Newborn sleep.

[mummato2boys]

Hi everyone ,

Just literally wanting to see how everyone is coping with newborn sleep? My daughter sleeps 3 hours during the day per sleep and from 10pm is 2 hours. My daughter is 16 days old and have been fine but the last two days I've been struggling and today emotionally exhausted and frustrated. My 2 year old toddler has also been struggling with transition and he's been a little down and having tantrums , he also use to sleep 7pm - 8am and now is waking twice to add to the NO sleep.

Any advice ? Ways to help a newborn sleep longer or even ways to help with toddler behavioural change.
I really miss my sons happy , playful and cheerful behaviour I feel like when I had my daughter I lost part of my beautiful son.

Have you tried swaddling baby and giving a dummy?

Are you breast feeding or formula? If breast feeding are you keeping her on one breast long enough to get to the hind milk which will fill her up more? I realised at night I was getting impatient due to tiredness and swapping our daughter too early. Persisting with keeping her on one breast for at least 20 mins seemed to help a bit with her sleeping longer.

Also, is she outside and getting plenty of daylight in the daytime? Just might help her get into a day/night pattern sooner and then she might naturally move her longer sleeps to night time?

That said, 2-3 hour stints are fairly normal for a newborn I think. Hope she swaps to the longer chunks at night soon! No advice on the toddler I'm afraid - I'm only on number 1. I am sure he will adjust but can understand the feelings of loss. You're doing a great job and the newborn phase will pass.

@FATEdestiny yes swaddling baby , our oldest love being swaddled , but this girl actually hates it so much. So she always wakes whilst swaddling to tell us off. So we have to pick her up and calm her back down! We tried a dummy , but it kept popping out of her mouth , which meant she was waking for us to put it back in every 20-30 minutes so we ended that very quickly.

@MGee123 wow interesting. My milk
Supply is amazing so what I find is after 10 minutes she will unattach and be sound a sleep! After 10 minutes she does her poo , and then she does the other side again for 10 minutes. But she would never make it to 20 minutes just because I have such a good supply if breastmilk. She put on 350g in 6 days. If I don't swap sides I end up with an extremely wet top and a very sore boob. So I don't know how to get her passed to that 20 minute mark.

And @MGee123 , we make sure our house is very light, bright and we carry on with our normal activities during the day, and dark, dim and quite through the night.

Gosh that sounds like quite some supply! Mine is definitely less than that but I imagine yours is still regulating itself. I'm not sure of the timeframes they need to get to to ensure they're getting the hind milk and how that relates to volume/flow, although as she is putting on weight well you would assume she's getting enough I guess. Were you give any contact numbers for breast feeding support? Might be worth a phonecall to ask their advice? La Leche League have an advice line as well I think.

If she hates being swaddled have you tried not swaddling her? Ours hated it the first couple of days so we gave up. No idea whether it might help - I think this is all trial and error!

If they do suggest keeping her on one boob for longer you could use a hakaa manual pump on the other side to collect your let down and avoid the leaking? You don't have to actually pump it or anything, it just suctions on.