Baby won't go to sleep EVER!

[Mamabear04]

My 10 week baby won't go to sleep hardly ever and it's driving me to despair. During the day she fights sleep and the only way she will nap is if I take her for a walk but even then won't sleep soundly and wakes up often so isn't rested. Come the evening time it feels like a fucking war to get her to sleep and myself and my DH are absolutely knackered. I've tried everything - white noise, dummies of all shapes and sizes, making the environment very calm, a dark room, cuddling her, rocking, swaddling, I've tried feeding her to sleep - she's BF and I even tried to give her some formula in the evening to fill her up and make her sleepy but she won't take it. It's getting to the point where I dread leaving the house because of the crying in public - I don't feel like i can go out and meet people. I'm really struggling and it's so hard. My DH is a great help in the evenings but he struggles to settle DD and it's so difficult for him too with the constant crying. She's been diagnosed with acid reflux but doesn't show much signs of it now the medication has kicked in so I'm not sure that's the problem. I really am starting to get really down about it and I'm struggling to enjoy time with my baby which I feel hugely guilty about. It just feels too much. Has anyone else had this experience or can offer advice? I'm just feeling miserable

I absolutely feel your pain and could have written your post when my baby was 10 weeks old. But to reassure you he is now 5 months old and life is much easier, I don't feel anyway near as nervous about taking him out as I used to (I am even taking him to baby cinema on my own tomorrow which is saying something). I don't have any golden nugget to fix it I am afraid - the only thing which worked for me was focusing on day time sleep to avoid him getting overtired, which then helped him going to sleep in the evening. the key for us was putting our baby down at the very first tired sign (which at 10 weeks was probably as soon as 45-60mins after the previous nap). Early doors I needed to take him out in the pram or rock him to sleep but then once the overtiredness improved and he slept more during the day I started to be able to put him in his cot. What is your DDs daytime sleep like - how many hours sleep does she get? How long is she awake between naps etc? And what are her nights like?

Thank you for your advice and encouragement! It's nice to know that I'm not the only one with an over tired baby!

Her sleep is all over the place at the moment. I've tried getting her into a routine but she is having none of it! Sometimes she will sleep for 10 minutes during the say and sometimes 4 hours! It's the same at night time really - sometimes she will sleep for 6 hours and then sometimes wake every 2.5 hours. For the life of me I can not work out a pattern. Since reading your post I've been trying to get her to sleep after being awake for an hour or so but it's tricky. I am taking her for endless walks but she will still wake up during her naps. Last night she was awake for over 3 hours before we managed to get her to sleep!!!! It's so frustrating because I know she needs to sleep and she is yawning but she won't go to sleep! How did you get through the nights when your baby wouldn't sleep?

I remember being in the same position as you.
I was going out of mind with tiredness and getting so depressed.
So i looked on the internet and around that time there was a footballers wife called Carly Cole who was struggling as well. She talked about The magic sleep fairy' woman who helped her. Obviously I couldn't afford for somebody to come round and help with the baby so in the the end I bought a book by this 'magic sleep fairy' called The sensational baby sleep plan by Alison (can't remember her surname) but you can get it off Amazon.
This book literally saved my life. I followed it and my baby was sleeping the whole night after a week. It was so good and my baby was so much happier as she was over tired etc I was happier because I was able to function!
I followed this book for all my children and it has worked on everyone one of them.
I always recommend it to all my mummy friends xx

Baby's don't put themselves into a routine. You need to do that for them. That means putting them down and waking them up at set times. If you let your baby sleep for 4 hours then of course they will never go down for their next nap and they will never get into a routine.

I used the Little Ones guides and stuck to their timings. It's really easy to follow.

10 weeks old is really common for fighting sleep. I think it was the worst period for us. It does get better. But it's so painful until it does! I think we started to see signs of progress around 14 weeks?

We kept going with pushchair naps during the day as even though sometimes they would fail and he would refuse to fall asleep or wake after only a brief sleep (on which occasions you have to just write it off as a failed nap, have some chocolate and move on) we knew that they worked better than anything else and we just needed to keep ploughing on.

I agree with trying to keep to good times. Try to figure out how long your baby can cope with being awake and try to take them out for a walk at that time, before they get overtired.

With nights, I started cosleeping at this age because we just could not get him to settle to sleep otherwise. It might not be for everyone but it helped us. At least then he was getting good sleep at night so I was less stressed by the rubbish naps.

It's a really tough time. Hang in there. Eat chocolate!