I'm at my wit's end, mamas. Our son (first baby) has never been a good sleeper, but now things are just wretched.
He's six weeks old, and never sleeps for more than an hour at a time, day OR night. Day naps usually last about 30-45 minutes, night sleeps lasts about 1-2 hours.
He's an enormous eater, and screams for the bottle every 1.5-2 hours. At night, he wakes reliably every 2 hours to eat. I can sometimes stretch him out to 2.5 hours, but not without a lot of crying, despite my attempts to rock/soothe him during this time (using a pacifier, etc.). He was 8 lbs. at birth, and weighed over 11 lbs. at his 1-month check-up, and the pediatrician gave me the hairy eyeball about feeding him too much. (He called the baby "gargantuan." Gee! Thanks!).
When he wakes up in his crib, he'll make soft noises for a couple of minutes, look around, then blow his top (I have a video monitor). He SCREAMS. We keep him swaddled in a Miracle Blanket, and when I pick him up and rock him (leaving him in his crib with a shush-pat never works), he'll quiet down for maybe another ten minutes - I can see how sleepy he is, it's like he's trying to go back to sleep but just can't get there - and then he starts bucking against the swaddle, wiggling around like a fish, and hollering.
I then unswaddle him (which I think may be a mistake, because the couple of times I let him holler and buck against my shoulder for a good long while, he did eventually settle down, but my God, it was hell getting there), and I sit there, feeling helpless and miserable and incompetent. Then he wants to eat, and I feed him, knowing it's probably too early but not knowing how else to soothe him, and then I cry because I feel like such a bad mother.
I do think I miss his sleepy cues, but to be fair, at this point, I think he's so chronically overtired that he's ALWAYS sleepy and/or overtired.
I honestly don't know if I have a "spirited" baby, because he's so tired that I can't tell WHAT his personality is. And the few days he's slept and been well-rested, he's seemed like a very gentle, old soul - a bit anxious, flinching at bright lights and loud noises, preferring everything to be very low-key - so the description of a "spirited" baby doesn't quite fit.
Anway, I'm at my wits end. At my worst - during the long nights - I can't help but feel that he'd be better off with a more skilled mother, that I just suck at this, that he was born knowing how to sleep but that I've somehow screwed him up. Everyone else's six-week-old is sleeping for 3 and 4 hours at a time. My child has never slept 3 or 4 hours at one time in his life.
I'm miserable. I'm filled with self-blame. I'm exhausted. And I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.
- Zoe