Not sure how much longer I can cope

[happyface42]

I had my DD2 on a Thursday morning after not having slept since Monday evening due to induction and labouring through 2 nights. I've managed to catch the odd hour here and there with sleep but she just won't settle at all during the night. She's very settled in the day but during night time she's on and off my boob all night so there's no chance for me to sleep.
As I have a 3 year old I don't have much opportunity to sleep in the day. My DD1 although was always difficult to settle to sleep would do 2/3 hour stretches for me in the night so I'm really not used to this. I've been trying to stay positive and tell myself it won't last long but the less sleep I'm getting the worse my anxiety is getting and I'm just feeling sick with worry all of the time now. I had PND after DD1 and I can feel the symptoms of that creeping in already purely due to just not getting enough sleep.

Has anyone been through similar and can offer advice or reassurance? Tell me how long this phase lasted for them? My OH is a great help atm but will be back in work soon and the thought of that just fills me with dread.

This sounds very similar to my experience (no sleep for 3 days with induction, labour, EMCS, baby wouldn't sleep at night initially). I was so fed up for the first couple of weeks. If someone had offered to take the baby away I would've jumped at the chance! I think you need to hand over everything (baby, DC1, housework) to your partner while the baby's asleep during the day and try to nap catch up as much as possible.
You can get baby into the habit of sleeping at night later, my DC is 7 weeks and sleeps a 6-7 hour stretch every night so you might be lucky in a few weeks! He was reliably doing a few 2-4 hours stretches a night from about 2/3 weeks until 6/7ish weeks.

@Danoodle

This sounds very similar to my experience (no sleep for 3 days with induction, labour, EMCS, baby wouldn't sleep at night initially). I was so fed up for the first couple of weeks. If someone had offered to take the baby away I would've jumped at the chance! I think you need to hand over everything (baby, DC1, housework) to your partner while the baby's asleep during the day and try to nap catch up as much as possible. You can get baby into the habit of sleeping at night later, my DC is 7 weeks and sleeps a 6-7 hour stretch every night so you might be lucky in a few weeks! He was reliably doing a few 2-4 hours stretches a night from about 2/3 weeks until 6/7ish weeks.

Thanks for your response that does give me a little hope that you've been through this and are now having some solid sleep at night. I would take anything atm even if it was two hours a night but it's not even 10 mins atm! She's still so young so I don't know if I'm just panicking unnecessarily or if this is going to be a hard pattern for her to get out of. She's been sleeping soundly all day again today. Think I'm just going to have to admit defeat and nap as and when I can and don't have my LG to look after. My DD1 didn't do this so it's a big shock to the system for me.

Is she swaddled? That may help.

If breastfeeding is established then a dummy for when she wants to suck for soothing.

When my DD was tiny and would only sleep when held, I used to go to bed when my eldest went to bed, and my DH would keep baby downstairs with him all evening (and into the early hours sometimes), only bringing her to me to be fed and then taking her back downstairs straight after. It meant I got at least a few hours sleep most days. It isn't a perfect plan, cluster feeding etc will make it tricky, but might be worth trying to let you feel a bit more human. Someone else has suggested swaddling, that might help too! Hang in there, it does (and will!) get better soon.

It's really common for babies to be basically nocturnal at first, I'm sure it'll get easier! It's not much comfort when you're going through it though. It took a good 2-3 weeks of putting him down, picking him up, putting down, picking up etc to get ours to settle and sleep at night reliably. It's definitely worth napping as much as possible, any extra sleep is going to help at this stage!

Thank you for all of the advice. She is actually ok at being put down in the day I just think she's basically got her day and night mixed up but there doesn't seem like there's much I can do to adjust that and will just have to wait for her naturally to adjust. I'm just so worried she will still be like this in 3 weeks time when my oh goes back to work and I have no option to catch up with sleep in the day