Hi all
My 7 week old is unable to sleep at night for any kind of significant period. He's always been a terrible sleeper but he used to be able to do a 2 - 3 hour stretch at the beginning of the night, and then do 40m - 1 hour stretches after that, but in the past week or so, he's lost this ability and can barely even do 40 minutes.
I'll either breastfeed him to sleep (he's EBF) and then hold him for a while before transferring to the crib, or I'll sway with him up on my chest for a while before transferring. The transfer is sometimes successful, sometimes not - but even when it's successful and he remains fast asleep, he'll wake crying around 15 - 20 minutes later.
Not just crying, he'll also be grunting, moaning, squirming, writhing, arching his back and scrunching up his body...
I'm worried I might be feeding him too often because often when he wakes and is upset, I offer him the breast. He only ever does 5 - 10 minutes of sucking, probably because he's getting it so often. I don't know what else to do though, often it's the only thing that calms him down.
I've gone through periods of thinking it's colic, then thinking it's reflux, now thinking it's lactose overload... My brain is turning to mush with the amount of exhausted googling I'm doing.
He's been on:
- Infacol
- Dentinox
- Colic Calm
- Probiotics
at various times
and I've tried:
- Tummy massage
- Bicycle legs
- Starting a dairy-free diet (I'm currently on Day 4)
- Reclining the cot, pre-heating the cot with hot water bottle
I use a swaddle and white noise. Unfortunately he won't take a dummy.
His dirty nappies are a dark green colour, and often quite "explosive". He seems to really struggle with farts and not being able to get them out.
He's gaining plenty of weight, so the GP isn't worried (she just said "sounds like colic, he'll grow out of it"). She said it isn't reflux because he's gaining weight.
He currently also has thrush on his tongue which doesn't help, but I know this isn't the sole cause of our night-time troubles because he had them before the thrush emerged.
His daytime naps are either in the pram (being pushed) or occasionally in the sling. He'll do around 3 - 4 naps per day, but I know this probably isn't enough and he's probably already overtired heading up to bed. It's very difficult to get him to nap though, he fights the sleep as much as possible.
I'm barely getting any sleep at all - the past few nights I've only gotten around 1 - 1.5 hours, and that's only because my husband takes the baby downstairs for that length of time before he starts work.
I dunno how much longer I can survive and it's already affecting my bond with him. I feel myself getting more depressed/despairing as the days go on. No idea how I'm supposed to survive until he potentially 'grows out of it' weeks from now.
One of the worst things is that my husband is convinced this is normal behaviour for a baby, which makes me feel like I'm going crazy because to me, it absolutely is NOT. He says sleepless nights are just a standard part of being a baby, it'll get better with time, we just need to push through, etc. It's easy for him to say this because I'm the one who's up all night (husband works so I let him sleep as much as possible through the night). I know that babies aren't good sleepers but waking 15 minutes after being put down? All night long? It CAN'T be normal in my opinion. Poor baby is absolutely exhausted in the morning and it takes ages of pushing the pram to finally get him to sleep.
Any help at all would be appreciated... I feel so awful but I'm starting to really resent motherhood and I long for the days and nights before we had him :( Thank you.