Help! Need sleep advice please!
Not a FTM here so feel a bit ridiculous posting this as thought I had it all figured out (ha ha!) but my second baby is a slightly different kettle of fish sleep wise. Plus my first is 9 years old so think I’m forgetting a ton! 🫣
Baby boy is 8 weeks old yesterday but born 1 week 5 days early and born on the small side (6.5lbs). First couple of weeks he was - relatively speaking 😄 - a great sleeper. Gave me a 4 hour stretch at the start of each night, plus I was in bed recovering from a planned c section for 2 weeks so - compared to pregnancy I felt quite reborn. From about 4 weeks onwards though it started to go a bit downhill.
I was - perhaps - a bit foolish and didn't really 'support' any independent sleep from an early age. He co-slept from first coming home from hospital - in fact even IN hospital as he stopped going in the bassinet from night one so they just passed him to me on the hospital bed.
I also hadn't realised he was actually doing more (dangerously) than just co sleeping as he was sleeping literally on my chest, not on the bed beside me. Only at the 6 week health visiyvisit - and when I started reading sleep forums - did I realise my error! To my (hopeful) defence, I'm not drinking, taking sleep medications or smoking - and I am a VERY light sleeper. But he got very used to my chest!
Once I realised this is not co sleeping and always unsafe I have been trying to move him off me and onto the bed beside me and things have started to unravel a bit sleep wise for us.
Simultaneously;
He has never slept int he bassinet during the day. Only ever contact napped or napped in the sling. I occasionally got about 30-40 mins in the bassinet if I slipped him in already asleep - but that seems to have stopped.
He sleeps GREAT in the baby sling.
He screamed his head off in the car seat. Car journeys do NOT calm him down - although we had to drive 2 hours to my daughter's gymnastics competition this weekend - which basically equated to extinction crying in the seat with me next to him- and ever since then he seems to have gotten a bit used to/ resigned to it. I felt awful all the way through - sat next to him
Rubbing his tummy- horrific.
He continues to really object being moved off me in the night. He also wakes a LOT during the night for his age (I think?!). He goes to bed (With me of course 😄) between 8-9pm- wakes up between 11.30 - 12.30 then again about 3am then again about 5am. He nurses and then falls asleep but I need to wait for this to try to move him off me, and sometimes (often!) he wakes up when I move him and I have to start the process all over again.
He is also quite colicky at night although this is tapering off slightly the last couple of days. Early bedtimes seems o help but then I obviously have to go to bed with him which is fine for my exhausted self but upsetting for my older daughter who feels she never ever sees me. I now don’t get to do her bedtime story as I have to go to bed. With the baby and he is nearly always on me after school (my husband tries to do a lot but he’s nearing the witching hour after school and quite fretting if not on me specifically)
He is honestly (obviously) the most adorable and lovely baby but I am so tired I can't see straight and feel something has to change. I barely slept through my last trimester so Im on like 5 months of not sleeping more than 2 hours at a time (aside from his first couple of weeks). I have tried everything gentle in terms of supporting the bassinet (warming it for him, drowsy but awake, white noise, blacked out room, lying beside him and patting his tummy etc etc). Nothing seems to work! The only way I can engineer it is by moving him asleep- so then as soon as he wakes up he screams for me.
This is not only impacting my ability to function ( I nearly had a car accident on the way to the GP yesterday) my daughter ( I have a 9 year old who keeps crying that she never gets to see me without the baby - the baby who also happens to be quite fussy so hard for us to do stories etc, me to pick her up from school in the car etc) and my own sanity.
I don't know what else to do besides let him cry/ fuss a bit in the bassinet- but he would go for an hour or so I think and it seems far too young for that. However some books seems to suggest its okay to do some sleep training earlier if it supports the baby to get good sleep (healthy sleep habits/ happy child suggests as young as 6-8 weeks in some cases?) but then other sources equate it to child cruelty!
I don't care about him sleeping through or anything like that - I just want him to get some good sleep, me to get more than a couple of hours and my daughter to feel like she has a present mother again. My husband thinks we need to start leaving him the bassinet in the morning for 30 mins or so (I tried doing in 2 minute stints, rubbing his belly etc but that just seemed to make him crosser). My husband also argues- which I get - that he has to get used to the car seat in this way and it seems to have worked - but then I read all these posts about the horrors of sleep training before 6 months.
To be clear again - I don't want to sleep train per se, I just don't have a family lifestyle that is conducive to contact naps only and I think its harming both mine and his mental functioning by now. He still sleeps great in the sling but his contact naps (which are effectively also his night time sleep ) are getting shorter by the week!
Any advice (please be gentle with me)? I just want the best for all my family and feel so caught between my daughter and my contact hungry baby!