newborn sleep nightmare, officially desperate

[ExistentialistCat]

2 week-old DD2 just won't settle in her crib at night at all. She'll sleep in her moses basket during the day quite happily, though. I've tried all the usual tricks (warming the mattress, swaddling, making a little nest out of a rolled-up blanket etc etc etc). We end up co-sleeping out of necessity but I don't want to, I don't get any sleep like that, and I'm not sure it's safe because DH and I are so extremely dopey now.

I'm averaging 2 hours sleep a night (not all in one chunk) and I just don't know how I can continue like this. I also have a 15 month-old DD1 and it's so unfair on her that I'm a permanently bf-ing zombie during the day.

Does all this settle on its own at the magic 6 week mark or is there something we could do to encourage DD2 to sleep in her crib? How do I survive the next 4 weeks? How much of an influence might bf-ing have, and could a night time bottle of formula help (I ff DD1 and don't remember the sleep issues being quite this bad in the early weeks)?

cosmosis! But v chuffed for you. We just attempted to go out and look at bedside cots in John Lewis but had to abort mission as DS kept screaming in the car ... :(

That's great cosmosis. DD fell asleep herself once

I'm so desperate to get her to to sleep in the day and not just on me. I have no idea what to do. I read all these threads about putting the baby down for a nap. HOW ARE THEY DOING IT???

I don't even need a routine, I don't care if I have to feed to sleep, but I would like to be able to put her down, so I can, you know, eat or have a shower.
Currently she is swaddled up in her carseat with a white noise app going on my iPhone, refusing to sleep, though she was asleep when I put her in there.

have you tried one of those swings?I have been looking after my friends baby today as she has flu and he fell asleep on me but woke up when i tried to lay him down i had bought a swing last month from a nearly nerw baby sale and put him in it-result! He s;ept for ages.Another thing i remembered is that pampers cd you get free in one of the promotional packs has this classical music,dd used to sleep if i put that on quite loud.I do feel for you all as i cant sleep at the mo due to spd and its really horrible to get no relief from bedtime.

Don't worry all, we had a no sleeping night so it was definitely a one off!

led we have a swing, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

led sorry to hear re SPD and late-preg insomnia - I had both so know how rotten it is.

cosmosis sorry you had a rubbish night. Ours was going ok until 3am - DS took 2hrs to settle then woke up again an hour later. Gah! Thank goodness for DH who carted him off at 6am so I could get some sleep. I didn't sleep at all between 3am and 7am due to some kind of weird mummy insomnia!

Ah thanks thats kind.

Does anyone else just feel like a total failure at this mothering thing? I was in tears at 4 this morning becuase every time we put him in his basket he woke up, and it ended up because we were all wound up that the only way he would sleep was latched on. I can't carry on like this. :( I'm going to have to get tough aren't I? The trouble is I know it's going to mean nights of even worse sleep while we get it sorted and I don't think I can face that.

Hi all.. can I join ?

I have a four week old dd who thinks night time is playtime !
I have had to give up bf already .. so she is on formula and not even that helps with the sleeping.. I am too nervous to co sleep..terrified of sids...

Cosmosis - I know I feel like that ..and this one is my third....

My mantra is "this will get better, this will get better.."

hugs ..x

good morning - mind if i join you?
dd is almost 6 weeks, and only sleeps on me.
we get 2 stretches where she will deign to be put down in her basket, from 8-11pm and 12am-2am. otherwise she is on me. dd1 was a nightmare, but would sleep in a moving buggy or car. dd2 just screams, and my nerves are increasingly frazzled. poor dd1 (3) has to put up with the screaming if we are to leave the house for toddler group etc. she won't take a dummy either .

dd1 was a rubbish sleeper, but not in this league. we ended up doing cc with her at 6mo, which was very quick and effective, but obviously not an option yet. and because of dd1 i don't have hours to do all that ssh-pat-resettle business either. grrrrrrr.

yy cosmosis - i do feel like Crap Mother of the Year. dd2 was desperately overtired (as usual) at toddler group yesterday and had a total purple-faced screaming benny when i put her in the buggy to go home. cue lots of helpful remarks about her being hungry (15 mins after a msmmoth bf) or in pain......i was judged and found wanting

Cosmosis, I feel the same... But I also feel like I would be a bad mum if I left my dd because I think most of the time she has colicky pain and the rest she has woken herself up by snuffling and coughing and making all sorts of weird noises!

Last night she wouldn't stay in her basket at all :-( she'd fall asleep on me and we'd cuddle and just when I thought she was fast asleep I would put her down and from then she'd gradually start stirring till wide awake and crying. In the end we held her from 4.30 till 10 this morning so at least one of us could sleep but we can't go on like this! And she definitely won't self settle herself to sleep if we leave her.

My dh keep suggesting we put her in her own room so we can ignore the sniffles and stuff and she'd only wake us if she cried, but she isn't 3 weeks yet and I want her in the same room till she is a few months old at least :-(

hello ladies - can i join in? 12wk old will not sleep. last night eventually got her down at 4am. i am in pieces and really am not coping - dont know what to do. sympathy to all going through simliar.

ARGH! Yes everyone, I feel your pain. We couldn't get DS to sleep last night. Nothing seems to work anymore. He is getting bigger and bigger and will soon be too heavy for all this rocking. I am sick of having to sleep with a detuned radio hissing because he wakes up if we switch it off!

He will only sleep on me for daytime naps so can't get any kip myself.

One of my nct pals came round the other day with her baby who's 15wks. At one point she looked at him and said, "ooh, you look a bit tired". She got a baby sleeping bag out, zipped him into it and laid him down on my living room rug. Popped a dummy in and he was asleep within seconds.

I told her I couldn't have been more amazed if he'd got up and moonwalked across the floor

nightmare. you must be frazzled.

My sister's DS was one of those freaky self-settling babies. She got the shock of her life when she had her DD .

I often wonder when I am bfing in the wee hours about all the other mums out there who are going through the hell difficulties that I am regarding sleep.

As Cosmosis knows I have a 5wk old and our sleeping pattern is a bit off. Last night he fed at 1130 but he did not settle in his Moses til 1245 - not long I know but on top of the existing lack of sleep its still stressful. Then up again at 4 to change and feed, back to bed/Moses around 5ish and then he woke again at 6 for a change and another feed.

He will sleep on me/in my arms no probs after a feed. Move him to him Moses - wide awake, crying, screaming, flailing arms and legs. I end up having to pick him up and cuddle him. I did it in the dark last night which helped.

I am rubbish at swaddling. It always unravels as the baby fights his way out. HV reckons he has my temper. Also he does have colic. Still not sure whether to use a dummy or not. Part of me doesnt want to cos bloody MIL will say "told you so" blah blah and I could knock her block off with all her advice regarding DS and my parenting skills. She thinks he is too cold and I dont dress him well cos his hands and feet are always cold...... go figure.....

At this moment I am waiting delivery of a Slumber Bear. Him Indoors has put the mobile from the cot on the Moses but I think that surely this will just stimulate the baby rather than send him to sleep, it doesnt have any lights mind you, just furry things and a bit of music.

To make things worse, I have a cold. Sore throat/blocked nose and pounding headache. I want to sleep. Forever. Uninterrupted. I even struggle to hear the baby crying in the night as I sleep so deeply. HI had to wake me this morning at 4am!

I knew that being a mum would be tough but nobody really tells you how bad it is. If they did I think that there would be a massive decline in births in this country.

Anyways nice to meet you all and look forward to getting to know you and lightening the load that is sleep deprivation.

Hello all, sorry to hear all your stories & sorry this thread has found so many followers (i mean that in the nicest possible way!)

I've said this before but I really recommend sleeping with one earphone or ear plug in. It cuts out most of the grunting and stops me waking up. It does mean I have milliseconds before she actually cries in which to her latched on!

I have a White noise app but it doesn't work if she is already worked up.

I started writting this at 6am which is when dd has taken to waking up. Dd1 is regularly waking up at night now which is a real PITA.

Can i join the club?

Ds is 4 weeks and was in a vague pattern in that he was going to sleep at 9-10 and sleeping for 2.5 - 3 hrs, then wanted feeding between 12 - 1, again at 3-4 then usually awake by 6am. not brilliant amunts of sleep b ut better thaan some. But.......................

the past few nights have been hell!!! really fussy evenings where nothing is working to settle him! he cries so much he cant / wont latch on, swaddling doesnt work, dummies dont work, occassionally he'll fall asleep on my dp or in a sling but now whenever we try and put him in his moses basket he wakes up and is wide awake again and resumes screaming the house down.

last night he did one 3 hour sleep and that was it, night before he was awake every hour . I'm exhausted, just praying its a growth spurt as he's a big boy, put on 1lb 3 oz in 1 week. (little fatty)

who knew being a mummy was so hard! almost feel like i've been tricked somewhere as no one told me Bf'ing and newborns were this challenging!!

I have been bouncing dd in her hammock for 45 mins now :(, 20 mins spent trying to hold a dummy in. She has slept for half an hour since 9am so she is tired. if i just persevere with this will it get shorter? can't stop bouncing as she wakes up, she's been crying for most of the time but seems to have settled, listen to amazon jungle sounds on the iphone!

Sleepdeprived, this may not help but hopefully will reassure you that the fussiness is normal and there is not much you can do, but at least you are not doing anything wrong. It does get better. DD is rarely fussy now, but does cluster feed still.

If DD is crying but I don't pick her up but bouncing, doing shh/pat staying with her, that's not controlled crying is it? I thought I had managed to get her to sleep before this 45 minute crying and for the 15 minutes that it worked I felt so relaxed and was sitting with DD1. Feel so frustrated by constantly having DD2 on or attached to me.

Ok, she is asleep, after 1 hour. Feel very mean but she really was tired. Wonder how long it will last.

15 minutes in case anyone was wondering

IWTFWM - thanks for the link, itd good to know that the fussiness is normal, and he has had periods of it before with cluster feeding for hours, its just that at the moment he just doesn't seem to know what he wants and therefore screams until DP or I can figure it out, and the usual solution of feeding him isn't always working :(

only 15 minutes? you poor thing, hope you at least managed a cup of tea and a biscuit.

15 mins?
dd2 is also a 20 minute napper, unless both swaddled and held, or moving in the sling . i am not getting on well with the sling (maya wrap) as my back aches, so am frantically bidding on ebay for a kari-me.

dh is working 6am-7pm today, so have the pleasure of trying to calm dd2 whilst doing bed and bath for dd1. i need wine.

Hideous charlotte, DH works till 7 two nights a week, bedtime waits till he is home, but I have to do dinner with velcro baby.

So after her waking up again, I fed her to sleep and I do know if it was all the fuss before or a fluke but she actually went down in her hammock, and has been asleep for over an hour. It feels so weird to have gone so long without holding her!

I'm wondering if I need to try and put her down at roughly the same time each day, so maybe sometime between 10 and 11am and 3 and 4pm. I don't want to be too rigid, but if I just try and put her down twice a day, even if it means going through the whole palaver of today do you think that sounds like it might work?