Help! My newborn doesn't sleep at night

[vixb1]

Hi,

Second time parent, feeling like a complete newbie.

My daughter is now 2 and a half weeks old. She's an angel during the day but she doesn't sleep at night. I mean at all. Last night she had 40 minutes sleep all night.

She feeds, fusses, doses for 10 mins and wakes herself up again. How is she doing it? She can't stay awake that long in the day but seems to be able to stay awake for hours and hours at night.

I'm doing all the things to get her to learn day and night, bright in the day, dark at night time etc. But she's getting worse.

I know she's only tiny, but I'm really worried about how long she's awake at night and how much she's fussing and whether she's getting enough rest etc.

Any ideas? We're all running on empty, especially with a toddler around and I'm concerned that I'm not doing the right things for her.

Thanks!

Is she sleeping in a cot or with you? Is she crying in the night are just laying there making a noise? Does she fuss after feeds. Sorry for the questions, just need to know how she’s sleeping and feeding.

By the way we are also having a lot of problems with our second, our first was a dream compared to our daughter! So I feel like we are starting all over again too.

We have a sleepyhead in the next to me. Try and put her in the next to me, but mostly she ends up in our bed in the sleepyhead so she's safe.

She's fussing and then eventually gets upset. Sick quite often and like she has wind or is uncomfortable, but I can't seem to make it better for her. But she isn't like it in the day, she'll drift off on her own in the day, but she's a different baby at night. Really odd?!

Our daughter has reflux when she wasn’t on the strong stuff she’s on now she was terrible in the day, sick al the time but fine at night, which was weird, I spoke to someone recently and her DD was the same. I would take her to the doctors as if she sick and fussing it maybe reflux. Our daughter has had reflux and silent reflux, in the mean time try holding her upright for 20 mins after a feed and see if it helps. Does she back arch? It’s a common sign of reflux. If you think she has wind try infacol it helped get our DDs wind up, she was that bad at winding they even struggled in special care!

Also does your baby have a dummy, white noise, swaddled? We do all these things and they REALLY help, we didn’t do any of these with our first but needed them this our DD

Some babies take longer to learn the difference between day and night. Up to 6 weeks is about normal for the switch to occur.

During the day is baby lying flat whilst sleeping? If not (i.e. sleeping on you, in sling, bouncy chair etc.) then it sounds like reflux.

Thanks all, interesting you say about reflux, my first had it and she suffered terribly.
Sounds like a trip to the doctors might be in order.
We're swaddling but trying to avoid a dummy at the moment. We had such a terrible experience getting it off my eldest I'm trying to avoid a repeat experience!
She's been asleep all day today, she just woke wake up! So suspect we're in for a terrible night again!

Another one saying reflux. My daughter was exactly the same, was diagnosed at 6 weeks and was like a different child from the day she was given medication.

I wouldn’t let her sleep all day. You need to get her into a rhythm where she has some awake time. How many feeds is she having?

My wee one is 12 weeks old and likes to stay up until 2am/3am, feeding every 1-2 hours in the evening and usually awake in the evenings too. He’ll then sleep for 4 hours or so. Advice to bring it all forward a few hours please??

Up to 12 weeks routine:
Feed 7am
Nap 8.15-10am
Feed 10.30am
Nap 11.30- 1.30
Feed 2pm
Nap 3-5pm
Half feed 5.30pm
Bath 6pm
Half feed 6.30pm
Bed 7pm
Dreamfeed 10pm
Feed on demand in the night.
Get out in bright daylight during awake times. Get the naps in any way you can, sleep breeds sleep.

Agree it's worth exploring reflux, especially silent, and especially if she's sleeping propped up in the day, and also that making clear distinctions between day and night should help.

However, the routine above would absolutely not have worked for my newborn, who fed with maximum 1-1.5 hour gaps (in the day, did longer stretches at night) until they were 16 weeks old, in part due to reflux. I'm not saying it won't work for anyone, I'm just writing this as I remember reading about similar suggested routines when dealing with it and feeling like an abject failure. What did work for us was focusing on wake times (the maximum amount of time the baby can be awake before needing the next sleep) which worked much better than timings. To begin with the wake times are really short (45min-1hr iirc) and they gradually lengthen but it helped establish a pattern, if not a routine.

Totally agree with modge. Don't do a routine for a newborn in my opinion it will only cause stress for you. Just focus on awake times. Keep baby awake more in the day. A nice bedtime routine, like bath, song, story, bed. 12 hours of dark / quiet time. Good luck