Me and my wife at the end of our tether!

[sonicninja]

Hi everyone,
I'm new on here but have been browsing the site for a while now looking for help. This certainly isn't the only post of its type but having read a lot of posts and trying various things we're still having real trouble with our daughter and are worried we are starting to resent her.

Our daughter is 19 weeks and during the day an absolute bundle of joy but when the night comes she turns into a monster. Sleep deprivation is making us monsters too.
Basically she just wont sleep for any significant duration during the night or day. I've read a baby her age should be sleeping approx 11-12 hours but this simply isn't happening.

We have a bedtime routine which starts with a calming bath at 6:30pm followed by a story in bed, then a feed and then we put her down. She recently was in a moses basket but is now in a cot by the side of our bed.

She wakes the second she hits the mattress. We've been trying to get her to self sooth but at the moment we're finding it hard enough to just get her to sleep by any means. We tried a bottle yesterday evening in order to basically knock her out. She slept for 3 hours, woke and then we spent the rest of the night/morning trying to get her to back sleep.

She will sleep in our arms but for obvious reasons we don't want to continue doing this.

I could go on and on but I don't want to make this a novel. Basically im really concerned about how this is affecting my lovely wife who is trying as hard as she can. I also feel that we're both resenting our daughter for denying us sleep and this makes me sad beyond belief.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them, we feel totally alone.

At that age mine would wake 3-4 times through the night for feeds. It's knackering and crap. I would have shot myself if it meant sleep. I feel for you. Lower your expectations. Take in turns to feed the baby, try a dollop of formula before bed to fill the baby's tummy. Things will improve when weaning starts then it all goes pear shaped again when teeth appear. X

I'm another one who had a demon child sleep refuser for the first 5 months of her life.....unless she had a boob in her mouth or was on me. We co-slept at night when she was teeny tiny newborn and then moved her into a bedside cot.
She didn't nap in the day either.....
I wish I had figured out sooner that avoiding daytime naps and crappy sleep at night was because she was chronically over tired At that age most babies can only handle being awake for 90mins-2hrs maximum between naps. Have you tried putting her down for a nap 90mins-2hrs after she wakes in the morning? And then continuing with that schedule throughout the day? It took a bit of time, but that, putting DD to sleep on her front and white noise playing from our iPad got her to finally sleep in some sort of routine! I just wish I had figured it out sooner!!
Don't beat yourself up about it though OP, you're a first time parent!! No one expects you to just magically "know" the solution to everything. I felt like a pretty shitty mum a lot of the time in the early months, like I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but it takes time to learn how your baby works and until babies evolve to pop out with an instruction manual, we will all go through the same trial and error struggles!

Don't rule out cows milk allergy

White noise - there's an app for this! Do try it.

Also, we found that my DD woke herself up flailing her arms around. When we zipped her into a swaddle pod, she slept for twice as long because she couldn't stir. Swaddling has been in the news this week because of possible safety issues connected with it so that should be an informed choice - but the truth is that millions of babies everyday are swaddled and suffer no ill effects.

Have you rulled out reflux and cows milk allergy? My DD was just like yiurssounds, she just couldn't settle for more than 20/30 minutes at a time. It was miserable for her and us. It went on for months, but eventually she was diagnosed with a cows milk allergy which meant she was constantly hungry and uncomfortable. Resolving that wasn't an instant fix, but definitely did help.

I saw this to everyone but Previous Little Sleep is a great website and has saved my sanity. Definitely read it.

Also, swaddle, swing, dummy, white noise. Works for us.

Ah the straining sounds. Drive you made don't they. Sorry not read full thread but have you checked she doesn't have any cow milk intolerance issues? The straining sounds for my ds2 were lower abdominal pain linked to that. He still does them but much less now he's on low allergy milk. Otherwise it sounds like she's feeding little and often which can also be habit. We used a dummy to stretch ours a little more between feeds and it worked by and large. They eventually slept longer and took more food then slept longer etc. Is a night nurse an option for a few nights? Might be able to help or just give you some respite.

Yes she is way overtired, that's why she's so hard to get to sleep and also why she pings awake after a minute or two.

Ideally she needs at least 2-3 hours sleep total during the day ('day' meaning 7am-7pm) and 12 hours at night. If she's having a lot less at night then she needs more in the day.

IME the only way to get a very overtired baby to sleep is with motion. Long pram walk, 3x a day. (Aim for roughly 9am, 12.30/1pm, shorter one at 4pm) Do that for a few days and you should see a big difference in how easily she goes to sleep and stays asleep.

Also: get a lactation consultant to check for tongue tie or signs of reflux

I used to stretch my nightie or one of DH's t shirts that I had worn over the mattress so that it smelled of me. Still works for ds (aged 2) when he is unsettled, he is currently sleeping with my fleecy jumper.

Hi OP - you have my sympathy.

I started co-sleeping with my DS when he was just over 4 months old because it was the only way we were getting any sleep. He would feed to sleep, go down in his cot and stay asleep for about 3 hours but when he woke I would just bring him into bed with me and he'd stay there until morning. He's breastfed.

In hindsight I can see that one of the huge problems we had was that he never napped during the day or if he did it was only for 20-30 minutes.

Unfortunately my sons sleep issues continued to worsen and things were generally pretty bleak by the time DS was about 8 months old. I was at breaking point. I was beyond exhausted, me and DH were arguing all the time, I resented DS, I didn't enjoy him, I dreaded the days and dreaded the nights and I was in tears all the time.

Whwn DS was 9 months of age I contacted a Sleep Consultant and she saved my life. She changed everything about DS's routines, his meal times, his nap times, his nap and bedtime routines, just everything and within a week my life has completely changed

Obviously, you can't sleep train your baby as she is far too young and actually her behaviour is pretty normal for such a little one, but I just wanted to make you see that you aren't alone in your desperation.

If your daughter takes a bottle then that's fantastic as it means you can take turns in who is up with her throughout the night to allow the other to get some rest.

As has been said, it really is a case of doing whatever it takes to get a good night's sleep and if co-sleeping is the answer then go for it.

I had my DS in a little sleeping bag which was perfect as it meant he could just lie next to me on top of my blanket and there was no risk of him being suffocated.

It does seem that she's really overtired during the day and it's affecting night sleep too.

Does she sleep being pushed in a pram? You could try pushing the pram back and forth inside the house if you can't go for a walk. Do that till she's asleep and then gradually reduce the movement. If she wakes up after 40 mins or so ideally you should try to get her to sleep again but it doesn't always work. Use white noise, dummy, whatever it takes.

The humanity wouldn't have survived if cosleeping was dangerous. Baby sleeping on their own is a very new concept. It's very safe if done properly unless she was premature or low birth weight.

If your wife is nervous to cosleep maybe suggest she does that during the day first. She could lie down and feed the baby and they both would sleep while you watch them. That could build her confidence a bit and she could try to do that for part of the night too (I'm assuming she's breastfeeding btw). FWIW a lot of people find themselves cosleeping accidentally when they are too tired during a night feed and just fall asleep with a baby in their bed. Much better to make it a conscious choice IMO.