The no sleep club - young babies

[Cindy1802]

Anyone want to join? For those with young babies who are struggling with sleep! Share tips, what's worked for you, and just generally a place to vent!

My LB is 11 weeks and we are lucky to get 2 hour stretches at night. He does one longer 2 hour stretch when he first goes down, but after that he is up every 45-90 mins.

He is EBF, and completely refuses bottles. HV has always said to feed on demand and follow babies cues, but I am wondering if he is just snacking all day and therefore needs/wants so much milk at night. So today I am trying to hold off feeding until at least 2.5 hours before feeding to see if that makes a difference!

(He does actually have suspected CMPA and silent reflux which could be the cause and I'm also working through helping him with those symptoms, but I'm desperate for sleep that I'm willing to try anything else to help get longer stretches!)

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

I'm here 😅. Just 13 weeks old, been over 3 weeks since I got a stretch of sleep longer than 90 mins. EBF, wants food every time he wakes but don't seem to be snacks - he's eating for a solid 15-20 mins! But he transfers back into his next to me asleep easily until 4am ish. Eating pattern the same in the day too. It's clearly not working for him either. For 2 weeks it was 45 mins sleep day or night, this week days are better and he can have a 2 hour day nap (always contact or won't sleep at all) and he wakes up crying and yawning and rubbing his eyes. I even sometimes need to wake him as he's been napping for 2.5 hours (usually his lunch time nap, waking him results in him being very upset). He's clearly also wrecked! Cosleeping doesn't work, he wakes even more often, wriggles, cries, arches his back and vomits everywhere. His next to me is on a slant which is better for the vomiting. We have family staying telling me how awful I look and offering to have him overnight for me to sleep, but they keep telling me I'm making a rod for my own back "giving into" him. I don't trust them not to leave him to cry 😭.

[Cindy1802]

Day time naps for us are hard work. I have to keep an eye on the time and either feed him or rock him to sleep and let him sleep on me, or go out in the pram. The car is the only place he will reliably fall asleep by himself! I've been working hard today to make sure he gets all his naps in to see if that makes a difference tonight.

What's your little ones mood like? My LB has been so miserable this week, and quite frankly not very pleasant to be around 😭 I don't know why he's gotten worse recently!? GP prescribed gaviscon today. I don't think they give it out very easily though as she grilled me with questions and made sure I'd basically tried everything else. I got the classic "some babies sleep doesn't settle until they are 1" 🙃 have you tried any medication for the reflux?

[LittleButtercup]

Hi all, I’m also in the no sleep club with my 11 week old DD2 😩 she has reflux and tends to sleep in 1 hour chunks throughout the night, getting harder to put down from around 4/5am. This results in her sleeping
on my stomach while I scroll the internet until morning!

She will only take contact naps in the day, so usually has most of her naps in the sling, or on mine or DH’s knee on the sofa (which I do love). I find she sleeps best in the sling and often has 2-3 hour naps in there. Although this doesn’t help my back, it at least means I can be with DD1 who is still only a toddler and is at home all day.

Because of her reflux she hates being lay flat, as she will immediately vomit whenever she is lay down. This is why she likes napping in the sling, as she is upright. I also have her next to me slightly tilted to stop her vomiting in the night.

I kept track of DD1’s sleep when she was a baby, as she similarly suffered from reflux and was a very colicky baby (even worse than DD2) - we used to joke that she was just furious at the world 24/7! With DD1 her peak fussiness/clinginess seemed to happen around 11/12 weeks, lasting around 4 weeks when things slowly eased off. Every week after that she seemed a little happier, slept a little longer. From around 5 months I was able to put her down for naps in her cot, and she is now a champion sleeper, we never sleep trained her and she sleeps through most nights and has consistently taken long daytime naps. She also had lots of tummy problems as a newborn and had a suspected allergy to something in my milk, but even when I went on a restricted dairy and soy-free diet for 3 months this didn’t seem to help, and her tummy issues actually just resolved themselves over time. She is now 2 and a half, has no intolerances and is the happiest, chattiest little girl.

Whenever DD2 has a very fussy day, or just won’t sleep, I keep reminding myself that this period is so brief and week by week it’s going to get easier. Before I know it I’m going to have another happy, chatty little toddler running around who (hopefully) lets me get some sleep! I remember with DD1 the days and weeks seemed to be so long and it felt like they would be like this forever, rocking a screaming baby and feeling like a zombie, but it really does go so fast and things will improve for us all soon🤞

[Cindy1802]

Sounds like we have very similar babies. Do either of you try to settle baby when they wake, more so when they waken after one hour and therefore shouldn't need the feed? I used to have some success by trying to resettle while he's still in his cot but that hasn't worked in a while. But seeing as he can go 3 hours without a feed during the day be should be able to last longer at night. So tonight when he woke after 1 hour I got up, picked him up and rocked him in my arms with ewan the sheep playing white noise- he fell back asleep very fast! And we got another hours sleep in the bank before he actually had another feed. I'm going to do that more often when I don't think he should be particularly hungry.

[Cindy1802]

@LittleButtercup you are so right that this is just a phase in time that we'll look back on- it's hard to remember that in the middle or the night when you're being pulled from deep sleep yet again, so thanks for the reminder. I hate wishing these early days away but then at the same time you can understand why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture!

[LittleButtercup]

@Cindy1802 Yes I have tried resettling without feeding occasionally, which does seem to work, however DD has dropped two centile lines due to bringing up so much milk with her reflux, so I’m having to feed her little and often including through the night, so don’t want to go too long between feeds at the moment. I also keep her upright for 30 minutes afterwards, but she often still brings quite a long of milk up after a burp! 😩

I have had a small breakthroug tonight though, as I moved DD out of her love to dream swaddle and into a standard arms out sleeping bag. She slept for almost 3 hours in one chunk, then fed and back down for another 2 hours! She’s on her second feed of the night as I type this, so I’m hoping for another couple of chunks of decent sleep 🤞 (Although 4am onwards is always the tricker part where she seem to be more restless, so not holding much hope!)

[MariaVT65]

Hellooo!

15 week old here. She will only contact sleep day or night. Doing shifts with my DH so I go to bed with DC1 (as his sleep is also shit) at 8pm and get up at 1.30am to take over.

[Thewildthingsarewithme]

Hii, three week old EBF and only managing 45 mins at a time! This is my second so I don’t know why it’s such a shock! No tips but sending solidarity xxx

[KCSIE]

There's no 'no sleep club - older babies' is there? Currently being consciously poked in the face by my 11month old whom I see every 2hours at night. 🥴😴

The days go so fast but the nights are like a sleepless eternity.

[Thewildthingsarewithme]

@KCSIE my first didn’t sleep for more than two hours until I stopped breastfeeding at 2 so you have my sympathies, if it’s any consolation he now sleeps for 12 hours straight most nights, so we thought we’d have another to continue the torture 😂

[KCSIE]

@Thewildthingsarewithme

@KCSIE my first didn’t sleep for more than two hours until I stopped breastfeeding at 2 so you have my sympathies, if it’s any consolation he now sleeps for 12 hours straight most nights, so we thought we’d have another to continue the torture 😂

My eldest didn't start sleeping through reliably until 3 which feels like forever away at this point! I stopped breastfeeding a few months before that.

[Thewildthingsarewithme]

It definitely seems to coincide with stopping breastfeeding, I agree though the thought of years of sleep deprivation is pretty bleak 😩

[Cindy1802]

@Thewildthingsarewithme this is my second too, and his sleep was SO different. He was waking for 1 feed at about 4am at this point and sleeping til about 8.30 in the morning - I didn't know I was living 🙃 I wasn't feeling too bad when this one was 3 weeks old as I knew how young he still was - but I didn't expect to still be seeing most hours of the night at 11 weeks!!

[Cindy1802]

@LittleButtercup ah yes the extended upright position is a killer. That's part of our issue, none of the wake ups are short, some can go on for 90mins so I feel like I am awake for so blooming long. Glad you had a breakthrough - I tried a swaddle bag and he really didn't like it, I think it made things worse as he was pissed off he couldn't move his hands.

We're now on gaviscon and, without wanting to jinx ourselves, I think it's helping. We've also made it to 2 hour stretches tonight which never normally happens after the first feed (albeit I have had to resettle once to make to 2 hours) but none the less, it was 2 hours! I was dreaming of this a few days ago 😅

[Cindy1802]

@KCSIE ah you poor thing - you're more than welcome here! Has he always slept like this or do you think it's some kind of regression? My first got hit with the regression around 11-12 months hard- he literally just woke for hours in the night for no reason.

[Cindy1802]

@MariaVT65 shifts are a good idea, although we are EBF and LB point blank refuses to take a bottle so not much my husband can do. But he does take full ownership of our 3YO between 7pm until I get up in the morning, apart from the days he's not at nursery (and those days are a challenge to say the least 😅)

Also apologies for the separate posts, it won't let me tag multiple people in the same post for some reason

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

Still no sleep here. Last night down at 8:30 and woke at 10, 11:30, 1, 2:30, 4, 5:30, 6:30, up for day 7:30 😅

[Cindy1802]

@FlyingHighFlyingLow ah gosh it's hard. How long are you awake for with each feed? Is baby insisting to be fed with each feed? I have had some success with resettling but only if its under the 90min mark, anything above that and he is insisting in being fed. I give in pretty quickly as I can't have him waking my 3YO in the next room!

We've been on gaviscon since Thursday and I think it's making a little bit of a difference now - he seems a bit more settled and getting 3.5 hours when he first goes to bed which is much better than 2 hours we were used to.

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

Yes, insists on food, solid 15 - 20 minute feed so I'm up a good half hour! My DH tried resettling after an hour and he cried until gave boob. Spits dummy out, full on screaming very quickly. I rang GP as he seems to have silent reflux but they refused to see him and said I have to do through health visitor instead so I'm still waiting for them to get back to me 😭 glad you're getting longer stretches!

[Cindy1802]

That's awful from your GP?! I did say that I had spoken to my HV who told me to try the natural remedies (keeping upright etc) but they hadn't helped so I was therefore wanting to see my GP, so they didn't have an issue with seeing me. I did get some standard patronising comments, like "society has unrealistic expectations of sleep" and "some babies sleep takes a bit longer to settle", but I wasn't there asking them to fix the sleep - the bad sleep was a symptom of the silent reflux I was there for. But none the less she prescribed it so I just took the patronising comments on the chin!

Sorry you are still waiting. They have a duty of care to mums too though, the baby isn't the only patient they have to look out for. Infuriating!

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

Health visitor called back, as soon as said breastfeeding they said they can't do anything until they weigh him so they know he's getting enough milk 😡. Apparently if you breastfeed you're assumed to be starving your baby until proven otherwise!

[Cindy1802]

@FlyingHighFlyingLow I'm so sorry, that's awful. That was never mentioned to me, albeit the HV offered to weigh him to make sure he was OK but nothing to do with getting help for the silent reflux.

If I were you I would push. I don't know if you are a FTM or not, but one thing I have learnt with both kids now is to trust my gut and advocate for them, cos no one else will. My first born went 10 months with underlying strep A last year and it took me taking him to a private paediatrician for someone to take me seriously - GP kept telling me that him getting fevers every 2-3 weeks was normal for a toddler who attends nursery. Then with my second, I was the one to contact the HV and GP to tell them what I thought was wrong with him - even though I had had HV check ups and no one thought to listen to the symptoms I was complaining of. Not to rub it in, but we had our best night ever last night (still no where near these babies who are sleeping for hours though 😅) but if it wasn't for me pushing for gaviscon, we'd still be at square one and we'd both still be miserable.

[KCSIE]

@FlyingHighFlyingLow

Still no sleep here. Last night down at 8:30 and woke at 10, 11:30, 1, 2:30, 4, 5:30, 6:30, up for day 7:30 😅

Oh gosh that's a lot, hope you can take It easy in the days! Any chance baby might be cold? That was our issue in the early few weeks/months with both my kids, you'd think I'd have learnt the first time! 🤭

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

@KCSIE

Oh gosh that's a lot, hope you can take It easy in the days! Any chance baby might be cold? That was our issue in the early few weeks/months with both my kids, you'd think I'd have learnt the first time! 🤭

Thankfully he's an only so just me and him but that's still normal night for us 😴😴😴😴 I'm on week 5 of this now. I thought that but he's in a vest, sleepsuit and 2.5 tog sleeping bag and I've got the thermostat next to his crib at 16 degrees. Not really any more layers I can even add to him!

[FlyingHighFlyingLow]

Hope all still getting better @Cindy1802