DD sleep going backwards at 8 weeks

[Lalarara10]

DD is 8 weeks old and has never been a great sleeper, we were working off her going down between 9-10, sleeping for 3-3.5 hours, then sleeping in 2 hour increments after that.

over the last week she still does the initial 3 hours but is then waking every hour. I tend to feed her back to sleep as this is the only way to get her to sleep.

she is usually swaddled and in a next to me but last night I tried co-sleeping to see if it would help but we had the exact same pattern (it was slightly better as I could feed lying down and didn’t have to hold her after feeding until she was sleepy enough to put down).

i feel really disheartened that we seem to be going backwards not forwards here. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is there a mini 8 week sleep regression- I read something online about this somewhere? Not sure what else to try!

Hi, I'm sorry to hear that you are tired but your baby's sleep - broken and varied - sounds completely standard. At only 8 weeks a baby that sleeps 'well' is very rare.

The thing I would recommend is reading a realistic book that explains why developmentally babies wake a lot, and of course try to get as much sleep as you can at whatever time of day.

I remember the knackeredness well!

Oh - and if BF it is probably a growth spurt so they need the food or are trying to increase your supply.

Thanks @carefulcalculator - I am EBD so will keep my fingers crossed that that’s what it is!

Yeah sleep doesn't (in my experience) continually improve. You think you've cracked it and then the next week you have a run of terrible nights. One night they will sleep brilliantly and you will frantically try and recreate everything that happened in that day. For it to make absolutely no difference. They do sleep eventually!

Agree with PP, sleep doesn't improve with age necessarily. DD slept through the night from 6 weeks (sorry!) until 5 months, at which point she started waking every 2 hours and then every 1 hour until 8 months. We snapped and sleepy trained at that point but your DD is too young at this point for that. There are loads of things you can try: putting something that smells like you in the crib, dream feeding, bath before bed etc etc but the likelihood is she'll grow out of it in a few weeks.

The thing that really worked for us was the love to dream arms up swaddle, she slept through as soon as we started using that. I'm not trying to sell them, we just noticed that she liked to be swaddled but also liked to suck her fingers, which traditional swaddles don't allow. Once we figured that out we found the love to dream arms up swaddle and that was what did it. It's difficult but maybe really study her sleep and see if you can spot something like that? Sorry, I know that's vague.

Sleeps not linear. Your babies sleep will change so much and so often within the first 18 months or so. So best to not tie yourself up in knots about it. I know it can be extremely tough at times.
Don't think too much or research too much about regressions and stuff like that, honestly all babies are different so it's likely to make no sense.

Thanks all

@user2391 I’ve done exactly that wheneber we’ve had a slightly better night but as you say it never works.

@goodmorningsunny thanks for this - we don’t bath before bed every night so I will try to make that part of our nightly routine. We do you the love to dream swaddle which helped a little bit at the beginning. She tends to wriggle around and grunt a fair bit when in her crib so I assume she’s a bit gassy but when she’s asleep in my arms she doesn’t do anything like that and sleeps soundly.

@miltonj I’m a terrible culprit for researching and trying to find solutions but as you say I should probably try and go with it

the sleep deprivation for me is bad but I also worry more about her quality of sleep

Hi @Lalarara10 just wanted to join your thread in solidarity really as my just turned nine week old is exactly the same. I had hope that his sleep was improving (did a similar patter to your DD) then boom we're at hourly wake ups and I'm sat up in bed feeding and crying at 2am. Doesn't help that wake ups still take about an hour what with feeding, nappy changing and settling.

All sleep counts as sleep. What we perceive as 'quality' sleep is just that, a perception.....

AHH hungry phase. It comes and goes

Honestly, you need to just go with it, it could easily be a growth spurt. I remember something similar but then the first increment lengthened. Also, I think it's really helpful to think of it as sleep progressing rather than regressing.. Keep following her lead and if she was sleeping on her own I'd continue that, sleep changes so much and the best thing is let them lead instead of interfering and making it worse

Thank you everyone - and @whatasillybilly sorry to hear you’re going through the same thing, it’s really not fun! As you say, it’s us that really suffer. DD is actually asleep most of the time (albeit restless and light sleep)

We’ve booked DD in for some cranio osteopathy on Friday (not sure whether it’ll work but I’ll try anything at this point) as she was delivered via ventouse and apparently it can be helpful in these cases.