Super alert 2 month old barely sleeping/feeds longer than recommended wake window

[AlicethroughtheSpookingGlass]

Hello everyone - a slightly desperate, very very tired FTM here hoping for some advice.

I have a two month old with a cleft palate that means he takes at least an hour, but often an hour and a half or two hours at every feed. (He can’t breast feed due to same issue, so is on formula.) Everything I’ve read online says his wake window shouldn’t be more than 45 mins - 80 mins right now or he’ll be exhausted, but I have no idea what to do when his feeding alone takes far longer than that! He usually goes for over 2 hrs between any nap, sometimes even 3, and finds it so hard to fall asleep, even if I’m rocking him/holding him the whole time - he basically only sleeps in the sling, where he can sleep for a few hours at a time if I’m
Walking constantly. Last night he probably slept about 40-50 mins at a time for a few brief snatches, and we’re all just broken today.

He’s never sleepy at the end of a feed - I can’t feed him to sleep. And generally he’s super bright and alert, with lots of smiles, and often happy to lie on his play mat and bat at his toys, but he’s clearly tired at certain points, and I’m really really worried about what damage the lack of sleep is doing to him.

I knew his sleep was bad but I started trying to track it at the weekend and it looks like he’s only getting about 11 hrs in total, which terrifies me. Does anyone have any advice? Everything online just emphasises how they mustn’t be awake for too long and you must get them to nap for their health but if I was to follow the sample schedules they lay out for a 2 month old, he’d have to be going to sleep mid-feed each and every time. He struggles to gain weight anyway due to his cleft, so we can’t risk cutting down the feeds.

No experience with the cleft palate aspect, but my wee one never read the instructions regarding wake windows or total sleep required – I'm not sure the newborn wake window applied past her first few days, maybe the first week. 11 hours total sleep a day at 2 months would have been a bit low for my liking, though.

My approach was to learn her tired cues and wake windows, and go with them (to be honest, at 2 months, I'm not sure the wake windows were that consistent yet – I certainly remember some veeeery long ones). I'd continue tracking it for a couple of weeks, to help work out the pattern, and when he does show tired cues, prioritise sleep if you can. If that means walking in the sling for naps, I'd probably try to go with it in the short term, but only for an hour or two at a time. I wouldn't want him to get into a reverse pattern of big blocks of sleep in the day and (even more) broken nights.

Where does he sleep at night, and how does he do with that on an average night?

If he's bottle fed, can you and your husband have a shift pattern so a bad night doesn't affect both of you so badly? If he's working and you're on maternity leave, perhaps you go to bed early to get a solid block of sleep and he keeps baby downstairs and does all wakes/feeds until he comes to bed, then you take over? He may need to sleep in the guest room/on sofa on really bad nights.

Thanks for replying - a few friends have reassured me their babies didn’t sleep for the recommended 17 hours + but all definitely did a lot more than 11 hours! We worked out last night we spend about 6-9 hours feeding him per day, and I think that’s basically where those missing hours of naps are going, they’re all on his long feeds.

At the moment day time sling naps are actually contributing quite a chunk - about 4 hrs of day sleeping, almost all in the sling as it’s the only way we can guarantee rest, vs 7 hrs of night sleep (from 7-7).

We’ve been splitting it in shifts as much as we can; my DH stays up with him while I go to bed at 9, does the last feed around 11 & then puts him into the snuzpod by the bed when that finishes at about midnight. unfortunately he is a very very noisy sleeper/breather because of the cleft so even if he does sleep himself (he did about 2 hrs last night, initially which is great for him) I tend to wake when he comes in then be semi-awake till he needs his next feed, which takes another hour and usually ends with him all bright eyed and awake. Then I try and put him back in the cot for a bit till he wakes again (after 40 mins last night) and then he comes into the bed with me as that normally gets him to sleep.

I feel a bit despairing - it feels like we either need to magically cut his feeds in at least half, which we can’t do as he can’t feed faster, or find some extra hours just for him to sleep. Poor little soul.

I have a little personal experience of this since my nephew was born with a cleft palate too. He's 15 now, but I can still remember his difficulties when he was a baby.

Do you have the right bottle for him? MY DN used one with a hard plastic spout to "pour" milk, since he couldn't suck. If you are just managing without the right equipment then get onto the ENT department at hospital asap for this.

If you do have the right feeding equipment, know that he will get better and quicker at it. So you won't always be taking so long to feed him. He's still very little for now and learning to cope with a way of feeding that will not come naturally to him. So he just needs more time to learn.

All you can realistically do is to encourage sleep at all times he isn't feeding. There isn't really any other possible way around it until he gets quicker at feeding.

Thanks @FATEdestiny - in some bizarre way I think that’s almost what we need to hear, that there isn’t anything more we can do ourselves and that it is an issue as we feel dreadful (physically and mentally). I have driven myself a bit mad looking at when he ‘should’ be napping and wanting to cry, and then we feel like complete failures, but all the guidelines seem designed for babies feeding normally - I read one ideal bedtime routine last night that worked on the basis you’d have the baby fed and drowsy within 10 mins.

He does have special bottles to try and help him feed - he has a cleft lip as well as the palate so it’s also hard for him to form a seal around the bottle in the first place - but he doesn’t seem to be getting any quicker feeding yet although he is very small still, so I’m not surprised. I’m going to ask our cleft nurse about whether specialised formula, which she’s mentioned in the past, might help to get some more calories in him faster.

@AlicethroughtheSpookingGlass congratulations on your baby boy! My little one is 10 weeks old so a little older than yours although he does not have a cleft lip or palate. I know our experience isn't exactly align but I wanted to reassure you that my baby often didn't seem to sleep much in the day in the early weeks.

I use an app to track his sleep and feeds and can see he sleeps for 12 hours on average in a 24 hour period over the last 14 day period. That's roughly 8 hours over the night time and 4 ish hours of naps over the day. So way below the 'recommended' sleeping for young babies but he seems perfectly happy and settled (we don't have any periods of fractious crying for example so I know he's not overtired).

When he's awake we are feeding every two hours although I appreciate that his feeds will take less time than your little ones. Perhaps another convo with your health support team about bottles / positions etc will help reassure you, although I guess as he gets bigger and stronger he'll start to be more efficient with his feeds as you find out together what works best.

I will say one thing though as a FTM that I am now spotting his sleep signals much clearer now than ever and he is gradually drifting into a semi routine where he will have morning and afternoon naps... I spot yawning and other signals for example and put him in his bassinet during the day and he'll quickly drift off or other times he sleeps on me or in the sling, depending on what we're doing.

Anyway, this was a very long winded way of saying I feel your worries as I've had them myself and I think you are doing the best you can with your circumstances. If he is happy and content in himself then follow his lead and he'll let you know when he needs to nap. All the articles I've read that say newborns sleep for 18 hours a day have never been my experience but I've stopped worrying and come to my conclusion that every baby is different!!

I stopped looking at the baby sleep schedules unless I was in the mood to find them funny. Fairly sure ten minutes to get baby fed and sleepy is unrealistic for a great many babies without feeding challenges, never mind your wee lad.

The specialised (high calorie, I assume) formula sounds like it would really help – he fundamentally needs more hours in the day to do all the things he wants and needs to do developmentally. Batting at toys is important baby business!

I wonder if part of the reason he is always alert after feeding is because he has to work quite hard at it? Doing something that requires focus and effort just doesn't lend itself to drifting off to sleep. Not sure what you do about that, though, other than try to help him with other sleep associations, rocking, lullabies, etc. Does white noise help him at all? Might also take the edge off for you with his noisy breathing (we used the sound of rain or waves, actually, not proper white noise).

Can you try to extend his 'night', keep it dark and quiet and persuade him to have another little snooze with you after the 7am wake? My wee one would have thought that was an utterly ridiculous suggestion, so I'm aware it might be a complete nonstarter, but if he's got long wake windows, it might be easier than trying to squeeze in another nap.

Would it be possible for your husband to do the nightshift once a week so you get one proper night's sleep? It's so hard when you're living on 1 and 2 hour snatches of sleep.

My first was like this. She just didn’t need much sleep. She was down to one (albeit quite long at 90mins-2hrs) nap a day by 12 months and none at all by the time she reached 21 months and would sleep for around 9-10hrs a night when they say it’s more like 12-14hrs a day necessary at that age.

She’s now almost 7 and still doesn’t need much sleep (gets about 6-7hrs a night when 10-12 is the amount apparently necessary.... she reads for hours while her little sister sleeps!) and is healthy and happy and full of beans. I’ve never needed that much sleep and was apparently similar to my daughter as a kid, I guess sleep needed, like everything else in life, is different for different people. My younger one however would still happily nap now at 4 (she can’t- she has pre school!) and sleeps a good 11-12hrs a night. Her ability to sleep is legendary and as a baby/toddler she would regularly fall asleep in her dinner/on the playmat at playgroup etc if she hadn’t gotten enough at nap time!

Unless your son is unhappy or unwell I would really just try and keep relaxed about it. He’s got a lot of energy and apparently proper certified geniuses have been shown to need less sleep that the average Joes amongst us, so maybe he’s just really clever!

Oh and sorry, I didn’t address your tiredness- I remember feeling that same. Your husband is going to have to step up where he can and do weekends and mornings/evenings to help you catch up on your sleep. No other option and necessary because otherwise you’ll burn yourself out. It won’t be forever. Good luck!