Baby wont sleep! | Imamother

amother

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 12:57 am

My baby is almost a month and just will not sleep. Day, night, whatever. It's a disaster. I'm getting sick from lack of sleep.
During the day- he needs me to hold him EVERY SINGLE MINUTE.
At night- when I put him down to sleep, he wakes up every half hour. I'll be about to drift off and he'll start screaming. I pick him up, and he's silent. Falls asleep against my chest and wont go back down nicely. He is well fed, clean, tired, and swaddled. I give him mylicon and burp him well.
Help!!! I'm at my whits end

the world's best mom

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 1:07 am

Hugs! That is really tough! I had a kid like that. I used to wear him when he slept during the day. But he screamed if I wore him when he was awake. He slept in my bed with me at night.

Another one of my kids was able to sleep in the swing as long as I kept it on. Might that work? We had the Fisher Price Cradle and Swing, which has a comfortable seat so he slept well in it.

This stage does end. At this point, each hour seems to take forever to go by, but by a couple of months from now, you should hopefully see some progress. You will figure out sleep solutions, and the baby will hopefully become more used to life in this world. The trick is to stay sane until then.

It's important to get help. If someone can come hold your baby for you for an hour a day, that would be amazing. Although when my son was like that, everyone refused to hold him besides me. He screamed too much for them.

I don't know if you have other children, but if you do, a helper could help with them. Or just keep you company so while you hold your screaming kid, so you won't feel so trapped and alone. Going out can also make a world of a difference (and it may put the baby to sleep, too.) Music might also calm both of you.

amother

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 2:37 am

the world's best mom wrote:

It's not fun. I am too afraid to cosleep. I would be up the entire time, so it wouldn't help me anyway.

He hates his swing and bouncer. I have the Fisher price one.

I have a live-in. He doesnt let her hold him. I dont always care, though. Sometimes I let him scream while she holds him and I nap, but a nap is short and very light. The real problem is at night.

I take him outside. Doesnt do anything. And music doesnt help.

amother

Burlywood

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 2:57 am

If I didn't co-sleep, I wouldn't sleep.

Set up a co-sleeping-safe bed.

Put the mattress on the floor with generous clearance around it on all sides (so no entrapment issues). Give baby a sleep sack and give yourself warm PJs and socks if you're used to having a blanket. Don't put a blanket on the bed.

If you generally do not roll off the bed in the middle of the night, you won't roll onto your baby.

Nurse lying down.

When things get better, you can move baby out of your bed if you want to.

(I coslept with all of my babies, including my twins. I do use a thin blanket, but I know many would not.)

amother

Violet

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 4:51 am

Have you read the Happiest Baby on the Block and followed the five S’? Swaddling, side-sleeping, shushing, sucking, shaking? If you haven’t, I’ll summarize:

The first three months of a baby’s life are the “fourth trimester” and they are soothed by conditions similar to the womb. These five things are what he’ll replicate that environment - done much more strongly than you might imagine:

LOUD shushing, or using LOUD white noise (author mentions using the sound of a blow dryer or radio static even)
tight swaddling - especially if you think your baby doesn’t like it, those babies need to be swaddled the most
vigorous rocking - in a safe way, you can look up the right method
sucking on pacifier or breast
sleeping or being rocked in side position

Especially when done together, these will soothe the baby and will help put them to sleep. If it’s not working, you may not be doing each thing strongly enough, or you need to be combining a few things at once - swaddling, shushing, rocking, etc.

if you can afford it, there’s a bassinet called the Snoo that you can buy or rent monthly that senses your baby’s movements and actually implements these things above. It was developed by Dr Harvey Karp who wrote the book above. I haven’t used it but heard it’s a miracle worker.

I have a newborn too and sleep deprivation can be torture. I hope this or something else works. Good luck!!

amother

Yellow

Sun, Sep 29 2019, 8:24 am

So many of these threads recently, poor exhausted moms. I posted the same thing on the other threads- at around a month, all of my kids stopped sleeping on any surface besides me, unless they were put down on their stomachs. I started off doing it only for daytime naps when I was supervising. Nothing can happen when you're watching the baby! Once I saw they were able to lift and turn their heads well enough, I started doing it at night too. My pediatrician was fine with it, and honestly it's extremely unhealthy for both mom and baby not to be sleeping properly, so something had to change. Sids is really not well understood, and the guidelines for sleep need to actually allow some sleep to happen.