3 week old velcro baby advice

[stellarfox]

Hello my baby is 3 weeks tomorrow and she's very much a velcro baby - she will rarely sleep anywhere other than our arms. In the 3 weeks we've had her I've managed to settle her in our bedside cot 5 times for an hour or so. I know she's really young/in her 4th trimester so it's fine for now but I was wondering how many times should I keep trying to put her in her bedside cot overnight? Our routine is I nurse her, wait for her to fall into what I think is a deep sleep and put her down but she's up within 5 minutes. She then cries and we start the cycle again. Should I just let her sleep on me or how many times would you try to put her down? Most of the time in the day I don't bother trying to put her down but I would really love some naps as at the moment my partner and I are doing shifts holding her

Likely not helpful just now but my first baby was a velcro baby I tried to change it spent months trying to be able to put him down get him to sleep alone u til he was 7 months old and I was so deep in PND he woke up 9 times in7 hours and I wanted to throw him in his cot and leave. At that point I accepted co sleeping and velcoing it up life got better and by 11 months he was an angel.

My second I co slept fed on demand carried him everywhere from day 1, hour 1 intact and he was a dream.

Try to pick your battles don't fight things because they 'should' be doing xyz or because your making a rod for your own back. Both my boys sleep alone every night and go to sleep with a five min cuddle, they are confident happy little people so clearly the rod is a myth.

Do what feels right and choose the path of least resistance

We got ours to settle in the bedside crib when he was a week old or thereabouts. Swaddling worked for us - I used swaddle blankets from mothercare folded into a triangle. I also had a myhummy (white noise toy) which seemed to work best on the heartbeat setting. I stuffed the crib sheet down my top for a bit so it smelled of me/milk.

The first couple of nights I slept with a hand gently resting on his tummy, after that he was happy without it.

No advice but solidarity. It does get better. I hope you have some support (I just had my fucking mother turning up and having a go at me/ telling me that I wasn't coping and needed to see a GP about my mental health because I hadn't caught up with all my laundry, which might have had something to do with the fact that I had a two-week old baby who screamed every time I put her down. According to my mother, I wasn't coping because DD and I should have had a routine at two bloody weeks. But sorry for the derail).

Oh, and I agree with a previous poster that it's ok not to like this stage. Great if you do, but if you don't then that's fine too. All the "they're only little for such a short time, soon they'll be leaving for university" stuff made me feel even worse about finding it so hard.

We had a horrendous first sleeper and have a better second sleeper. Not what you want to hear but we’ve done nothing different except accept that he might want another feed and given it or spent ages winding ds2 is 20wks and when he has a bottle of expressed so I can swim he can go to sleep himself. He hardly ever does if I’m round to be human dummy. I’m coming to believe they do sleep when they’re ready.

DS1 currently trying to kill us with a waking every night at 3.5 and being an early bird. No explanation just goes back to sleep. They are faulty!

Hope you get sleep soon x