Our 3 week old sleep problems worsening

[grass_tiger]

I have a bunch of questions. We have a 3 1/2 week old daughter.

First I tried the dream feed, but she won't wake up enough to eat and if we wake her enough to eat even though she can feed to sleep she needs changing afterwards or she wakes because she's wet/dirty, then we have to start all over again with settling her. And because this is so close to the other feeds she just doesn't seem to sleep well and ends up waking sooner than she used to or just being unsettleable for hours even if we re-feed.

I started out with nursing her to sleep because she was so sleepy she'd sleep all the time anyway. I think this made her also learn to fall asleep on someone. So now it seems we have both problems.

I've tried to have her on a schedule of feedings at around 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, and cluster feeding at 6pm, 8pm and 10pm and when she wakes during the night which is anywhere from 2 to 5 hours...once she finally falls asleep. The problem is that with the feedings so close in the evening she would be very hard to put down because we'd woken her up so soon and then she also wouldn't sleep well for the rest of the night. Now after three days she refuses to sleep in the evening at all.

With all of this she has been harder and harder to put down. We don't want her to cry it out.  The pat/shush was too stimulating, so we've tried sitting next to her crib and letting her fall asleep on us and transfering her as a temporary measure to at least break her of the feeding before sleep. But now she wakes as soon as we move her.

She just doesn't want to be put down anymore at all. She keeps one eye just barely open and every time she starts to drift off she rouses herself and opens the eye again.

It seems like things just keep getting worse. Before we could occassionally put her down when she was just sleepy and leave and she would be just fine, but since we stopped the nursing her to sleep or letting her fall asleep on us sometimes this seems to have disappeared.

We started using music, but this doesn't seem to have helped and we've decided to get the slumber bear. We just don't know what to do now. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

[thodder]

Hi,

It sounds like you are in the place that I was when my LO was really small.  Keep in mind that you LO is only 3.5 weeks old - she will need help to learn to fall asleep for quite some time.  Please, whatever you do, don't try the Controlled crying etc... esp. with a 3.5 week old - she's just trying to learn if she can trust you: if she cries, or needs help falling asleep, help her, otherwise you will have problems forever because she won't trust that you will actually be there to help when she needs it.  That being said, I have a couple of suggestions:

1) Don't worry too much about schedules.  At 3.5 weeks your little one will probably still be eating eratically, and sleeping at odd times.  Feed her when she's hungry and don't try to force more food into if she's not, or you'll end up with bad gas pains to deal with (the voice of experience talking here).

2) Chances are your LO is falling asleep at the breast because that's what all newborns do - it's warm, it's comfortable and they've just had a shot of Oxytocin (acts like a sleeping pill for baby). 

3) I know all about the not wanting to be put down thing - it took three months before my LO got over it.  Some suggestions: warm the bed up first with a heating pad or blanket (but make sure you take it out before the baby goes in), and made sure the baby is warm enough once in there (enough blankets etc...).  You can also try wrapping her in something that you've worn (and not washed).  That way, the smell of you will still be there.  Right now, your LO is likely still a little freaked out about the brand new world and just wants the comfort of knowing you are there.  Don't worry, it won't last forever.  Think of it as a chance to cuddle and relax - something you should be doing lots of right now anyway.  :-)

Let me know if any of that helped, or if things are getting better.

Theressa

[grass_tiger]

Thanks for your reply. She allowed me to put her right down this morning and just kept an eye on me till she was well asleep, so at least I didn't have to hold her. This is encouraging. She also slept five hours last night, so it seems things haven't slipped as much as I'd thought.

The slumber bear should be here tomorrow and it has something that you get your scent on so hopefully that will help. I hope.

I don't really know what to do about the evenings. I wanted to let her sleep as she does during her naps during the day (when she goes down)...i.e. three hours between feeds or when she wakes if sooner... but again tonight she wouldn't have anything to do with sleep. She's been awake for about four hours now. I'm only feeding when she is hungry (no point in doing otherwise since she spits enough up without doing that & she always wakes hungry). Oddly, last night and tonight, she was hungry at six and at eight even though she'd not slept or only slept 1/2 hour. Could she have gotten that schedule from just two days (two days ago)?

I'm not sure if I'm just not getting her down fast enough and she's getting overtired. After eating she needs a diaper change and won't settle without being changed. I'm wondering if sometimes she is just so sleepy already that just that is enough to make her overtired.

I'm trying to keep in mind the "start as you plan to continue" and so I'm thinking we should try to not nurse her to sleep (though I do at the middle of the night feeding) or have her fall asleep on us. Do you think we shouldn't? Should we be waiting a bit longer? "The Baby Whisperer Solves all your Problems" just arrived today so when I can I'll be reading that too.

Thanks again.

[thodder]

It sounds like you are on the right track. The first major step is getting them to sleep on their own in their own bed.  No matter what you do, babies will fall asleep nursing, esp. new ones - I really believe it's the way nature intended it.  Joshua is now 5 months old and still occasionally falls asleep nursing, but he can also put himself back to sleep at night when he wakes up.  If your LO went 5 hours at night, she is also gaining that skill so don't stress too much.  Things will happen slowly - as my lactation consultant said "he's a baby - you need to take baby steps in everything you do".  Personally, I don't have the heart to wake a baby who just innocently fell asleep at the breast.  And it's even in the BW book - the goal to work towards is to put the baby down and let them drift off on their own, but it's not always possible at first with every baby.  So patience, time and more patience will probably get you to where you are trying to go. 
And just so that you know you aren't alone, at 4 weeks my LO was awake from about 5pm - 10 or 11pm: he just would not sleep during that time.  And he would cluster feed for about 3 hours straight every 45 minutes.  Now he's up at 5pm from his afternoon nap and goes down at 8pm without a fuss.  It's just that whole night and day thing.  Just try to keep the evenings as calm as possible and she will eventually figure out what bedtimes are :-) .

Theressa

[grass_tiger]

Well, I have some good news. The snuggle bear arrived on Friday and I gave in and bought a paci since she seemed to need more sucking time. As soon as we turned on the suggle bear she perked up then I felt her whole body relax.    I finally got her to take the paci and laid her down (swaddled and after holding her for five minutes like BW recommends) and she snuggled right in and was asleep in 25 minutes! I was amazed! That happened in the evening too. Now she isn't sleeping in the evenings again, but she isn't desperately trying to keep herself awake anymore or seeming to care if we leave before she is fully asleep (sometimes it takes her an hour to fully drop off so we stay at least 20 min or so...we are getting to know when we can by observing her...if we leave too early she doesn't necessarily not cry, but she doesn't sleep as well). She has slept for five hours straight the last two nights...so that didn't totally disappear! ...not bad for a four week old!

So the difficulty seems to have passed. We finally figured it out that it seems the problems were mainly caused because we moved her bassinet into a different room where she'd only slept in a moses basket before. So things are going well I'd say. Things are so much easier now. Thanks so much!