Five week old waking every 30 mins at night

[snm88]

Exhausted FTM mum. My five week old was sleeping for a couple of hours a time at night but the last few nights is up every 30 minutes and screaming the house down. During the day he will settle on me for contact naps, in the sling, or when our walking in his pram, but come nighttime he fights sleep and won’t sleep longer than half an hour.
We try to do a calming nighttime routine - bath, nappy change, feed and in bed at 11pm but he won’t even think about falling asleep til 1am then is up constantly.
Any advice?

Sorry no advice as my kids are older now but i remember feeling broken at times when they were constantly awake and crying like that. It will pass but very hard when you are in the middle of it.

i ended up co-sleeping with all of mine and it did make things less bad.

So sorry to hear you're struggling. As bub is still super young, I would just be working on things like exposing him to daylight between 7am-7pm (or any other 12 hour window you choose), keeping daytime naps bright and noisy and bedtime dark and calm. Make sure you're optimising feeds during the day too (he could be making up for it at night). All this will help prevent day/night confusion and hopefully give you back longer stretches of sleep at night.

I would also rule out things like tongue tie (is he able to feed well?), sleep apnoea (does he mouth breathe?) and allergies, like CMPA (cow's milk protein allergy), which could be affecting his sleep. Does he have green nappies? Blood in his stools etc? Suffering from colic? They are all red flags that could indicate something is disrupting his sleep. Hope this helps x

Are you bf or ff?

If bf, they will potentially be hungry or working to increase supply, are you feeding all evening? That might help.

It can be like this but often only for a very short time.

Swaddling. A tight swaddle was the only thing that helped my tiny non sleeping baby to sleep a bit longer.

Co-sleeping is a sanity saver.

No advice on the baby front really other than to say that it won’t last forever. If you’re knackered clear your schedule and sleep when they sleep the next day. They’ll start to figure out the difference between night and day between 8-12 weeks and you should start to notice some difference. My DS is 2 weeks old and I’m in the trenches with you!