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first time mum- help needed!

Like I said in my other post, my seven week old is still waking up for three hourly for feeds in the night.
We don't have him on any routine, were just following his lead really. He's quite a difficult baby, and during the day he screams the minute you stop walking whilst rocking and patting him. But he does settle more easily on a night, although I've stated bringing him into our bed after his 5am feed otherwise I end up starting the day with him because he won't go back to sleep.

Where should he be having naps during the day? If he will go down during the day, he's in the living room in his moses basket or rocker but wont sleep for more than 45 mins at a time. I don't take him upstairs until he's had a feed after 8.30pm, when I will go to bed too (no evenings for me :cryimage

My hubby works shifts, that are in no set pattern so this is my excuse for not having LO on a routine, but now after being sleep deprived for seven weeks I'm beginning to regret this.

Do you have your LO on a routine? If so could you give me some examples please.

I'm reading the baby whisperer book and her E.A.S.Y routine, but It just seems so overwhelming. For example; what if my LO won't sleep when she recommends the whole routine will be thrown out and I have no idea what your supposed to do in that instance.

Also me and hubby have been sharing the night feeds, even when he has to get up to go to work. I'm beginning to think this is quite unreasonable for me to keep letting him do this. Am I being unfair?

I bet I sound totally clueless, but at the moment I'm just trying to get through one day at a time making sure my baby is fed, changed and loved.

Any advice will be gratefully received x

Replies

  • how much is he taking when he has a feed? my lo was in a routine easily from birth because he was feeding so well in the day he didn't need anything at night, he's now 14 weeks and sleeps 11-12 hours overnight! could it be that he's quite a hungry baby and may need hungry baby milk or maybe more milk each feed?

    some babies don't ever sleep through the night for months, thats all part of having a baby and there's really nothing u can do! you'll have to sleep in the day when he's sleeping, do u have a swing that u could put him in to rock him rather than u doing it? my mil rocked my lo twice one night and the next day he cried when i put him down because he wanted me to rock him, i had to leave him to settle himself which is hard but sometimes u have to be cruel to be kind...does he have a dummy? i really dont know what else to suggest, hope ur ok x
  • You are doing the right thing hun! in making sure he is fed and loved. He is so little, I really wouldn't worry about those routines.

    I was really lucky that my lo was in a routine and sleeping through by 7 weeks BUT before you kill me lol, he's now almost 8 months and is a right pain in the bum and half of the time he is up in the night (luckily, not often for long!) for 1 thing or another.

    Lo will drop the night feeds soon enough & settle into a routine, you can give a nudge in the right direction by making sure the last feed is in a darkened room etc, after a bath or a wash and cuddles etc, this helps. Personally I don't believe in bedtime being a 'set time'...Los don't understand this...I usually get Gabe ready for bed at 6.30 with a wash and change and then he plays for a bit until he gets hungry usually about 7. then he has his milk and goes to bed.

    It doesn't matter where he sleeps in the day, if we are home, Gabe sleeps either on my bed or in his cot as he gets excitable in the front room and very rarely 'switches off' enough to sleep. If we are out he sleeps in his pram.

    Hope this helps. xx
  • Good advice from mrsjbourne. Also, I found that by getting my son up at 10.30/11pm before we went to bad and giving him a feed, he'd sleep through the night - he slept through from 6 weeks, and one of my friends had trouble with her little girl waking in the night until she gave her a feed at this time too. I hope you get some sleep v soon! xx

    37+4
  • firstly stop beating yousef up, if your is ony 7 weeks your doing fab!

    3 hourly feeds at 7 weeks isnt bad, my lo is 20 weeks and only goes 4 to 5 hours, his 2 brothers slept thru from 9 n 10 weeks but this lo is just not designed to do so.

    Re routines my lo has to fit around his brothers so day routines are a bit hit and miss but ive always tried to make sure he has one sleep in his cot in the day even if it is only 5 mins. Im just very strict with the bed time routine. Since he was 2 weeks old we have been following rountine and i say no too social occasions to make sure we are home in time. I did the same with my other 2 and they are fab sleepers.

    As for your oh if he is happy to help then keep going, at the end of the day running a household is a full time job, if my dh would get up i certainly wouldnt stop him.

    Have you tried a dream feed? If you dh is going to bed later than you get him to feed him before he goes to bed, it might mean that you get a longer nights sleep.

    As for the sleep deprevation i promise it does get easier, you dont necessairly get any more you just get used to it. finally if you can def get your head down when baby sleeps in day.

    sorry its long

    xxDBxx

  • Your doing a fab job, Evie is seven weeks and feeds every 2hrs during the day and wakes up once or twice a night although the last two night she has woken a few more times i think shes growing anyway when we did push her to four hours (which she can do) she woke up nearly every hour during the night, its just trying to find something that suits you both, but your doing a fab job xxx
  • Hey pp!

    My 1st slept from 11pm thru to 6pm from 5/6 wks old......we were lucky lol My 2nd slept thru at 8/9wks, 3rd at about the same & my 4th was bout 3 months!!! Nathan is 5 wks tomoro and generally goes about 2-3hrly thru the day on 3-4 oz's each time.....he'll then feed about 8ish and sleep to around 3am and take 1-2 oz's then wake again at about 5am and do the same again!! We have tried dream feeding and getting him to take more at the 1st time of waking but he refuses - either puckers up so the bottle can't get in or he'll gag on it lol so we've given up for now! If you can get ur lo to dream feed (our others were pretty amicable for this) then it mite knock out one of his wake times during the night.

    Best of luck hun, and don't stress too much - babe's are all different but we all get there in the end.........eventually lol xx
  • We didn't have a routine till about 6 months old when I started getting Cole to nap in his cot but before then he just napped wherever and ate when he was hungry. Even now he doesn't have a particularly set routine - nap about 2.5 hours after getting up, lunch, tea and bath times are fairly set but thats it.

    I bought the baby whisperere book cause cole seemed to fit it and the very same day (i kid you not) he started acting totally different so I gave up!

    I was bf-ing cole but started giving him a bottle last thing at night and that helped him sleep through from about 10-6.30 from about 6 weeks. that lasted till about 4 months old and now still at 1 he wakes around 4-5am for a bottle.

    If he's screaming a lot is he struggling to bring up wind? Have you tried infacol or something similar?

    As for the night feeds - my hubby always has got up with me - now I feed cole while he changes the nappy. If he's at work I'll stay up with cole as much as poss if he doesn't settle but if he's off or we are both at work we take turns.

    Don't feel like you have to have a routine, it doesn't necessarily work - I found we used to drift into rough patterns then things would change so for me trying to conform to what one book or another said should be happening was just too irritating so I ignored them! The only thing I was strict about was a bedtime routine and even then it was just doing the same things rather than at a set time at first and then we gradually settled into a set time which we then brought earlier, and then even earlier when cole was getting tired earlier and he now has his bath at 6pm and then off to bed.

    7 weeks isn't long to get used to a new baby, and honestly the sleep deprivation does get easier. one thing we used to do was take it in turns to have lie ins at the weekends/hubbys day foff so even though we didn't get to spend much time together we got sleep!

    You'll be fine
    xx
  • hey,

    you've had tons of great advice, i just wanted to add that routines work well for some babies and not at all for others. i think that doing things in the same order giving signals to your lo is more important. Eg, my lo knows that she has her bath, daddy gets her dressed, mummy feeds her then its sleep time.

    you'll soon find that you slip into a basic routine naturally.
  • Try not to get stressed it sounds to me like your doing fantastic, i remember all too well that overwhelming feeling and it feels like you'll never be as confident as every other mum seems to be but things will fall in to place.

    we have a routine, BUT we dont always stick to the letter because as my oh says "routines are great...until life happens"
    our routine started at about 7 weeks prob and it just seemed to happen when i started bathing cameron at the same time every night. i started to bath him at 6.30, give him a feed and a cuddle then put him to bed..when we 1st started i would put him to bed asleep but after a few weeks i started to put him down awake to settle himself.

    cameron still woke in the night until 5 months, i think around 4 months he dropped to 1 feed at 4am then at 5 months he dropped this too and slept from 7pm-7.30am whithout a feed. he still wakes for his dummy or just a little chat to himself in the middle of the night but i dont feed him anymore.

    now he is weaning so his routine has changed every few weeks for the past 2 months. but he pretty much feeds every 4 hours (used to be 3 until i started weaning) and has 2 long naps and a short cat nap at tea time. he never used to sleep much either i would have to fight to get him to have a nap in the day but i used to keep him in the pram with me. when i moved him into his cot at 10 weeks thats where he started to nap and he now sleeps for 1-1/2 hours.

    hope some of this info helps. bear in mind, routines are a new thing..my mum used to feed us when we seemed hungry and let us sleep when we were tired and we turned out ok!
    xx
  • Thankyou everyone for your replies.

    He is a colicky baby and is on the c&g comfort milk with coleif drops- expensive baby!

    I guess I have been quite stressed about it, the HV has one thing to say about what he should be doing now, and how much milk he should be taking etc and the books tell you another.
    And then of course our parents want to add their twopence worth. It all gets abit much and I end up feeling that LO's totally off track. Even though like you all said, he's an individual and he's going to do what he wants to do.

    When he was first born, I was really panicky about the thought of him crying. And so whenever he cried I offered the bottle, which is probably why he feeds every 2 hours during the day. So I have started him on the wrong path, but when people tell me I need to be more 'hard' with him the more I'm attentive.

    Anyway thanks for your help!
  • Hi Percypig- I'm in the same boat so don't worry. Archie (9wks) will go slightly longer at night (5hrs) but I'm still knackered ! I'd take the offer of help from oh until he asks to stop!

    As lo's tummy grows he should be able to take more volume in the day and won't need the frequent night feeds??
    Good Luck x


    [Modified by: camlo on December 30, 2008 06:26 PM]

  • percypig - do you get coleif on prescription? I'm sure your hv should be able to prescribe it, if not your gp should. Just a thought with you saying expensive baby. I wouldn't worry about feeding lo every 2 hours, he's still only small and his tummy is still small too. I used to feed Cole regularly throughout the day too if he wanted when he was small and even now (just turned 1) he still doesn't go 4 hours between meals.

    Its hard when people keep buttign in when you are trying to deal with lo (my parents were buggers for it but I ignored them as they only saw him a little bit at a time and didn't know what went on the rest of the day), but remember you are the one with him most if not all fo the time and you know him best out of everyone - you might not realise it yet but if you haven't already, then soon you'll start to figure out more what he wants when he cries and what his different cries mean. I thought that I'd never figure it out with Cole but eventually it all just seemed to make sense.

    Don't beat yourself up about feeding every time he cried - i'm sure most people here have donet hat at some point. Maybe thats what he was crying for - if he drank the milk then it could well have been.

    Hope things get easier for you soon...and sympathies on the 45 min napping.. cole is the same - if i get more than half an hour out of him at a time its a miracle!
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