Baby screams when tired but she won't sleep!

[loulou2021]

My baby is 9 weeks old. She has been very unsettled and screams at various times throughout the day. At first I wondered if it could be a dairy allergy causing her pain, and I eliminated dairy from my diet (I’m ebf). However I’ve recently worked out that the reason why she’s screaming is that she’s tired. It seems she can only stay awake for one hour before she’s crying for another nap. The problem is that it’s not that easy to get to her to have a nap - I have to work very hard to get her to sleep. She never falls asleep on her own (and won’t nap in pushchair or baby carrier). I have another child and it’s not practical for me to spend a long time trying to get her to nap every hour. This results in the screaming. Does anyone else have any experience of this?

@HackettGreen thank you for your reply. Unfortunately we don't have any family where we live so don't have grandparent or sibling support. We do have plenty of friends and they have been great taking my DS out but obviously they can't do that every day - they've all got their own young kids. I'm praying the baby starts to settle down soon!

We got into a similar cycle, and I spent a long weekend just prioritising SLEEP.

Get as much sleep into her as possible - it's fine if the big one has too much telly while you rock, or spends all weekend in the park while you manically push the pram in circles. Just get whatever sleep you can into her to break the overtired cycle.

@Violettaa thanks so much for your reply. This is great advice. We actually don't have much on this weekend, so I can prioritise sleep over the next few days. Her over tiredness is even impacting her feeding now - she's too tired to feed properly so has been taking the bare minimum and then just screaming when she feels herself drifting off to sleep. She's only managed one decent feed today (which I guess will mean she will be up feeding quite a bit tonight). Have things improved for you since you have prioritised sleep?

DD was like that as a baby. I bought The Baby Whisperer and a Prince Lionheart slumber bear and after a bit of time and sticking to the routine, she was much better.

@loulou2021 DD is 2.5 now so we're well over it, but how horrible it was is rather etched in my mind!

She was a fairly crap sleeper all round until we sleep trained at about 6 months, and she's been pretty good ever since.

Your baby is very young still so it's not strange that they can't stay awake too long. When mine were like this I would get them the longest contact nap possible and as many as possible in the day. So either feed to sleep and let them sleep on you, or feed and put in the carrier so if they stir you can soothe quickly back off to sleep. Focus on that over the weekend and I bet things are different by Monday!

@LaDamaDeElche thanks for your reply! I've ordered the Baby Whisperer book and it should be delivered later today. I'm watching outside for the Amazon driver as I type this!

Good luck with it! I hope it works as well for you as it did for me. I stuck rigidly to the routine and it was a total lifesaver. I lent it to a couple of people at work and they said it worked well for them too 😊

@Violettaa I'm glad you're out the other side. I've had reasonable success prioritising sleep for The baby today but it takes soooo much effort it's exhausting!

@wibblewobbleball thanks for your advice. Contact naps all the way today!

Your baby is still so young. Please understand, she doesn't know that this horrible heavy pressure in her head is "tired", she doesn't know that sleep will make it go away and she doesn't kmow how to go to sleep deliberately anyway. She just doesn't like it.

She will get there. The advice above is good. We also used the Baby Whisperer book.

I have an 11 week old and a 3 year old. My baby has almost all of his naps on me in the carrier so I can just get on with most things and he never wakes up even though my 3 year old is really loud as I think he's so comfy in there. It's so easy and takes all the stress out of trying to get him to sleep and stay asleep as they're so used to falling asleep to motion anyway when they're so young. I'm sure this doesn't suit everyone but I love it. I've got a koala baby wrap which is really easy to use too.