Hi!

Congratulations on you baby's birth!

Our son Jonathan was born on the 29th at 11:51pm, he's absolutely adorable!

However, we've got exactly the same issue as you.
He sleeps fine during the day in his Moses basket in the living room, but when we put him down at night, from about midnight till about 7am he just wont settle for more than half an hour.

He keeps waking and crying out for us.

We feed on demand, as that was advised during the breast-feeding session during our NCT classes.

We were advised to put a radio on low, and give him somthing that smells of mummy in the basket over night, but that made no difference.

His first night at home was virtually sleep free, but the next night was the first full day of Mummy having full milk production, however, he wanted to feed virtually every half hour for up to 20 minutes.

Now he feeds regularly (about every hour or two) but keeps falling asleep at the breast! We put him back down, then he's awake soon after crying out.

Co-sleeping is not an option, we're too scared of the dangers - and our bed is not big enough as I am quite large and the Mrs tends to trun lots during the night.

sibod it sounds as if we're going through the same thing with the sleep and breast feeding.

We have resorted to co-sleeping even though we're scared as it's the only way after a week we can get more than 10 minutes sleep.
We're still each night spending an hour or more just trying to calm her enough to go into the basket and I think it's starting to work a bit (we're upto 10 minute stints now where she's not screaming)

The other thing the midwife said to us is sometimes babies can't take all the stimulation they get during the day so at night for the first week or so the only way you can calm them is by having close or skin to skin contact and that's why she keeps falling asleep at the breast, it's the only time her mind is calm enough.

Good luck with Jonothan and I hope for all our sakes our kids calm down soon!

Hi Weylund hope you're doing ok!

Hi Sibod, congatulations on the birth of your son!

Just a couple of things we found useful as we have been through exactly the same as you.

Try using the hairdryer to help sooth them to sleep or get one of the white noise CD's so that you don't burn the hairdryer out... as we did. Basically, any sounds that the baby will recognise from being in the womb and that you can easily recreate... the hairdryer was a lifesaver for us. Also, swaddling can help... you can buy purpose made swaddling blankets which make this a lot easier... this only works while they are newborn though.

However, as you will know, sometimes nothing will sooth them and you just have to stand and rock/sway, sing/hum until the jobs done... (pick an easy song and stick to the same one... they get to know it!! it will annoy the hell out of you and your partner but we think the familiarity has helped).

A couple of books you might find useful:

The Baby Book - by Sears & Sears
The No-Cry Sleep Solution - by Pantley (foreword by Sears)

P.s. I agree that you need to understand all the dangers of co-sleeping and also that it won't work for everyone...

1 month on.

It's been a very hard month.

Baby is back to her birth weight, but is still feeding ALL the time. It's got to the point now where she's throwing up lots, but if you actually take her away from the breast after a very short while she starts crying for more.

My wife is now on her own during the day and is completley knackered. We're still working to the orders that we can't let the baby cry, but I'm going to bring that up at the health visitor meeting next week.

Re-usable nappies are going quite well. We have a leak once every few days but on the whole they're very good, and after using disposables for a few days the resuables are much more comfortable.

I think I read somewhere that it's 6 weeks before babies can actually go into deep sleep so I'm hoping when that happens we can acutally start putting her in the moses basket.

Hi Weylund,

I remember it being hard and its certainly a strain on you both when you have to go back to work...

Just interested in a coupl of things you wrote:

You wrote: "We're still working to the orders that we can't let the baby cry, but I'm going to bring that up at the health visitor meeting next week".

Who's 'ordered' you to do this? surely this is a parenting choice? We have followed this route and I wouldn't do it any other way if we do it again! but its not meant to be a punishment on anyone. You have to parent in a way that you are comfortable with and one that won't leave you with feelings of resentment (just my opinion - not trying to tell you how it is).

You wrote: "I think I read somewhere that it's 6 weeks before babies can actually go into deep sleep so I'm hoping when that happens we can acutally start putting her in the moses basket."

Babies have natural sleep cycles and i think the first one is 20 minutes and then every 40 minutes - at these times they wake naturally - its a kind of safety mechanism thing where they are chaking if everything is ok with the world. When your baby is a bit older you can actually be in the room when baby approaches the wakeful time and you can help them stay asleep (patting, shhhing etc). As they get older they do sleep more deeply (I think thats different for most babies), but they'll still have wakeful periods even then. Just so you know, we never got ours to sleep in the moses basket so been co-sleeping, but he does do the first 4 hours of the night in his cot now and then does a combination of sleeping with us and sleeping in his cot, depending on what kind of a night he's having.

We were ordered not to let the baby cry by the hospital. As she'd lost so much weight we were told when she's crying she's wasting calories so if she'll only rest when at the breast, even if she's not feeding it doesn't mattrer just don't let her cry.
I think people misunderstand when I say "let her cry", I don't mean for 30 mins while we go off and hopfully she's get used to it, I mean for 5 minutes to get something to drink or answer the door.