Looking for advice/tips/similar ecperiences. Baby is 1 month old. If we are holding him he will sleep forever - during the day I tend to put him down or change his nappy etc so that he wakes up and feeds every 2-4 hours as I don't want the long sleeps to be in the daytime. At night we let him sleep and he will easily go 5 hours without waking if he is held.
He's not terrible with the bassinet. If he's asleep we can put him down and he doesn't wake up, the problem is he then wakes up 45mins later like clockwork and I'm rarely able to settle him again (every now and then 20 mins of effort with my arms in the bassinet will extend the sleep for another 40 mins or so).
All the advice I can find focuses on teaching them day and night, or else focuses on the putting down and how to avoid startling them awake immediately. Neither of these is the problem we have!
i know this is roughly the length of a baby sleep cycle so it's obviously a case of him rousing at a certain point and being upset he's alone, and/or waking himself up with movements because when held he can't jerk about so much.
we have tried:.
- Swaddling. Helpful for getting him to sleep for the initial 45 mins but otherwise useless.
- Putting him down drowsy but awake. Haven't been able to get him to sleep doing this at all. If it works at such a young age then we will try more often - at the moment I often can't face it because it's a guaranteed hour or more of struggle if we try (he becomes slowly more and more awake until he cries, then it takes quite a while to settle him unless I feed again and let him sleep at the breast).
- Cosleeping. He's not quite so clockwork with this - he will sleep (in a wiggly half awake way) for a bit longer, but he wakes to feed very frequently and doesn't take full feeds.
Now my husband is back at work, I am left with the choice of getting about 30 minutes sleep with him in the crib, or getting him to sleep for ages but I'm on the sofa so shouldnt be sleeping with him. The only real sleep I'm getting is in the evenings when husband can hold the baby for a few hours while I sleep. I'd do anything for a bit of sleep between midnight and 6am at the moment!
I'm not sure if it's best to hold him at night so he learns to have a long sleep at night or if I should just suffer through cycles of short sleeps and then having to feed again all night , if this will teach him to sleep in the crib. I always end up feeding though which is annoying because I just struggle to settle him once awake otherwise
Sorry for the long post!