Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Sleep

Join our Sleep forum for tips on creating a sleep routine for your baby or toddler. Need more advice on your childs development? Sign up to our Ages and Stages newsletter here.

8 week old won't sleep independently AT ALL.

1 reply

Flowerface · 27/01/2010 12:09

My DD is 8 weeks and won't sleep AT ALL unless on a person. So she is carried about all day and we co-sleep at night, which I never wanted to do, waking up several times for feeds (whenever she wakes up in the night I tend to feed her without really paying attention to the time, as I am usually too asleep myself to even tell the time...). (She is 100% breastfed, BTW).

This situation is starting to get me down a bit. DP is consigned to the spare room as there isn't room in the bed for the three of us, and she is huge: lugging her about all day is really doing my back in.

I don't really know what to do. I used to think that she would become more independent as she got older, but if anything she is getting more resistant to the idea of sleeping on her own, and wakes the INSTANT you put her down. I have been reading things like the Baby Sleep System and the dreaded Tracey Hogg, and am now scared that this situation is only going to get worse and that I am instilling a load of bad habits in her that it'll take years to shift.

Part of the problem is that I thought I'd be a tough authoritarian parent but am actually a complete weed who capitulates on the first cry. I experimented with a bit of PUPD in her afternoon nap and gave up after about 5 mins - she cried the minute I started lowering her into the cot and my back was killing me. No way could I keep that up for an hour, or whatever it would take.

So what do I do? Wait til she's older and then suffer through the torment of CC? Hope she grows out of it? Shushing and stroking her when she's in the cot makes bugger all difference to the yelling... The whole thing is making me feel like a complete failure and I know I am looking for excuses to put off confronting the issue. My current line is 'I'll sort it at 3 months', but why should it be any easier then?!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
rubyslippers · 27/01/2010 12:17

throw the books away

whatever she needs right now, do it

i am feeding DD to sleep around 50 % of the time and mainly at night but she is much easier to settle than she was at 8 weeks and is getting much better at self soothing but it is a continual process and i KNOW that she will continue to improve

you don't need to do CC ever - have you go No Cry Sleep Solution - there is also a very good book by Sears (will have to dig it out as i can't remember what it is call as i am sleep deprived)

DD does sleep in a moses basket but she needs to be swaddled very tightly

try putting something which smells of you in with her - i put a vest i had slept in over the moses basket mattress so it couldn't get tangled up with her

you are not a weed - i cannot let DD cry

I have found putting her on her side so i can pat her bum a very good way of getting her to sleep and then when she is asleep, i gently turn her onto her back

PU/PD is totally nuts and over stimulating IME

you are doing really well

New posts on this thread. Refresh page