This might be a little long, but I am at my wits end and need help, so I am going to include as much info as possible.
I have a four month-old touchy baby boy. He is my third child (my others were textbook and angel). I was totally unprepared for a touchy baby, and feel like I am starting over again from scratch. Since he is #3, he needs to go with the flow but it has been hard since he is, well, touchy. We've been having sleep issues with him for about 6 weeks now, maybe longer, my sleep-deprived brain cannot remember exactly.
Routine..
E-730a
S-845/900a
E-1115a
S-1245p (cat nap in the pram while I pick up boys from kindergarten - can be as little or as long as he wants)
E-130p
S-230p
E-515/530p
S-730p
Unfortunately, I cannot alter this schedule much since I have to be out and about twice every day to pick up the older boys, and we also have to work around everyone else's eating and sleeping schedules (i.e., I can't be putting the baby to bed and cooking dinner at the same time). And for my sanity, everyone needs to nap at the same time in the afternoon which is how it is working right now (all 3 boys go to bed at 230pm). My husband thinks the baby would like another cat nap in the late afternoon but I just cannot manage to fit that in with all the chaos that goes on around dinner time.
A time.. it's hard to keep him awake for long. He gets overstimulated and is not interested in a lot of things my other two were (he hates books!). If we are moving (in the baby bjorn or in the pram), he can kind of zone out and be okay for longer but sitting or doing an activity for more than 10 mins will result in fussing and crying.
Feedings.. he is breastfed, and doesn't seem to have any issues with eating. He gains weight well, was a normal healthy birth weight and has nearly doubled his birth weight already. I do a dream feed at 1130pm with a bottle of formula. He probably does not need this, but I would like to iron out the waking issues before taking this away.
Nap routine.. We use a swaddler which has helped. We also use white noise when we are home. But I have to take my older boys to kindergarten during the first nap time and pick them up during the cat nap time. I live in Germany and usually go by tram so I am able to put his bassinet in the pram and he can sleep that way (though for the cat nap, I leave him sitting semi-upright in the pram). He sleeps in the same bassinet at home that fits in the pram, but I know he will grow out of this in the next month or two.
Props.. We have given him a pacifier since birth. He is not real crazy about it (my second LOVED his) but he uses it. In fact, this is the bane of my existence lately and the real problem and purpose of my post. We have to put the dumb thing back in his mouth after every 1 1/2 hours. Most of the time, we pop it back in and he goes back to sleep. Sometimes he is awake for longer and fusses more but mostly it's just a pop in and reset the clock for another 1 1/2 hours. Once in a great while he will be able to sleep a little longer without it, but never more than 3 hours. As such, we were hoping to help him figure out how to put it back in so we have started swaddling him with one arm out in the hopes that he would suck on his hand until he could put the pacifier back in. We've been doing this for about a week. He sometimes sucks on his hand in the bath or when being held. But so far, no luck in him soothing himself without the pacifier. He doesn't have a lovie yet because there's no room for anything else in his bassinet. (It's a phil and teds peanut shell if that helps).
Sleep position.. I do not want to take the pacifier away because it reduces the SIDS risk, and unfortunately this baby is a tummy sleeper. He has had terrible gas pains since birth and this seems to be the only way he is comfortable (I also give him fennel tea when feeding him to help with the gas). Also because he is touchy he has a hard time blocking out the light and stimulation when on his back. He is very unsettled on his back. I have tried flipping him onto his back in the middle of a sleep cycle at night but it wakes him right up and he instantly cries.
Waking.. as I mentioned, we are up every 1 1/2 hours or so (sometimes every hour, sometimes every two, and once in a great while every 3 hours) to put the pacifier back in. He does not seem to be hungry. I have tried bfing him but it only results in him barely eating during the morning feed. So it is not that he is waking to eat. But I do not know what to do to stop this constant waking up at night. He did sleep for 6 hours a few times when he was about 2 months old. But then it seemed to regress to this nonsense that we are in now.
Bedtime routine.. as soon as we have finished dinner (literally seconds after the last bite), we put him in the bath which he loves. On non-bath days he gets a little massage with baby oil. Then after he is dressed, I nurse him and then he says goodnight to the brothers and goes to bed. He does not like story time and he does not like being rocked. I couldn't rock or nurse him to sleep even if I wanted to. He just doesn't like it. He probably would like to go to bed earlier, but it just isn't possible.
Crying when going to sleep / during naps and nighttime.. Another problem we have is that we live in a very small apartment (2 bedrooms and a living room) that has concrete floors so the sound is magnified. We have put some rugs in the hallway to absorb some noise but it's still a concern that the crying will wake up the other boys. We have tried crying it out, but it absolutely does not work with this child (we did it a little bit with the others but they never needed to cry much, more than 5-10 mins max). He will scream his head off for more than an hour, and will still not fall asleep. So we end up having to put the prop back in so that he doesn't get too hysterical and bring the whole house down.
Touchy.. If I happen to brush his face with my fingers while putting the pacifier in, it sets him off and he is hard to settle down. One wrong touch and he can cry for an hour.
Things we have tried.. We've tried shh/pat. We've tried pu/pd. We've tried just putting our hand on his back to let him know we are here. Nothing seems to work for this baby to get him to sleep more than a few hours at a time, at least not without that darn pacifier. He needs to soothe himself - but how? And with what?
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance!!!
