Newborn sleep help!

[rachel876]

My baby is 3 weeks old and I completely get he wants comfort and to be attached to me which I am absolutely fine with and I can wear a sling in the day to keep my hands free. But at night he will not sleep in his bed. We’ve tried a Moses basket and a next 2 me crib and nothing works. He won’t be put down. I can only hold him or have him in the bed with me to sleep. This means I’m getting next to no sleep as I can’t sleep due to it not being safe. I’m so sleep deprived and I also have a 2 year old to look after so it’s getting on top of me. He either cries as soon as he’s in his bed or within 5 minutes and doesn’t calm down. Tried every kind of swaddle I think you can buy too.

Any tips?!

Yes. Safely co-sleep.

My baby was exactly the same. We tried for 2 weeks with me only getting 2-4 hours sleep. Tried cosleeping and didn’t look back. Look at the lullaby trust safe sleep.

Thanks so much for your replies. I'm completely new to all this but will look it up. Am I able to co sleep with my husband in the bed too or would he need to sleep elsewhere?
Thanks

You can cosleep with your H there, but the baby needs to be on your side, not between you, as he doesn't have the biological attunement to the baby that you do. If you have somewhere else for him to sleep, it's probably easier for him to do that.

Hi rachel876

Newborn sleep is very disorganised at the beginning and the first weeks are focused on you purely recovering, establishing feeding and bonding however once you are ready there is plenty of things you can do to start shaping the sleep for the future. I'm a certified gentle baby and child sleep consultant who is supporting sleep deprived parents to solve sleep challenges as well as supporting new and expectant parents in understanding newborn's sleep and shaping it for the future.

I agree with others, that if you want a quick solution to get a sleep (your baby is still so little so will be waking a lot at night for the feeds), then you can try swaddling. Co-sleeping is a personal choice and if you don't feel like you want to do this then don't. Lullaby Trust is a great source of information to find out how to do this safely.

I am providing one-off 1h programmes for new parents to learn how to shape the sleep for the future. It's all about taking a small steps daily or once a day as a start but what I can quickly advice you on is to start working on:

1. Starting a simple bedtime routine
2. Create a sleep friendly environment
3. Introduce some soothing techniques to comfort your baby as he attemts to settle to sleep in his own sleep space ( at the moment your baby needs you to fall asleep as he doesn't have ability to do this by himself yet). You could do a bit of co-sleeping and a bit of own sleep space. At this stage don't worry about creating any 'bad habits' as what you and your baby need is a sleep so whatever works the go with that.
4. Your newborn baby may also be getting overstimulated easily so try to keep in mind awake windows. 3 weeks old baby, would be fine being awake for 45-60 minutes max. Keeping that in mind will help you with settling your baby to sleep easier and faster.