8 week old:Fighting sleep - Advice please!!

[MatchsticksMama]

Apologies if this becomes lenghty but I am a first time Mum struggling to function following many,many nights of broken sleep (yes, I know I am not alone!) and looking for some advice on how to proceed from where I am now.

The main issus is getting my ds to fall asleep independantly which is having drastic repurcussions at early hours feeds when I could be up for up to 90 mins after a feed trying to settle him back down only for it to be almost time for the next feed once I have succeeded.

At the moment my dh and I seem to have fallen into a routine of rocking ds's basket (in our bedroom) and holding his right arm gently down at his side (he flails around so much it scares him otherwise) until he eventually falls asleep. This then has to be repeated whenever I try to settle him at night after a feed and is getting out of hand as I and ds are only getting about 4/5 hours of VERY broken sleep a night despite me going to bed at 9pm every night.

He is a very sucky baby and we give him a dummy at night to help him soothe himself (we also leave his left hand near his face as he sometimes sucks his thumb/fingers to self soothe but not often). The dummy seems to be causing more issues as it falls out every 5 minutes causing more grumbling which if left unattended proceeds to outright crying.

Ds bfeeds every 2 hours in the day (he is not gaining an awful lot of weight so I am not prepared to extend this as yet)and can go 4 hourly at night but most of this gap is spent trying to get him back to sleep so never seems like 4 hours!

We are trying out a bedtime routine and have moved ds's bedtime forward to 7pm as he was getting so tired in the evening and really cranky(he naps for a couple of hours in the morning then cat naps a little in the afternoon but nothing is guarenteed after lunch time). Last night he slept from 9pm-1am solid but before and after that time we had the issues outlined above...PLEASE HELP!!!

hi matchsticksmama and for your sleeplessness. have you tried swaddling to stop the flailing? might make lo feel more cosy. i co slept with dd as it made it so much easier for us, but i know not everyone is up for that.
my 13mth is usually bf to sleep, so cant help with the falling asleep independently either i'm afraid. could try no cry sleep solution by elizabeth pantley. shes got some good ideas, i'm just too lazy to implement them!!
feel free to join us on sleep is for the weak thread for some sympathy and more ideas from the others.

I could have written your post! In fact, I pretty much did write it, a couple of weeks back.

My LO is 10 weeks and I've had loads of bother with him, wind/colic/poor sleep/constant breastfeeding/can't fall asleep without help. I got into a really really low ebb and got tons of help from the lovely people here. I don't know if much of what I can say will help but here's my ideas from a fellow sufferer!

We're co-sleeping. I was really unhappy about it to start with but it means I can feed him to sleep and then we both get some rest. People here told me I'd end up doing it and I thought they were talking nonsense . Once he's deeply asleep I move him up so he's between my pillow and the bedside table (bolstered with a towel) - it still takes an hour or so to feed and resettle at night but much much easier now we're not moving him back to the cot. I now have the issue that he needs feeding to sleep but it's easier to deal with and I can work on his sleeping in the daytime when I am fresher (from all my lovely co-cleeping sleep ). We also got some Gaviscon from the doc because he is a bit refluxy and dislikes lying on his back, although I feel that's improving a lot.

I pretty much abandoned my dreams of LO going to sleep without my help in some form - because he was losing so much sleep with my faffing around trying various ways of 'teaching' him he got overtired and hence even harder to settle. So I took some excellent advice (thanks funnypeculiar!) to just concentrate for a few days on getting him to sleep however and wherever he would. Now he's slowly catching up on lost sleep he's getting a little easier.

One other thing - are you BFing on demand?

I totally sympathise with the misery of the feed - spend hours settling - have 30 seconds sleep - feed again thing. Nights have started to get much better in the last week or so, he will usually sleep 11-3 (that's the only thing I can predict with any sort of accuracy in a 24 hour period!). But only in the last week. Life is still draining but you know what, after all those weeks of disjointed, disturbed and limited sleep, getting a 4 hour stretch makes you feel so much better, so try to hold out because I'm sure your LO will improve soon.

Sorry to have post and run yesterday...I did get a chance to read your replies and will definitely join you in 'Sleep for the Weak' thread - thanks Tibsy.

CSB - I remember your thread well now you have refreshed my sleep deprived memory! Another MNer drew my attention to it a few weeks ago and apart from the reflux we do seem to have identakit babies!

I will check out that thread for some ideas now our issues have reoccurred!

To answer your questions -Tibsy yes we did try swaddling when ds was smaller but he has strong little arms now and manages to get them out and now as we want to encourage hand/thumb sucking we want him to be able to reach his hand. We do a sort of semi swaddle still but leave his preferred (left) arm out.

Bf to sleep doesn't really work as when he is asleep we ease him back into basket but as soon as he touches the sheets his eyes ping open and we are back to square one!

About a month ago we fell into a type of co sleeping in desperation CSB but it isn't really for us - I have thought about it again though but still holding out!

Your question re bf on demand is a tricky one CSB. I WAS feeding on demand but demand seemed to be every hour and was getting out of hand, we later found out that as ds is so sucky he was 'feeding' for comfort and ended up spitting up most of those feeds so I cut him down to every 2 hours to give a bit of structure until I could distinguish between feeding for food and feeding to suck. Now I am feeding on demand as I can recognise the demand more! If that makes sense...it just happens to be about every 2 hours.

BUT saying all that I am typing this as ds naps in his carrycot after I was very strong and perservered for 90 mins when I saw he needed to nap and eventually he has settled himself to sleep!Yippeee!

My dh and I took shifts last night so I managed about 4 hours sleep so going to nap myself now!

Thanks for your help