Sleep quality for velcro 8 week old with young toddler

[Prusik]

Nearly 8 week old ds2 has started getting ratty when tired but moving out of that newborn sleep through anything stage. He was up from 3.30am until 6am on a bit of a cluster feed upon which point the 14 month old woke.

I'm all for a sling but as soon as ds1 has finished breakfast I can't carry ds2 as leaning over doing Ds1 nappy, dressing him, etc, is just too awkward with a baby in a sling.

So as a consequence, ds2 has been disturbed by being put down and then was only able to doze as ds1 kept playing with him.

Ds2 will only sleep on me and I'm more than happy with this. He was three weeks early and is only just a month past his due date and is also only just 8lb so on the 0.4th percentile. I feel that it's good for him to be on me but he seriously isn't getting any form of quality sleep apart from the two 90 minute naps ds1 has and after he goes to bed.

He's ebf and his preference is to fall asleep on my boob. Isn't keen on a dummy.

Since he was born he's slept in total about ten minutes on his own. We also co sleep.

Anyone have any experience or tips?

I guess my answer is to teach ds2 to sleep independently but he's just so little

Will he sleep in the carry cot of the pram when you're out and about? I found that my velcro baby didn't mind the moving pram too much, so I worked up to putting her in the carrycot swaddled, with white noise playing on my phone, and a pram rocker (the rockit one on amazon) for movement so I could nap her indoors without needing to physically walk the pram around outside for every nap.

No, he won't go in the carry cot. sometimes he'll fall asleep in the car when we're driving somewhere and will stay asleep for about another ten minutes after we've stopped. That's rare though - usually he'll just cry in the car.

He won't even go to dh, mil, anyone... Although a couple of times friends have managed to rock him until he calms

How long did it take you to teach your newborn to go down,@MammaSchwifty? With such a young toddler I favour peace during his nap times as I'm generally pretty tired and then I need to be available for toddler when he's awake. I just feel so torn as both boys need my focus

I'd persist with the pram. It might be the change of temperature from you to the pram, so maybe warm up the sheet with a hot water bottle first or swaddle and then place him down? Mine wouldn't be swaddled after 6 weeks but your DS2 might if he's only 1month (in real terms)? Lots of us have used the car ride just to get a baby to sleep. Longer ride might be needed? You might get both off.

Ds1 favours his cot every time, unfortunately. I'll give the pram a go on the next available dry day. Maybe I'll walk the boys to the supermarket. When I was pregnant I used to walk there with ds1 to buy some raspberries as a treat and we used to eat them on the way home.

It's hard to know what to do as his weight gain is steady but slow and the second he cries I always try to feed him to get as much in as possible but I can't do that if I'm going to try to get him down

It's really tough. With my baby, she hated the pram at first, so I always brought a sling so I could carry her in case she started really crying. I found playing the white noise in the pram and swaddling her helped to keep her calm. I'd try it little and often until she got used to it. She would also wake if the pram stopped, so the pram rocker helped indoors. Eventually it became one of her reliable nap places, but she's pretty much outgrown it now

Oh yeah, i should have said, it got to the point that I was able to give her a fees, then put her in the pram inside the house, rock and sing or sush for a few minutes and she'd sleep. Another huge factor was getting the timing right, so that she was ready for a sleep. Good luck, it's tough when they're very velcro, and all babies are different. I guess he's still physically very small so he might be attached to you a wee while longer. If I remember right, this started to work well on mine around the 10-11 week mark...