Please someone tell me if this is normal - New Mum worried!

[pilotsprincess]

Im having a major wobble here and need some experienced mums to help me out..
I have a 7 week old baby girl, I cant get her to nap at all in the day unless I rock her asleep and keep a tight hold on her. If I loosen my hold or try to put her down she starts wrestling with herself, pulling toungues and basically wriggling herself awake, been going on for a month, the first 3 weeks she wasnt like this at all.
At night she will sleep untill she wakes for her first bottle at approx 3 am, then she will start the jerking and wiggling in her sleep, till I resort to putting her in bed next to me, then its silence and she sleeps soundly till 6 when she wakes up for another day of constant dance moves!
Please tell me this sounds normal because yesterday she had her 6 week check at the drs and he said ''wow shes a very busy baby is she like this at night? does she not sleep? poor you'' and Ive seen friends babys that sit happily and content when out and if I go anywhere with my DD I need to constantly jiggle her or she starts wrestling herself and winds herself up.. is it over tiredness??? Im so tired and dont even have clean clothes or had a square meal and feel total meltdown coming on..thankyou!

ps- she was BF for 2 wks, had issues due to traumatic birth, was in pain and gave up which I feel horrendous about as I really wanted it to work out :(

She sounds like an active little baby - and will probably be a lively and adventurous little girl. I wouldn't worry. Can you put a small cot next to your bed and rock it gently in the night so you're not actually having to get up and hold her if you've done it many times already and are too tired to move? We had to do this with our DD who was equally wriggly. She is now 4 and could wriggle for the next Olympics.

Have you tried swaddling her to sleep?

Some babies are just particularly active babies. She sounds healthy and normal from your post, just very active.

I agree with the others, keeping her by your side, maybe touching her may soothe her or swaddling. Swaddling worked wonders with DD1 in the early months.

Our ds2 is like this still at 13 weeks! Very wriggly and jerky, and hardly ever still. We bought the 'miracle' swaddle blanket from mothercare and he sleeps so much better in it. Still not perfect, but a lot better. I'd really recommend it . Good luck!

My DD was the same at this age, but slept once better once I started swaddling her.

My dd (15 weeks now) is like this during the day too (unlike my ds who was a perfect napper). I have found a moby sling a godsend - was driving myself mad trying the cot for naps until giving in and going for the sling after a friend lent it to me. It means I have my hands free and can get on with things. It soothes her to have arms and legs tightly encased. Swaddling also worked the few times she managed to nap in the cot!

Another vote for swaddling for naps and at night; it really calmed my wriggly, ever-alert little DS

He's a very eagle-eyed baby who does everything with gusto, then becomes over-tired in a nanosecond. I too look in amazement at other mum's holding their calm, sleepy LOs!

Totally normal. I have a very active 10 months old DS, who had almost all naps on me until he was 5 months old, when he was suddenly happy to be put in his cot. He hated being swaddled.

I just let him nap on me - in retrospect, I should have got a sling and make the most of it, he is not portable anymore and I have to fit everything around his routine. Please make sure you take care of yourself too, do you have any help in RL? Can you nap with her, maybe once every couple of days? If you get a sling and have both hands free, you can get something decent to eat and put some washing on...Oh, and don't beat yourself up over FF, it's not for lack of trying that you couldn't do it for longer.

My advice would be to do anything that allows you to get most sleep, and make life easy for yourself, she's tiny and you can't create "bad" habits yet. And if you still feel down in a couple of weeks, talk to your GP or HV, a traumatic birth and lack of sleep can both cause PND.