

Could she be hungry? A lot of babies get hungry when they have a growth spurt, around 8 weeks is a typical age.

Second the hungry bit - my dd had a big growth spurt at 8 weeks and fed almost 24/7!

Or maybe more cuddling to sleep?

All sounds pretty normal to (inexperienced) me, don't think you can expect much before 6 months old to be honest, and even then, it's more a case of luck than anything else when it comes to sleep!

Sounds pretty normal to me. Especially how your DD did seem to have some sort of routine and then suddenly changed. And IME she will change again (maybe to the old routine, maybe to something completely different). And going through phases of wanting you more (eg being cuddled to sleep) and wanting you less (eg going to sleep on her own).

Definitely lower your expectations and that might help with the frazzled-ness. And don't think that it's all your fault.

No magic answers but hope this is reassuring at least!

Each baby is so different so don't expect them to be the same, even when v young.

I used to want a light on top their heads to tell me what was wrong, e.g. feed me, I'm bored, I'm tired etc. If only......

The light above their heads would be great - someone should develop that idea!

Thanks for all of your thoughts/ideas. It all helps to get a perspective.

The trouble is you've read the Gina Ford book but she hasn't.

Having my second child made me realise that all the things I proudly thought I had Got Right with the first were mostly pure dumb luck .

I seem to remember dd2 being similar. For the first few weeks she was brilliant, I remember telling the midwife she was sleeping 6hrs overnight. It was around 8 weeks that she started asserting herself a bit more and becoming far more wakeful.