A month or so ago I started bed sharing with my DD as it was impossible to put her in her cot without her waking and crying (she will only fall asleep being breastfed) It was going quite well with her waking every 90 mins or so and me being able to feed her back to sleep lying down without fully waking myself.
Recently it has completely fallen apart. I can’t feed her lying down anymore, she squirms around, pushes herself away and then cries but feeds fine if I pick her up, or even quickly falls asleep if I just hold her sometimes. The problem is I can’t put her back down again, even right next to me without her waking. It’s got to the point she even starts to stir as I’m moving my hands so I can get in a position to move her. Me and my partner are just taking turns to hold her all night.
I really don’t know what else I can do. She has been a very alert and active baby since birth and none of the usual advice seems to work on her. She is having some teething pain but that’s not what wakes her, she’s not in a lot of distress, just stirs, grizzles and it always progresses to full crying if I don’t pick her up.
Ive already tried:
- white noise machine
- checking daily naps are appropriate for age
- making sure she’s not too warm or cold
- bedtime wind down routine
- sleep consultant
- very gentle self settling, patting, shushing etc, she just gets more worked up
- habit stacking
- magnesuim supplements
- osteopathy
- unlikely to have allergies or silent reflux
I don’t know what else I can do. I’m sure that sleep training would be a disaster, she would just scream her head off for a very long time. She was a very stressed newborn and we’ve managed to calm her and discovered that she’s actually a very smiley baby and I’m not willing to reintroduce stress to her life through leaving her to cry.
Shes so busy in the day you’d think she would be knackered. She was rolling at 12 weeks and crawling at 4 months and just keeps going!