12 week old, hardly sleeps. HELP

[DelBot123]

Im afraid I've created a monster, sleep wise, in my lovely 12 week old daughter. She has slept in my bed since she was a few weeks old, I'm more than happy with this but what I'm less pleased about is her sleep there.

We have a routine of bath and bed at 7. She sleeps until 12, lightly but she's asleep and I watch her go back to sleep if she stirs. However, once she's had her first night feed she wakes every 20 minutes to an hour for a feed, she can't be hungry just wants comfort.

I've tried getting her to sleep in other ways and giving her a dummy (she refuses it) but she wakes as soon as she goes back down. In desperation I called my HV for advice she says I shouldn't give her the breast if she's fed less than 2 hours ago, should put her in a cot in the day and at night (she often bfs to sleep and stays on my lap in the day) and need to get into the habit of getting her to sleep in other ways. I tried all of those things . . . resulted in 2 days of us both crying, alot and a bad back from swinging.

I'm so worried I've ruined my little girl and don't know how to correct this 'bad habit' of her needing me to get back to sleep post 12 am. She naps in the day in a sling or on me but is sleepy at 3 and will often sleep till her bedtime. Should I move her bedtime forward? I tried waking her at 6 but she dropped the first 4 hour chunk in response. don't mind about being sleep deprived I'm more worried she is, she's always yawning on her 8 hours of broken sleep a night.

Sorry for the outpouring. I am at the end of my tether with it all and feel like a bit of a failure :(

I can't offer you any answers but didn't want to read and run. What I would say though is that if something isn't a problem for you, it isn't a problem. I'm sure your HV thinks she's giving you the best advice, but saying you have to put your baby in a cot when co sleeping is working for you is not necessarily helpful. I co slept with my DD for the first 5 months and gradually moved her to a cot when co sleeping became uncomfortable. She now spends most of the night there and I only sometimes more her in with me if she's ill or won't settle.

You can't ruin your baby. She is only tiny, she needs her mum and at 12 weeks she will still be going through frequent growth spurts and may well need to feed frequently throughout the night. My co sleeping EBF DD's sleep gradually improved until by 16 weeks she was reliably doing 2 x 5-hour stretches. That's without me doing anything to change things. (Then the 4 month sleep regression hit and it all went pear shaped, but that's another story!)

There is some helpful, academically researched info on baby sleep on the Isis website (sorry don't have the link but you can find it via google). Hopefully someone else will come along with some more concrete suggestions but in the meantime please don't think you're a failure. It sounds like you're doing a brilliant job.

Thank you for your message and reassurance. I will check out the website. It's good to know things got better for you at 16 weeks.

I'm slowly getting her into her cot by putting her into a pram newborn liner and then putting that on my bed. Hopefully I'll then be able to put that in my cot eventually. I heat it with a hot water bottle first and she goes in it ok, in fact she's just done her first ever 5 hour stint :) So I'm more hopeful than I have been. Thanks for heads up about months - I'll look forward to that!! lol

You haven't ruined your dd! She is 12 weeks old. She is so tiny still.

Do whatever you need to do to get some rest. Your own rest and sleep is priority when baby is so small.

I promise you she will get better.

I've had 2 none sleepers. Ds was my first dc and i was so worried about doing it wrong I probably made it harder. Dd is 7 months and although the routine is improving its still not established.

The difference with dd is I will do anything to get some sleep. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

Relax, enjoy your baby and forget about night and day. Just think of nap times. It won't be like this forever!

As everyone has said you can't ruin your DD, she's too little to be ruined!
It takes babies 4/5 days to get used to a new thing do be patient with the cot, she'll get there.
At this age I believe babies struggle being awake for longer than 2 hours so try & put her down for naps if she's up for longer than that during the day. Her last nap should finish at leave 1 & 1/2 hours before her bedtime so she's drowsy.
Do you do any sort of bedtime routine with her such as a bath/story etc? Not sure but it might help her realise it's nighttime & not just a long nap.
Good luck.

So sorry just seen you do have a bedtime routine!
I felt things got better when I added in a daytime routine as well but like another poster has said these aren't for everyone. I found Jo Tantum to be right for my DD though if it helps.

Thanks for all your messages. Feeling much more positive now :) I have done a daytime routine since she was 8 weeks, will try and introduce some more naps. I'll keep up with the cot hoping that in 4/5 days she'll start to get the idea :) I don't really mind how long it takes just as long as she's not picked up an awful habit from me I can't undo. Most of my family and friends have warned me about parenting her the way I am, its reassuring to her the opposite from you lot. Feel much more confident :)

Mine is 9 weeks - her naps totally vary during the day, she only sleeps on me or in the moving pram during the day, at night I have to settle her at our bedtime with a dummy/boob, she then sleeps from around 11pm-3am and 4am-6am approx.

I'm surviving fine on this and it's so much better than the nights of crying she used to do. However I've been thinking of doing a bedtime routine and trying to settle her for the night at 7.30/8pm. The reason for this would be to set a good pattern of an early bedtime for when she hopefully starts sleeping through.

The problem we might then have is what you're having, we won't be asleep during her longest run of sleep. So I'm not sure whether a later bedtime is better or whether you've actually set a good pattern for later with an earlier bedtime?!

We're also using a cosleeper babybay so am worried she won't sleep well in her own cot/room later but it's just so easy now. I make sure I don't hold/touch her at night when we're sleeping. During the day I give in and hold her so she naps well though, I should be stronger and put her down more!

Anyway please keep us posted on how you get on but just wanted to say you might actually have set a good pattern for later on with the early bedtime and routine even though it doesn't feel like it now! Please keep us posted on how you get on.

Alexandra6 - I have always held my LO in the day for naps, even though everyone says I'm making a rod for my own back!!!, I like it and she sleeps for longer like you say. It does mean that now she's not a massive fan of going into her cot for naps but I'm trying to introduce on nap a day where she goes down. I'll let you know how it goes.

What I've started doing this week is putting her in a newborn pram liner, shaped like a cot, has sides but its fabric so can sit on my bed next to me. I'm trying to get her to sleep in this in the day occasionally and every night. She hasn't seemed to notice. Im then going to move this away from me in my bed and towards the cot and then put the liner into the cot. That's my theory anyway. Putting a hot water bottle in first helps to warm the base so she doesn't notice when I put her in it (obviously I take the water bottle out before I put her down).

I go to bed at 7 with her but I know that this might not be practical for everyone. Most of my friends put theirs to bed later I think when they're older you could inch bedtime forward over a period of weeks and they'd soon get into the swing of things.