To the OP – seriously feel for you – it can be very tough getting to grips with a newborn.

+1 on grobags – also check the bedroom is the right temperature the whole night

Sleephead / pod systems were banned in the USA a few years ago after a number of deaths so probably best to avoid – using a crib is safe though.

Co-sleeping as others have said can be quite dangerous – and if the baby is cluster feeding and being breast fed it may be worth getting a breast feeding specialist to check out the feeding position and make sure they’re getting a good meal each go – NCT have free breast feeding clinics in most places.

One other thing it’s very easy to do without realising is introducing sleep “props” like rocking the baby to sleep etc. These work short term but set you up for problems down the line – no one tells you until it’s too late.

None of this insight is coming from a point of expertise though – I’ve spent the last year getting up 3-4 times a night (or more) to resettle our 2 year old and averaged less than 4 hours a night of sleep for much of that period – on top of a 12 hour day at work the experience completely broke me mentally and physically.

Three weeks. Try years. Our first never slept longer than 90 minutes and suffered incessant colic. Turned out he was always hungry (10lbs at birth) and we were too terrified to add formula milk in the age of being burnt at the stake by midwives. Come the second, breast milk by day and a bottle of formula last thing at night. Second slept through from four weeks.

Top tip. Make up milk, place in microwave and set for 2 min at 180W. Come middle off night, stagger to kitchen, hit start and then shake. I used to hallucinate that the ml marking were minutes of sleep as they went down.

Sleep deprivation is an effective torture. And keep them in the room in a crib not your bed. Three months was enough for each of ours.

Sleephead / pod systems were banned in the USA a few years ago after a number of deaths so probably best to avoid – using a crib is safe though.

Turns out my brain is fried, blaming the toddler. My earlier post didn’t mean Sleepyhead, it’s the Cosydream I was thinking of as being safe to use

Congratulations on the new baby!

I can only reiterate what has been said above. There is no magic trick to get them to sleep, well if there is i haven’t found it! Little baby trying to work out what the hell is going on, they were previously cosy and warm in mums tummy, and now they aren’t, on top of that they don’t good sustenance on tap. Kepp in mind how little their stomach is, it can’t hold a lot of milk and needs to be topped up regularly, so unfortunately that means feeding in the night (and the day).

Your baby will start to get the hang of night and day in the not too distant future, and will likely start to spend slightly longer periods awake for playing in the day, and wake to feed in the night. Playing won’t be what you imagine play is – but it will be interaction with you / mum. Try to be consistent in the night time by keeping sound low, lights dime etc, and try to stick to a routine (bath and chill before bedtime).

I do remember our boy loved to be swaddled, the tighter the better as he was a wriggler. As soon as the he was wrapped up he would nod back off to sleep.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? We did all of that and more, our baby is 18 months and still doesn’t sleep through the night! I have just given up on expecting to sleep for a whole night and make sure we have lots of coffee! So i have no bloody idea how to do it!

Don’t listen to any of your nct peers about what their baby is doing right now, they are all different and have their own ways of settling. I am deeply distrustful of anyone who says their baby sleeps like a dream!

Try to enjoy the cuddles and snuggling time as much as you can, try not to stress (easier said than done), and just try to work out a way to function as well as you can. Try to give each other a breather from it all, I used to make the wife go for a swim when i got home from work so that she could de-stress and have some time away from the house.

Good luck!

Haven’t read through all of the above, but we had good success with our two with a next-to-me crib for the first few months. They’re right next to you so don’t feel so separated, but there aren’t any of the dangers of co-sleeping. Both then transitioned very easily to a proper crib in their own room.

With our first my wife did a ‘dream feed’ at around midnight, where you feed them without fully waking them up – this worked well and he slept through the rest of the night. With our second, he would never settle after the dream feed so she stopped and he generally sleeps through the night.

All babies are different though, and 3 weeks is early days. Good luck.

All babies are different though, and 3 weeks is early days.

Yup, do what it takes to have them sleeping and you sleeping, whether it’s swaddling, warming the moses basket (I just brought the little mat next to me under the duvet when he was feeding) or co-sleeping.

No one in the room has much of a clue about what’s best, only how they feel at that moment. Things change, keep trying different things, you’ll find a pattern and then the pattern will change!

*** anecdotal personal experience with very limited use for you:

We started off putting ours in the basket*, he’d sleep next to me and I’d keep a hand on his chest. That worked for a bit then he stopped liking it as much and would sleep on my chest or hers, much like you’re doing. At about a month, he would start settling better in the moses basket, which was fine by us! started sleeping through at about 3 months, then stopped, now he’s started again after some sleep training. Fully aware this could/can/will change at any time, and we could have another baby who’d be completely different, and need and want completely different things.

* Mainly because you’re told in hospital that co-sleeping is DANGEROUS, DON’T DO IT! which I guess is an easier message than it CAN BE DANGEROUS! ONLY DO IT IF YOU’RE CAREFUL (Don’t smoke or go to bed drunk) AND IT FEELS SAFE!

It felt a bit like we were confessing a terrible secret when we told the health visitor, but she just said, “fine, most people do at some time or another.”

I found the car to be our answer…. night after night at 1am driving the local lanes and half sleeping in a layby/field so the wife could get some kip.

3am sitting watching Micky Mouse Clubhouse…. sheesh…. those were the days…

We all survived, but yeah, it was open to debate.

Especially Xmas day where the Mrs split about a gallon of gravy all over the floor due to being unable to stand due to tiredness… that was a fun day…. Xmas night, 1am…. me out in the car, in the lanes… driving….driving….

Poor guy would just scream if he wasn’t vertical.

I think there’s a gap in the market for velcro babygrows and vests; velcro them up and just stick them to the wall. They’re safe, in a good position for wind and reflux, and when teaching them to go to sleep on their own you could just velcro them to the cot and leave them to it until they get used to it… what’s not to like?

Cheers again for all the advice and anecdotes, it’s nice to hear that everyone is in the same completely different boat, even though I think we kinda knew it anyway. We’ve discovered that she loves going for a walk in her pram (until she does a poo or needs a feed at which point it’s full speed ahead, which makes for some soul destroying laps of our block) and she’s starting to settle better in the crib / moses basket. She’s also developed a liking for a bouncy vibratey chair, which isn’t necessarily great for sleeping but is brilliant when MrsMonkey needs a shower and I’m at work.

We’re very cautious about trying co-sleeping, MrsMonkey because of all the DO NOT DO THIS stuff you hear and me because I know I thrash around like a drowning moose in bed and I’m very wary of accidentally punting MiniMonkey across the room. That said, it’s probably preferable to falling asleep with her on the sofa, her waking up and making a break for freedom (which she is wont to do) and smashing herself up on a stool or the floor or something.

If you think having a baby is stressful wait until you try to take an iPhone away from a  15 year old girl…..

Ah by the time MiniMonkey hits 15 we’ll either be living in a post apocalyptic nightmare or all have neural implants instead of phones. Win win.

I haven’t read the whole thread, so it might already be covered, but we used a “Ewan the dream sheep” & it was brilliant. also, try putting a t-shirt or blanket that smells of you or your Mrs round the mattress as a sheet in the moses basket.

Thought I might as well bring this thread back to life.

Child v2 is now 9 weeks, sleeping for 2hrs at a time.
Child v1 was only waking twice in the night by this point. The suspicion we were spoiled first time round has now been confirmed!

Blankets, swaddles, Swaddle Ups, co-sleeping all tried and failed to get longer out so far!

#loveeverymoment

I haven’t read the whole thread, but spotted a couple of “our way is the best” comments, so…

Breast feeding doesn’t always work. We tried, up to the point of a stay in hospital due to mastitis. We persisted for longer than we should have, because of all the “Breast is best” propoganda, but it was the wrong thing for us. Also, our DD slept through as soon as we went to formula. We believe she hadn’t been getting enough milk.

Have you tried: Warming up the cot? Wrap one of you or mummy’s (smelly) t-shirts round the mattress, so the cot smells of you. Ewan the dream sheep is amazing.

Well since this has come back up I guess I’ll update… She gradually improved to the point where she was waking up once or maybe twice, which was manageable. Then at around 5 months she got much worse again.

So we tried self settling. We weren’t convinced, but we figured we’d give it a go for a week or so and see what happened. Within about three days she was sleeping through till about 5 every day. We’re working on getting through to 7, some days she’ll do 6.30 uninterrupted, some days she’ll need a feed about 4.45 then sleep till about half seven.

I think we picked just the right time to try it and got really lucky, but it’s been a revelation. We’ve also started being a bit more regimented about her daytime naps, which seems to be helping too.

“So we tried self settling. We weren’t convinced, but we figured we’d give it a go for a week or so and see what happened. Within about three days she was sleeping through till about 5 every day. We’re working on getting through to 7, some days she’ll do 6.30 uninterrupted, some days she’ll need a feed about 4.45 then sleep till about half seven.”

Exactly the same thing happened for us at about the 5 month mark!

Of course, rule No1 when it comes to Babies, don’t believe a word said online it’s full of contradictory stuff that worked for 1 person and they think they’ve discovered fire or something.

That said, at 5 months we were a desperation point, neither of us had slept for more than 3 hours on the bounce since the day she was born.

One of the Health Visitor explain to us. From about 4-6 months old, for the rest of our lives our bodies are designed to half-wake every 45 mins for the first and last few hours of sleep, assess our surroundings for danger and then fall into another 45 min cycle.

A lot of parents, in an act of desperation have really elaborate pre-bed processes at this point. Our were, and I can barely believe we did all this.

6pm take her up to our bedroom, put classical music on (same tracks, in the same order).

615 swaddle and hold. (Same position) she’d fall to sleep at this point.

645 sloooooooowly carry her to the cot, and put to sleep.

7pm – she cry the house down, wife would cry, I would cry, start again, at least once more, sometimes twice this near hour long cycle.

It was pretty simple in hindsight, she’d go to sleep in Mums arms, only to half-wake 45 mins later in the cot without Mum, which would cause her to wake.

Health Visitor made us promise to follow this self-settle plan.

Put her into bed at 615, let her cry for 5 mins, if she’s still crying, sooth her for no more than a min, put back in cot, this time let her cry for 10 mins, if still crying sooth her for more than a min, put back in cot, this time let her cry for 15 mins.

We did it exactly once, we picked her up at the 5 mins point, there was no 10 min point because she was sound asleep, she slept from 630 to 630 that night and pretty much every night until she was old enough to ask to stay up to watch Cebeebies bedtime story.

That’s pretty much exactly what we did / were suggested too, except we don’t pick her up – just a gentle ‘shh’, stroke of the head and gentle pressure on the tummy.

There have been a couple of nights she’s screamed a bit (usually when she’s a bit poorly or has woken up with a giant poo) but it’s been pretty much a revelation.