Help! My husband and I are at our wits end. Our almost 8 week old cannot fall asleep on her own and will only nap in my arms. Putting her down on any surface wakes her instantly. Nights she sleeps a bit better but it takes my husband an hour of holding the paci in her mouth while she thrashes around, kicks violently and fusses for her to fall asleep (then he has to keep holding it in when she wakes at 10min, 25min). She can’t keep the paci in her mouth herself even when tightly swaddled since she thrashes her head so much. She usually falls asleep between 830-10pm and wakes to feed twice (she’s EBF).
We tried PU/PD for naps for 6 days at 5.5 weeks and it just resulted of days of terrible 15min naps until she was so overtired I couldn’t handle it anymore and went to rocking/holding. She’s sleeping far better now but it is totally unsustainable for us now let alone in a few weeks when I go back to work.
We have swaddled her since birth (we tried blanket, halo, swaddleme and she burst out of all of them, so now we use swaddleup). She has been very difficult to get to nap her whole life until the last couple weeks of holding her - before we would rock her to sleep for a long time, put her down and she’d wake up after 15-20min. Now I have a short nap time routine in a darkish room with a soft saying and white noise, followed by rocking. She can go for 2hrs in my arms but does startle herself awake and usually needs to be re-rocked to sleep.
After this last couple weeks I’ve realized a big problem was WT - we’ve fallen into a 3hr natural E/A/S pattern but until this last week she would be up for far too long - even 3-4hrs. Now I start the sleep routine at 50min of wake time and she’s asleep by 60min of WT for 4 1.5-2hr naps/day (approx 7am, 10, 1pm and 4pm). Which would be lovely except I am holding her the whole time! I’m so exhausted after weeks of 4-5hrs of broken sleep at night and no naps, and with such a short WT I can barely eat, let alone shower (it takes 35min to feed/burp her). I’ve tried a carrier but she fusses/gets hysterical after about 15min. She prefers sleeping on her side tummy to tummy with me. Even with a carrier, my biggest problem is I need to sleep/nap and it won’t help with that. We have a cheap swing which she also fusses in although I’m wondering if we should buy/try a fancier one to get us through a few weeks? She has fussed in the Rocknplay since about 4-5wks. Her nighttime bed is a packnplay in our room.
I’ve read so much conflicting info on whether babies this age can even self soothe. Sh/pat doesn’t console her and I just can’t imagine how the holy grail of putting her down drowsy but awake would get her to fall asleep, especially if the paci falls out in 5sec of her thrashing. Any help would be much appreciated!
