Sorry this is long!
Hi, my dd is 3 months. She is good at night in that she only gets up twice ish. At night she has a bottle of formula and then sometimes also a bit of breast to fall asleep. Then she is transferred into her sleepyhead in a bedside cot with a white noise machine.
The problem we have is lack of sleep during the day. If she does nap it's often very short and on me after falling asleep feeding. If I try to then move her 95% of the time she will wake up.
I have briefly tried the baby whisperer technique of shh pat after sleepy cues but it says the baby should be full. Problem is my daughter snack feeds all day long as in won't go more than 20 mins between a feed. I think this is because of her reflux (on medicine but maybe not enough yet). She also has cow's milk protein allergy which can make her very very windy and have irregular explosive poos. So i don't feel she meets the criteria of being full and content.
We have tried white noise, dummy (always spits it out), titled bed etc. I think she's now at the age that we should do something but I'm worried about her never being full enough to be content enough to sleep if you see what I mean. As soon as she wakes up from any nap, long or short she wants food. Her weight gain is steady and whilst I think some of it is comfort sucking I don't think most of it is, I think she's just a very slow feeder. Hv isn't worried about how she feeds and has in the past said I need to 'go with the flow' in terms of routine due to her reflux etc. My MIL has said before we should 'just put her down' and today said we are making a rod for our own backs by feeding her to sleep. I agree to a certain extent would not tell her that! But I don't know what we 'should' do in our circumstances. She goes from crying to screaming pretty darn quickly and then takes a very long time to calm down again. She hates her pram and car seat by the way and only likes being front facing in a carrier I know it's not meant to be until 5 months but she has good head control and I watch her carefully.
Usually I just let her rule the roost but sometimes I have to go out and can't stay on the sofa all day eating bourbons with my legs crossed. Today she got massively overtired as she was being passed around so much but then couldn't sleep as the in-laws tried to put her down to sleep and she just kept jumping awake when her body hit the bed. She was then so past tired that she wouldn't even feed to sleep not helped my mil playing peek a boo with her after failed putting down!
Should we try baby whisperer shhh pat properly or is it not going to work as my dd is never truly full? I don't particularly want to give her more formula than I do now. Should I just accept she needs to nap on me after a breast feed? I would be fine with that if there was any kind of pattern to her wanting to nap but it's always at random times.
Any advice? TIA