I'm having trouble getting my 9 week old DS to settle to sleep and was wondering if anyone else could offer me some tips on how to improve things. This is the second night this week I haven't slept at all and it's beginning to affect me.
DS2 will only sleep in the Moses basket if he has first slept on me for about 45 minutes and then is rocked in the Moses basket for twenty minutes and even then this isn't guaranteed to work every time. If this doesn't happen he will cry inconsolably until picked up and the whole cycle starts again. It can take up to an hour of shushing, jiggling and rocking to get him to sleep anywhere. He also likes to suck on the knuckle of my index finger to try and sooth himself to sleep but refuses to take a dummy and gets very frustrated if my finger falls out of his mouth.
I am a very heavy sleeper (DH jokes that I could sleep through world war 3) so co-sleeping would not be an option for us.
We have tried to get him into our older son's bedtime routine of bath, pyjamas, story and bed at 7-7.30 but it doesn't seem to work with him (so much for second children just going along with what's already in place :o ) . He is never asleep before 11pm. We have also tried offering him a bottle of ebm (he is ebf) as we did with DS1 at that age as it worked really well with him, but DS2 refuses to take a bottle.
I am really stumped with this and if anyone could pass on some tips on how to improve his sleep I would be beyond grateful. You can tell by the look on his face and the way he cries, that DS2 is tired a lot of the time which won't be helping the situation. I am feeling incredibly run down and because of DS1, who is 3.11 and still needs supervising, it is impossible for me to catch up with any sleep when DH is not around.
Once he is asleep he will go for about 5 hours during the night so quantity of sleep isn't the problem, it's just getting him to sleep in the first place!
Thanks for reading