Coping with newborn

[Joy27]

I'm sure there are many threads like this out there, but I could really do with some support.

My baby girl is 16 days old and I'm finding the exhaustion hard to cope with. On balance, I suppose my daughter sleeps well- on a good night she feeds at 8.30pm. 10.30pm, 3.30am and 6.30am. On a bad night, like last night, it was 8.30pm, 1am, 4am, 6am, 8am. In the day she feeds every three hours (sometimes needing waking up to do so).

The problem is that she takes so long to settle after a feed- the whole process often takes two hours, leaving very little time for me to sleep before next feed. She grunts and groans and generally seems to be suffering with wind, and nothing I have tried seems to sort it out. Often she seems settled but when I put her down she starts to make windy noises again and I have to rub her tummy for half an hour or more.

We've developed a routine of sorts, more for our sanity than to try and "train" her: bath at around 6.30pm then quiet time all evening. Sometimes this allows us to eat dinner together, sometimes it all goes to pot and she's up squeaking all evening.

My partner has gone back to work, and though he does change nappies at night, I don't think it's fair to ask him to be up for hours settling her.

I know this is all normal, but I'm finding it very hard- I barely feel recovered from the birth tbh. I adore my daughter and I feel sad that sometimes the tiredness feels like it's stopping me from enjoying her as much.

Any tips for settling a windy baby? And just generally staying sane?

Sorry for long post.

Get a good sling and co-sleep. It could just save your life!

Hi joy
Congratulations on your baby!!!
Have you thought of having a bit of a baby moon. I'm not sure if you're breast or bottle feeding (it doesn't really matter) but you basically take baby and go to bed for a few days. If you are breast feeding, have you tried feeding lying down as it may be a bit more restful?
Can your partner make you a load of sandwiches etc or go to shops and get a load of easy picnic type food in the fridge for you to snack on so you don't have to cook and then you just lie in bed with baby and chill out.
For the windy thing, when you say you put her down, does she sit in a bouncy chair thing or lie down? Try to bouncy chair to have her a bit more upright, she might be more comfortable.
I hope you aren't stressing about housework etc, because it really doesn't matter if you let it slide for a few weeks/months etc. It's most important for your sanity to get some rest.
Finally, do you have a friend/relative nearby who could take baby for an hour while you have a nap? You would be surprised at how much difference even 1 hours sleep can make

(Nb why are you waking her to feed during the day? is/was she early / jaundiced / not gaining weight? if none of the above and she is happy, alert and producing wet and dirty nappies, I'd question the need to wake her every 3h and suggest you kip while she does...)

I can totally sympathise, it does seem endless and there's nothing worse then that 3am feed is there?! My DS is now coming up 4 weeks old and can only ever go 3 hours at night between feeds so a very similar pattern to yours. Luckily he does feed and settle back down very quickly so I'm only ever up for 20-30 minutes. However, my DD who is now 2.2 was a total monkey, she used to feed for an hour and then took an hour to settle - I feel your pain! We ended up finding some really useful techniques to soothe her though so you might want to try the below...

Firstly - have you tried just leaving her? Often babies are very noisy little things and she might be quite happy just grunting away to herself. My DD used to sound like a donkey when she was drifting off to sleep! If she's not actually crying and is just making sounds it might be worth just leaving her to it. That took me ages to figure out as I couldn't bear to listen to her making ANY noise

Another thing you could try is putting on some white noise in the background. Babies don't really like peace and quiet and having some background noise can maybe help her drift off a bit sooner. I noticed with my DD she'd always fall asleep when I dried my hair so I downloaded 74 minutes of hairdryer noise on itunes and played it on an ipod speaker in the room on a 16 hour long playlist (wishful thinking)!! She used to drift off in about 5 minutes when I had been spending up to an hour rocking and soothing her before that. If your baby's in the room with you it shouldn't keep you awake aswell, as it's so monotonous.

Hope it gets better soon. They will eventually sleep - keep the faith!

x

Have you tried co-sleeping? Babies often settle much more quickly like that - and with a bit of practice you can feed half asleep!

Oh and you don't have to change nappies at night unless they are dirty.....[bad mother emoticon]

agree with seeker. Just make sure baby is warm enough, because a cold baby with a cold wet nappy will wake up, at 16 days, I doubt they pee out enough to saturate the thing anyway!!

I would say co-sleep as well: it's the one thing I would have done from the start if I were to do it all again. My dd also doesn't settle well...

Yes I agree, no nappy changes unless they are dirty. When you feed her keep the light in the room to a minimum and keep quiet, no loud takling etc. How are you feeding her? If you are using bottles then be well organised and have everything ready to use in the bedroom if possible so that she is not waiting too long to be fed.

You could also try wrapping her in a blanket while you feed her so she is nice and snug and if she's not too awake to start with then she'll hopefully just fall back to sleep.

There are different views on this but I also think it really helps them settle at night if you keep them downstairs for daytime naps with a bit of noise around them. They get to know that when it's quiet and peaceful at night it is sleep time. Not everyone agrees with this though, you have to do whatever is right for you and your baby.

It's tough the first few weeks but it does get better. Good luck.

Agree with the above posts - but would add:
Try Infacol. DS1 was a windy baby until about 3 months old and this seemed to help.

good suggestion, swaddling worked a treat for my 2. Wrap them up nice and tight, they seemed to like it, worth a try but not all babies like it!

Hello Joy27. Yes it is EXHAUSTING. Totally exhausting. My first born was tiny when he was born (5lb 13oz) and needed to be woken up to feed religiously every 3 hours so he could gain weight quickly. And of course the feed took 1 hour and then another hour or so to settle. It is relentless.

I didn't co-sleep because personally I found that I was so worried that I would fall asleep on him that I never settled properly (that is probably most unlikely but that was in my head and I couldn't sleep). So I used a dummy with both of mine to settle them back to sleep.

It worked a treat for me. And I managed to take it away one night from both of them when they moved into their big beds.

Good luck - it will get better.

I second the dummy!

Just to add another voice - if you're breastfeeding you do need to feed regularly to keep your supply up, so waking to feed very 3hrs or so is very important, especially when she's so little. TikTok on the breastfeeding forum has great advice on this if you want more info.

Thanks for the advice ladies. This morning a family member took her for 90 mins while I napped, which was bliss. Will try to make that a regular thing!

Will try your suggestions. I'm not sure about co-sleeping as I'm quite nervous already (always checking she is still breathing) and wouldn't be able to rest easy thinking I might suffocate her.

I am breastfeeding btw- and waking her up in the daytime only for feeds. I'm not such a masochist that I'd wake her at night...

A babymoon sounds good- just need to get rid of all these blinking visitors!

Oh and just one more question- everyone says it gets better, but can anyone tell me when that might be? I know every baby is different, but when did things start to improve for you?

the feeding is very, very intense to begin with

learn to feed laying down and co-sleep

this saved my sanity in the early days

DD seemed hard to settle from around 4 am onwards so would bring her in bed with me, latch her on and i would wake around 8 am and we would both be rested and dd would be fed and rested!

Swaddling was brill

i fed DD to sleep until she was around 3/4 months old so didn't worry about settling her

DD is 19 weeks now and the feeding is so easy and quick - 10 mins per side (she still wakes a lot at night but i know of plenty of 5 month olds that don't)

Congrats on your DD!

Joy my DS was like this as a newborn but turned out he had reflux and silent reflux (hence the grunting and no amount of infacol/gripe water or burping sorted him out).

When you say windy noises, do you mean she's farting etc or is she writhing/wriggling/moaning? It could be silent reflux (where stomach acid comes back up) if she's not spitting up. One clue is putting on loads of weight as the baby will comfort suck to ease the discomfort. Another is difficulty settling. Have a read of this website

The only thing that helped (before we knew what it was) was swaddling and keeping DS upright for a while after feeds. He only ever slept on our chests or would sleep lying down after a couple of hours. We didn't realise until he was 12 weeks old so had a very tough few months and only now at 5 months have we got him settled.

Try winding after every feed but dont pat, rub. Keep your DD upright for at least 30 mins after a feed. Prop up her moses basket or cot and swaddle. Give a dummy after a feed as helps keep the food down. If these measures help it could be silent reflux.

Many GPs are reluctant to diagnose but it's worth keeping track of symptoms over a week and booking an appointment. They might prescribe infant gaviscon (usually the first port of call) but it's pretty useless for silent reflux. Ranitidine is much better as it help neutralise the acid.

Good luck.

thing is, yes it gets better..mainly because you get more used to it. you adjust.

but then as soon as you think oh great she has slept through 6 hours, then 7 hours, maybe more..she'll suddenly have a growth spurt and wake every 2 hours or whatever.

so you ride that phase out, and things settle down again.

then they start teething.

then they get snuffly colds.

etc.

ultimately what works/worked for me (i have dd age 3.5yrs and ds age 3 months) is to tank them up with milk during the day. also, not getting up to them straight away they make a noise. i don't mean leave them to cry, but just wait a minute to see if they nod off again.

other than that..grab what help you can. someone taking the baby so you can nap is great. your partner taking the baby on saturdays while you sleep and he just brings her up for feeding is also great.

finally- all babies are different. what you do 'to' them doesn't always make a jot of difference. dd woke every 3 hours at night up to 8 months (9pm feed, midnight feed, 3am feed, 6am feed). ds on the other hand slept 9 hours a stretch at 6 weeks, 11 hours at 10 wks.

best of luck

Firstly, congratulations. YOu sound like you are doing a wonderful job and your DD sounds very normal. It is, however, completely exhausting. I would second all the advice to get as much sleep while they sleep/someone else holds her whilst you can.

As to your question as to how long it will last - whilst that is probably a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question, the answer is really that it just gets gradually better. In 2 weeks it will seem better than now (but probably not 'perfect' and 2 weeks later will seem better again - and so on. Try to look back and remember how far you have come even in 16 days. You will still have bad nights but the balance will become in your favour. Suddenly, all this will seem a long time ago.

As to settling at night, my DD was exactly like this - sometimes go to sleep straight after a feed at night, sometimes taking ages to settle regardless of how well she'd sleep. Agree about making sure well winded no matter how tired you are and then keep her as close as possible (pull her cot right up to your bed) so you can put her hand on her tummy whilst you lie down and she can see/smell you. Try lying her on her side(make sure use 'bolster' so she can't roll on to her front)

Lastly, it is easy for tiredness to really get you down. Make sure you have emotional support and try to get that family member around more often so you can rest. It is hard to enjoy your baby (no matter how much you love her) when you are so exhausted. Get rid of those visitors if need be - or confine them to strict visiting times. People will understand - and if they don't it is really for such a relatively short period of time (even if it doesn't seem it now!). Good luck - go get some sleep!

OP - IME things are not necessarily easier per se, but by six weeks you start coping better. You become grateful of any improvement in sleep, and settling gets a bit easier.

Totally agree with those who say don't jump up straight away just when you hear a little peep from baby. If baby isn't crying he may just be stirring in sleep. Newborns are very noisy sleepers!

And go to bed EARLY! Its not forever, but putting the baby down upstairs straight after tea, and then going to sleep straight away yourself can be a lifesaver. Both my DD and DS used to cry a lot (colic I think) between about 5-8pm, but then they used to go to sleep exhausted until about 12. Often the rest of the night would be a bit of a right-off with the regular feeds and long time settling. But I ended up getting a good 3 hours sleep when it was still light outside, and then about 1 or 2 hours during the rest of the night!!!

grobags/swaddling
infacol
rocking to sleep
sleep when she sleeps
dummy!!!

it's still very early too - you'll get better at winding her, and find better techniques that suit her.

def keep waking her during the day for feeds (and def not at night!! )

don't panic.. this week is the worst week of the newborn phase IMO - I was a mess the week DP went back to work.

also, as a side thing - make sure you get out during the day. It's early days yet, but even if you pop out to the shops for 10 mins, make sure you get dressed and get out the door. Stops you feeling trapped.

We had a light like this with a low wattage bulb - good to switch on for night feeds, enough so you can see what you're doing, but not harsh at all. was really useful (I'm sure a nightlight would be the same).

congratulations, and hope this helps.

Also would recommend agreeing a plan with your DH re. settling. I used to find it really soul-destroying if DD took ages to go to sleep before I'd even had a wink of sleep myself. So I would do the 8ish feed and if DD wouldn't settle I would leave DH to it whilst I got some sleep. I then dealt with the majority of the night wakings/feedings myself.

Yes - alternate night feeds.

Yes, your DP needs his sleep, but so do you. In the early weeks while you're finding your feet I personally think you should share the night feeds.

With DS DP would stay up and do the 10:30/11pm feed and I had an early night - I would go to bed early and do the inevitable 3am feed.

There was often a 5am feed which was just torture, that was the one that caused arguments, but whoever did it got the lie in (8am weekdays, whatever if weekend) so that worked quite well.

Hi Joy, just want to say it gets better every day but 6 weeks was when I started feeling a bit more human. But it really does get better and easier and your energy will slowly come back.

Infacol - works really well. Ignore all this co-sleeping nonsense.