confused

[loopylo]

My dd is 8 weeks old. She hasn't settled into a nap routine during the day-often only sleeping if I drive with her in the car or carry her in the front carrier. What should I be aiming for ? And how. HV says I should put her down at set times twice a day in her cot and let her cry ??

The hv asked re her night time sleep and I said I was very happy and she was a star at night. She sleeps late, start bed time routine at 6.30 pm but she tends to cluster feed until 9-10pm ish. Then wakes to feed every 3 hrs. I'm happy with that. The hv pulled a face, said 'oh dear thats bad'. Made me feel terrible.

She also thinks I feed her too much in the day and implied I fed her instead of playing with her-I do play with her but if shes rooting for breast milk I give it to her. Ok she sometimes feeds every 30-60 minutes in the day but I'm not bothered by that.

What should I do? 1st baby so I'm at a loss.

Just do what works for you - bugger what the HV says, or what anyone on here says! The only thing you should be doing is making sure that you and her are safe and happy, and doing what works for you and your family.

Ignore your stupid HV - it's not actually biologically normal for children to sleep through the night until they're 3 or 4 years old, so your baby is completely and utterly normal.

She cries when you put her down because, biologically, she's making sure she's safe by making sure she's with you the whole time. It's good and normal. Get a good sling so you can carry her for longer - not one of those baby-bjorn type ones. Get a good ringsling or wraparound carrier.

And you can't overfeed a breastfed baby - they do far better when they're fed little and often because they're never too full or too empty. As long as the reason she's feeding frequently is because she's normal, and not because she's not latching on well, then go with it.

Trust that you know how to parent your baby - you were born to be a mother...all women are born with the skills they need to mother, and disempowering, mean HVs like yours really, really piss me off. I would stop seeing her if I were you!

i agree with notanotherbrick. it sounds like you are doing great. if you weren't physically of mentally able to cope with your current set-up then go ahead and try and change, but as you say, you are happy with how she's doing so let hetr continue to find her feet with rountines - she's so so little and just needs you lots at present - as most little ones do!

Do we have the same baby??

I'm wondering the same thing about day time naps, mine seems to only nap for short periods of time as well, and does the same thing at night time as yours!

Maybe we have normal babies??

My problem is I listen too much to people who have their babies in a routine and then I feel like I'm doing something wrong.

By the way about the playing thing, I find my baby gets a little bit niggly if I play with him too much. I'm assuming it's the same as me wanted to sit down with a cup of tea instead of going an all-night rave. Crap analogy but I know what I mean!

I suppose I want my baby to nap more, if I'm being honest, so I can get some nap time too!! But I think they pick up on that desperation and then want to cling on! Nap times used to happen naturally before I started worrying tsk.

Rimsky-Thank you. Its good to know I'm not alone. 'All my friends babies' have these amazing routines and all have slept through really early (3-6 weeks). My baby has character !!!!

what a silly hv! Waking every 3 hours or so sounds perfectly normal and from where im standing with a 6mo ds who wakes every 90 mins at night sounds like luxury!! And if babys rooting then just feed her! I put ds on a routine but never enforced it i just saw how he reponded, he was on it for about 3 months but as soon as it was clear he wanted feeding more frequently we dropped out of it. I really think routines with bf babies are hard to stick to long term.