Sleeping one hour at a time

[Cloudy14]

Hi, my DD is 9 weeks old and unfortunately unlike her older sibling is a terrible sleeper. She is EBF and is currently sleeping just an hour at a time for most of the night.

We have a bedtime routine of bath/story/milk from 6.30/7pm, She doesn’t usually fall fully asleep feeding so I rock or bounce her afterwards. She falls asleep around 7.30/8pm and I place her down once she is fully asleep in a sleepyhead in a next to me (I know not recommended, but we got desperate a few weeks ago). She now wakes up exactly 55mins after initially falling asleep and I rock her back to sleep, occasionally then she’ll do a 3 hour stint when she wakes up hungry, then the rest of the night she sleeps for roughly an hour at a time before waking. Last night she woke 6 times! Im feeding her 2-3 times through the night which I don’t mind doing, but she isn’t just waking when hungry and it isn’t sustainable much longer. Occasionally she wakes with wind, but not always. My husband takes over around 5am and holds her asleep until 7am ish.

Naps are in the carrier/pram/car/held, she isn’t falling asleep independently yet, and she’s napping between 4-5 hours a day. Too much? She usually stays awake for just over an hour at a time, with 1.5-2 hours of awake time between her last nap and bedtime. She feeds every 2-3 hours during the day and generally once fed and rested is a very happy baby. In contrast my eldest was a terrible napper and only slept a couple of hours during the day but made up for it at night sleeping 7-9 hours a time by 9 weeks old.

I’m not sure how many more nights I can take. I wait until she’s fully asleep before putting her down so am generally getting 30mins of sleep at a time. She has previously slept 4-6 hours before waking which was glorious, followed by roughly 2 hours at a time, which is manageable.

The room is pitch black, white noise plays all night, she is in a swaddle love to dream sleeping bag (time to transition?) and she can be put down once fully asleep after 20mins or so. She struggles with wind so has infacol and gripe water with most feeds. I’ve cut out dairy and she’s had three sessions with a cranial oestopath. Any ideas before I lose my marbles?I’m tried a dummy with no joy but will try again. I thought 9 weeks would be too early for a sleep association but maybe not?

I would definitely try again with a dummy. We had to try a couple makes, we landed on tommie tippie. We had this, and dumny was saving grace for in the night.

Maybe tilt the side crib slightly I know some your able to do this with. It might help with the wind and such.

Sadly my lo never slept longer then 2 hours at one time sometimes 3 with help of dummy. Until we slepp trained at 6 months I know it's a killer.

Lo isn't cold?

Have you tried popping lo one down and seeing what happens? I'm not advocating cry it out or anything but some like to be left alone to go sleep. My lo never fell asleep on bottle either. I used to hold.

That bedtime is really really early for a 9 week old

Let her nap on and off until 10/11 then start routine

As per above, newborns have naturally late bedtimes. At that age my LO had a bedtime of like 11pm-1am. I hated it as my bedtime is 10pm so by the time lil man was getting ready to go to bed I was nodding off. We've let him lead on sleep, he sleeps when he's tired instead of according to the clock.

That’s helpful to know about the later bedtime @GinnyBee and @sunflowerandivy . At the moment we do it so early as it fits in with our eldest, we have stories together in bed around 7pm whilst DD feeds, but it’s something we can try. Hopefully when the clocks change that will naturally help!

@ChittyBang1987 thank you, we’ll persevere with a dummy. I did wonder if she was cold but she’s dressed according to the room temperature, plus we’ve tried having the heating on and with an extra layer with no difference.

No, now you’ve said it, we haven’t actually tried putting her down on her own for ages! I’m doubtful it will work but I think as she’s our second we just chose the path of
least resistance to get as much sleep as possible! I will certainly give it a go - the obstacle is we need to keep her upright for a while after feeding so often she will fall asleep then,

What we did at this age was do bed and bath with our 4 year old around 7, I'd then feed baby until 8/8:30, then hubby would take baby into kitchen for a play and a nap until 11pm (in this time I'd have a 2 hour nap) then he'd bring baby up and we'd start bedtime routine and baby would be in cot for sleep by 12/1am. This then got earlier and earlier. I stopped having my nap at around 3/4 months as bedtime was around 9, now it's 7:30