8 week old - Sleep problem

[Unicornyourself1]

My 8 week old daughter was such a deep sleeper earlier and dream fed day and night. For the past three weeks she has been sleeping badly.

She can’t fall asleep on her own. She cries, fusses until she gets tired. She is fidgety, squirmy and restless during day naps and at night. Night time it gets worse. She stays awake about 5 to 6 hours when she can’t fall asleep.

Baby girl always falls asleep while feeding (bottle), even stays asleep when burping her but wakes up as soon as I put her down.

We stopped swaddling her sometime back as the weather was getting hot. Her arms are out of control she manages to wake herself up, so we are back to swaddling her again. Even that doesn’t help. We have tried rocking, bouncing, cuddling, white noise even singing to her. Nothing calms her down.

She wakes up to the softest sound or when she farts or when she is put down.

Her twin brother is much better. Wakes every two hours for feed, falls back to sleep and self soothes.

Oh when she does fall asleep she can sleep for 4 hours straight without feeding. Sometimes we have to wake her up to feed. She doesn’t feed a great deal as well. Usually about 60ml which is very little.

What could be the issue? How should I handle her bed time? Please advice. I am at my wits end.

My daughter was the same, co-sleeping helped a lot. Remember they are sooo tiny at 8 weeks! It will get better... Saying that, I am still waiting for my 9 month old daughter to sleep through haha.

I’m sorry to hear that you’re having a tough time!

Could it be that she is becoming overtired? My LO is about the same age and more than 2 hours awake time is enough to give me an unsettled bubba who can’t stay asleep! It happened today, which why I’m here now haha!

Have you considered a very loose bedtime routine? We have a star light for the last bottle in bed, then white noise whilst having a cuddle, then placed in cot when in a deep sleep. I keep it the same do he knows what to expect, although the timings can change as he is still small! But I only have one to cope with so that’s easy for me to say!

60ml seems very little, perhaps speak to your HV? Perhaps she is still hungry - you say she wakes when you put her down, it might be worth offering her the bottle again to see if she takes it? My LO would often do this!

With the not calming down - a great piece of advice I was given was to stick with a soothing technique for 10 mins before moving on. I know it sounds silly but when I actually applied it it really helped - I realised that I would bounce (for example) for only a few minutes before declaring it wasn’t working and doing something else. All the changing was overloading him and actually sticking with something for longer than felt ‘natural’ gave him time to calm down. Although obv don’t flog a dead horse for half an hour etc!

I hope some of that helps, good luck! It’s tough when they don’t sleep - I hope you have someone to give you a hand!