Back to the real world, forget those dreams of new bikes 🙁 😉

Little one is 6 weeks old now. She’s always been pretty farty……! She’ll feed, settle for a bit, then start to get wriggly and uncomfortable until a trump comes, then settle, then get wriggly, trump etc’ etc’.

On one hand, it’s pretty funny coz she does some pretty good ones, but on the other hand it does upset her and if she’s awake she cries; if she’s asleep she wriggles and grunts and sometimes wakes herself up.

She also wakes herself up with the startle reflex! This in turn keeps us awake at night.

Other than this she is well and gaining weight etc’ and the GP tells us babies farting a lot in this manner is common and will settle down.

So…. we’ve been swaddling her (probably for about 6 nights now.) This seems to help her sleep, although it does look pretty cruel, but I get that it’s supposed to help her feel safe.

The health visitor though, tells us we shouldn’t swaddle her, nor should we be shushing her to sleep, as we will be making her reliant on this and are creating a rod for own backs.

Any thoughts on swaddling? Any thoughts on shushing a 6 week old to sleep? Anyone else had a really farty baby!?

We are pretty much of the opinion that we have to do what is right and works for her, but are we in for trouble down the line? The health visitor made us feel like we’re doing something wrong!!

Swaddling our daughter gave her some comfort for a few weeks, but what really helped was understanding that she was a bit lactose intolerant and using laculose, or whatever it’s called. She was troubled until she got on solids and away from an exclusively milk diet tbh. 12 now and still farts like a beast.

Never done the swaddling thing, but it’s really hard not to shush a lovely little bundle of cuddles (and farts) to sleep.

We did it a bit too much with No.1 and he is a bit more clingy at bed time, can’t stand being by himself when he’s falling asleep at night, unless he’s totally cream crackered.

With no.2 we tried to not do it as much, and he’s a bit better at going to sleep on his own, but has recently developed a thing for being wrapped up in a blanket, he’s 2 now.

Personally do what ever feels right, gets you the best nights sleep and makes the bebe happy, balls to the health visitor, they just spew facts & fiction from guidance manuals IMHO.

All kids are different. My in-laws swear by it but apparently its “the thing” in Australia right now now so they would. We tried it with ours and he hated it.

As far as I have seen there are medical pros and cons to both.

The wife and I have different shushing styles. I can put him to sleep within 30 seconds of him waking, the wife has absolutely no success with it at all.

We didn’t sleep for more than 2 hours in a row for over 7 months. If you’re looking for a magic cure, I suspect you’ll be looking a long time.

We swaddled, it worked, when we stopped it didn’t cause huge nightmares.

Yeah it looks like my idea of hell, but Babies love it, oddly.

Too early now, but when She’s 5 months or so THEN it the time to avoid sleep triggers – I for the life of me cannot remember the terminolgy but there’s a part of our brains that semi-wakes us every 45 mins or so to check our surroundings – we don’t really notice it until there’s something amiss – we might roll over etc, but it’s 90% subliminal.

Once Babies start getting to about the 5 month mark they start doing it too, we really balls this up at home, ours was always a terrible sleeper and we were ruined, 5 months of 2-3 hours broken sleep a night kills you, anyway – Mrs would cradle her for 45 mins, then carfully lower her into her cot, sometimes she would stir and the 45 mins would start again – seem insane now, but we were that tired it seemed normal some nights it would take 3 goes to go down – and then 45 mins later she’d wake up again! All because her brain checked her surroundings and discovered she was no longer in Mums arms and woke her up. Finally we broke and put her to sleep crying and awake – she cried for 9 mins and slept for 9 hours, the first time ever!

Personally I think there are no shortcuts, they are what they are, you can only do your best and muddle on. I used to shush mine by rubbing gently down her nose and making a reassuring ‘shhhhh’ noise. No idea if it ever made any difference. I wouldn’t have swaddled.

Right now this feels like endless torment but in a couple of years it will seem the very briefest of blips and will bring a tear to your eye. It will be over before you know it.

& she’s lucky to have you. Daughters are awesome.

do whatever it takes to get yourselves some decent sleep!

In the long run however, you will pay for being too soft on them, its tough but you need to try and get a routine instilled as early as possible; change nappy, feed, sleep, repeat, (they like routine, but illness is does reset it all)

you cant do proper sleep cry down training or whatever until they are a bit older as they dont have the hormones to get their sleep pattern sorted

Just try and be disciplined in doing everything at the same time every day
in some ways its tough as youll have to sacrifice stuff youd like to do but it pays off in the long run

You do need to discuss it with the other half and make sure you are both working from the same page

as for swaddling, it worked well for our first, but not so much for our 2nd and its ok to settle them by shushing a holding them but not for long, try and get them falling asleep on their own

youre not doing anything wrong but it will be harder on you later, we made all these mistakes with our first and were much more consistent with the 2nd and it did make life easier.

weve now just added twins to the mix, only 4 weeks old and we are having to be quite strict, just because theres no time left in the day for anything else if we held them all the time!

Oh and spend longer than you think winding them, theres always a bit more gas trapped there!

We found white noise soundtracks were good for keeping our little one down during the night but only up to 5 months or so. After that, not so much. Dr Harvey Karp’s something or other if memory serves.

At 2 years old she’s a much better sleeper but I did spend most of last night sleeping on the floor in her room because she woke up scared and wouldn’t settle back down.

Good advice so far fellas, reassuring. We’re definitely not looking for shortcuts and are realistic in our expectations. She’s a baby, she cries, we get broken sleep, it happens! It’s just good to hear what other people do, and STW feels a bit more like real people to me rather than mumsnet etc’!

We swaddled, it worked, when we stopped it didn’t cause huge nightmares.

Yeah it looks like my idea of hell, but Babies love it, oddly.

Exactly the same for our two – they used to flail a lot and wake themselves up. I don’t think we had to do it for long – maybe until they were 3 months old.

They’re both good sleepers now so we don’t appear to have irrevocably damaged them, whatever the OP’s health visitor may think.

The health visitor though, tells us we shouldn’t swaddle her, nor should we be shushing her to sleep, as we will be making her reliant on this and are creating a rod for own backs.

Any thoughts on swaddling? Any thoughts on shushing a 6 week old to sleep? Anyone else had a really farty baby!?

IMHO it makes no difference what you do and you will try anything for a good nights sleep Everyone will give you conflicting advce7Some folk will insist x worked in 2 days for their child

Some will say its your fault and you make the child needy and dependent and let them cry some will say go immediately

Ignore it all and do what you and the mum think is best or what works best for you.

it wont leave the child emotionally scared for life whatever option you choose to go with

Enjoy it and tape some of the farts for when she is older and dating

I am the owner of now nearly 2 year old twins. I think that the main thing that can be learned from parenting thus far is as follows:

– Children are consistently inconsistent.
– What works this week probably wouldn’t have worked last week and sure as hell won’t work next week.
-It is impossible for a child to fart quietly.
-They hate it when you are enjoying yourself and they aren’t in the room. They can sense it when it happens, and they will do everything in their power to ruin it for you.

We didn’t swaddle from birth, but then one day we thought let’s give it a go and it was really successful for a while. I’d swaddle them up really snuggly and they seemed to like it and sleep well. From memory (memory isn’t what it once was…) they swaddled from a few weeks old up until they started to try and roll about and then that dream was over.

They are 2 next month, and in that time they have shown glimmers of ‘sleeping through the night’, but never both in the same night, and normally only preceeding a spell of illness in which they would then barely sleep for the following 5 nights…

I mentioned earlier that they can’t fart quietly. Even now, in the first few hours after going to bed, if they have got wind of any type then we know about it. There will be a period of wriggling, then some audible noises, then normally fully fledged shouting and screaming, then sometimes the tiniest of little ‘ppphhhffrrrttt’ and then they’ll be sleeping soundly again. (trying to suppress child A through this whilst not waking up child B is a dark art)

Our oldest had terrible reflux, swaddling made him comfy enough to sleep, we also shushed and that worked too.

We followed this US Doctor Harvey Karp, even used a rocking cradle and it worked wonders. Look it’s your baby, you guys need to see what works best from all of the advice, we had a bad experience with our health visitor, it was her way and that was it when it just didn’t work with our baby. 👿

Here’s the link, if you fancied a look, but I’d say swaddle away!

Ah here’s the break down!! Worked wonders for our lad, and our sanity.

https://happiestbaby.com/using-the-5-ss/

ps. in my view, it is not the Health Visitors job to tell you how to parent. This child has been alive 6 weeks and just wants some comfort and to be reassured that it is going to be ok. It’s only in relatively recent modern history that Man has decided that they should attend to their child at hours convenient to them. They need you, it’s a full time job, the hours are crap and the pay is awful, but anything you do now in an attempt to make things easier in the long run is essentially cutting corners at parenting.

Sounds like you’re doing a great job. You’re only 6 weeks in, life is a blur and you only need a few moments a day of them doing ‘new things’ and you forget all of the less than satisfactory bits of parenting! Farting is always hilarious. The moment that I don’t laugh at a fart I’ll know that I am dead inside!

We used a baby hammock until he got too big for it. It worked really well as whenever he woke himself up it made the thing rock and put him back to sleep.
Thankfully our fears were not realised and he transitioned to a cot easily enough.
I always made a point of putting him to bed when he was just drifting off rather than when he was asleep so he would get used to being on his own to go to sleep.
No idea if this will work long term as he is only 11 months but he sleeps relatively well, waking up once a night because he is a greedy little git and wants milk

we had a little girl in the same week as Kimbers, so 4 weeks old today!
**** me it’s hard work. This is our 2nd and it didn’t seem so bad with the first, I think your brain must actively eradicate memories of how tiring and utterly exhausting having a baby can be, otherwise you’d never have another.

Our health visitor is saying not to swaddle as well so we’re not but we did with the first so it’s all a bit mehh. Our baby seems to sleep without any issue without swaddling so all is fine. Once the hands drop to the bed we’re on a win and jump into bed and get to sleep asap. The good thing is because we’re both so tired we never have any issue getting to sleep but there is nothing worse than being asleep for 15 mins and baby starts crying again, oh my god. I’d quite happily skip the entire first year I reckon.

– Children are consistently inconsistent.
– What works this week probably wouldn’t have worked last week and sure as hell won’t work next week.
-It is impossible for a child to fart quietly.
-They hate it when you are enjoying yourself and they aren’t in the room. They can sense it when it happens, and they will do everything in their power to ruin it for you.

This, very much this

Just when you think you’ve got it all on track, and your body relaxes thinking you’re going to get some sleep… BANG!!!

Back to square one

They started climbing out of their cots a month ago so we had to remove the sides to make them into beds. Giving a sub 2 year old the decision on whether or not they should be in bed has been a troubling period for everyone involved. The excitement of being able to get out of bed in the period preceeding going to sleep is too much of a responsibility for such a small person to deal with and so ‘bed time’ now ranges from anywhere between 1 and 3 hours.

The bonus is that when they wake up in the night, they now get out and toddle in to our room and get in to bed. I now sometimes don’t even get woken up even if they are in our bed when I get up for work.

It doesn’t get any easier… it just gets different!

There is no magic formula!!

I am a teacher, and my wife is a former nanny / nursery nurse turned degree lecturer in Child development psychology, so you would think we would have a least some idea of what we were doing!!

Turns out we were clueless and despite everyone giving advice, eventually we just had to accept that we would find a way, and they would sleep through. Although I did get close to punching a smug mum and dad who told me their child has slept through from 2 months (after we were on 12 months of sleep deprivation).

You don’t see many teenagers with sleep problems, so everyone must figure out a way eventually 😀 As brutal as it sounds, just accept you will make mistakes, you are not going to have much sleep!

I am still slightly proud that my daughter will happily fall asleep when I am cuddling her, but not when my wife is……….I know it is a petty thing, but you take what you can as a dad, I am also bent round her little finger and I accept this!

They’re all different.

Swaddling sort of worked with #1 for a couple of weeks. The he decided it was the worst thing ever, but cuddles were cool.

#2 Is nearly 1 and properly awkward. We knew she’d be trouble from the moment we found out we were pregnant – 2 days into a holiday Spain. She likes cuddles but threatened to resonate our brains to pieces in a way that only Jean Grey could equal when we tried to swaddle her. We also suffered from her projectiling instead of burping for the first 3-4 months which nearly killed off our washing machine. She hates me when going to sleep, or when I try to settle her during the night. That is, unless my wife is away & then she goes straight back down. Currently she wakes at around 22:30, 01:00, sometimes at 03:00 and then gets up properly at 06:30, about ten minutes before my alarm.

It really does get better and I’m convinced that very little you do now has much nearing on how they behave, sleep wise, later on.

we didnt swaddle our eldest…he was a good feeder and sleeper so we didnt have any problems
the second one was also a good feeder but a light sleeper so the swaddling worked for her for a couple of months. she got used to sleeping through after a good feed and then we stopped swaddling her and she was fine.
the youngest didnt like it at first but then it worked for a few weeks before he wised up to it. …he’s 2 now and still hates being covered up when asleep.

i’ve always recommended to other parents to try it. it works for some but not others…only way you find out is by trying it

Richard, how are you feeding the baby? My mrs started on the boob but he would feed for a bit and then just use them for comfort. From this we worked out he wasn’t getting enough to fill him so the mrs started expressing. After feeling like a cow for a good few weeks, we moved to bottle feeding. We knew what he was having and we could fill him. He would burp and then fall into what we called a milk coma, eyes glazing over and ready for bed. Like this he would sleep.

We also made the decision to sleep in different rooms. My mrs would head to bed at 9pm and i’d stay up to do the last feed at about 11-11.30. I’d then take him up and put him to bed in her room. Off to bed i went. She’d wake at 3am to feed and i’d sleep through to 6.30 and go to work. This gave us both 6ish hours sleep each in a row. Before we did this we would bicker about a knife left out or a plate on the side, really stupid stuff but we were both shot!! I’m not saying this is how to do things, we’re only at 9 months so still have a long way to go, but it worked for us.

Now we do controlled crying at bed. Bath, milk then bed at pretty much the same time each night, he cries/whimpers for 5-10 mins and then is off for the night waking at about 7.

As for swaddling, our little lad loved it at first. After 2 days he was rushed back in after a 999 call and spent about a week in hospital. When he wasn’t in the bili bed, he was swaddled up sleeping. We shushed him and was never told not to.

I found it very disappointing how few parents seemed to tell the truth. As far as they were concerned their babies were angels, could put themselves to sleep having fed themselves, and then slept through the night

Very few give you the honest, warts-and-all truth. It’s like some sort of competition. Very irritating

Skiprat – We’re bottle feeding. She’ll quite often get milk drunk and fall asleep, but will wake up because of the startle reflex when we put her down. Swaddle helps with this, but it’s the farting that she’s really struggling with.

Your plan of sleeping in separate rooms sounds remarkably familiar. We’re doing that when I’m working, but I’ve been really lucky in getting a lot of paternity leave sorted out. Got another two weeks off coming up after this week.

Benp1 – This thread seems pretty honest, which is good. All people ever ask is “How’s she sleeping?” followed by “I got mine into a routine and he/she slept through.”

I honestly can’t remember on the swaddling aspect (sweajnr is only 2.5 😳 ) but I suspect we did as we were willing to try anything. I do remember someone telling me that 6-8 weeks is one of the worst stretches and for us that was certainly the case. Sweajnr didn’t sleep through until well past 1 but the number of interruptions decreased somewhere in the 8-10 weeks timeframe.

As for the rods thing that may be the case but I was willing to try anything at the time to get more sleep.

They started climbing out of their cots a month ago so we had to remove the sides to make them into beds. Giving a sub 2 year old the decision on whether or not they should be in bed has been a troubling period for everyone involved.

We had the same problem when our eldest turned 2 – I heard a thump which was my daughter landing over the other side of the stair gate, having climbed out of her cot. Obviously, we had to put her into a bed and take the stairgate down. Two months of sheer hell followed, then she started sleeping properly and has been fine ever since (she’s just turned 5).

We tried the swaddling thing and spent a load of money on some funny shaped bits of material that were apparently designed for the job.

Our little one hates it & would take seconds to force her way out of it. She hates being wrapped up tight.

Funny, I was just about to recommend one of those: Swaddle bags as our little one didn’t like being wrapped up, but would routinely flail about, hit himself in the head and wake himself up. Could still move his body and feet around a bit, just stopped him slapping himself. We bought on ebay for a couple of quid, no way I’d pay full price for one though. Used it until he grew out of it.

5 months now, still wakes at least every hour during the night. He was good(ish) until about 6 weeks, then there was a marked deterioration from which we’ve never recovered. Sleeping all the way through is a distant dream for us and 2 hours uninterrupted is a rare luxury. Ughhh.

We’ve got a similar thing to swaddle her with, zips up the front so fairly easy to get her in it. got a fairly decent night out of her last night, we cranked the volume on the white noise app and she didn’t move for 3+ hrs!! The belly trouble started at 4:45 though, lots of wriggling, got her up at 5:45, then she proceeded to fill her nappy (and her baby grow and the bouncy chair) 3 times before 7am.

Richard, as you’re bottle feeding, have you looked at a different milk? We found out our little lad had a milk protein allergy (not lactose) so was prescribed aptamil pepti 1 (i think). Was much easier on his tum and if i remember cut down on the trumps.

Good luck with it all.

Our experience of health visitors was that they were generally ill informed and full of outdated unsuitable advice. Swaddling worked for our two when tiny but doesn’t for all. Shushing also worked. The elder one is three and has been a good sleeper from a few months old (rarely wakes during the night, often sleeps past 7 or even 8). The younger one is eleven months and is an erratic sleeper, usually waking at least once, occasionally needing co-sleeping and often up early. I don’t think our approach differed significantly but their resulting behaviour has!

We swaddled No2 out of necessity. She had reflux and other complications so had an NG tube. We had to keep little fingers tucked out of the way to stop the NG tube being pulled out. Basically, folded a flat bedsheet diagonally to create a triangle and rolled her up swiss roll style, one arm by side, the other across chest. The sheet was high enough to hold her (medically recommended) dummy in place. We also placed two half size Heinz tins under the cot legs at the head end to elevate her head and esophagus.

Worked a treat, she usually slept right through and rarely puked, a vast difference from before.

Skiprat – we’re on C+G comfort at the moment, is better than the the normal C+G but she’s still trumping like a champion. She was at the Doc’s the other day who said we could try changing the milk again, but things don’t necessarily settle down until 3 months anyway, so we could be wasting our time and unsettling her again for no reason. We’ll look at milk again in a few weeks if there’s no change.