Why doesn't DD sleep? :)

DD is about 6.5 weeks old. She's never really slept much during the
day. She seems to take 1 or 2 30 minute naps, but other times when you
can tell she's tired she won't fall asleep and likes to just cry.

Moving her around, changing posistions, etc helps a little, but once
shes settled she cries again. (we've tried everything we can think of
to help).

She's being fed EBM exclusivley (for reasons).

At night she's sometimes hard to put down to sleep. When she does, she
sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. But once there's sunlight, she's up for
what seems like all day.

Normal? Too much light/stimulus?

Legbuh wrote:
DD is about 6.5 weeks old. She's never really slept much during the
day. She seems to take 1 or 2 30 minute naps, but other times when you
can tell she's tired she won't fall asleep and likes to just cry.

Moving her around, changing posistions, etc helps a little, but once
shes settled she cries again. (we've tried everything we can think of
to help).

She's being fed EBM exclusivley (for reasons).

At night she's sometimes hard to put down to sleep. When she does, she
sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. But once there's sunlight, she's up for
what seems like all day.

Normal? Too much light/stimulus?

For my DS to sleep, he needs complete darkness, and to be quite warm.
Noise level is not s huge factor, but quiet is good. He prefers me to
not be around [hence nursing won't do it].

What you describe is completely typical of a 6 - 7 week old. And once
you have figured it out, she'll change and you'll need to figure *that*
out next, and so on. :-)

Jacqueline

First of, you have my sympathies. Maybe she has colic? Colic tends to
start at around 2 weeks, peak at around 6 weeks, and then taper off so
that it is usually gone by three months. DD (now 15 months) had
terrible colic, and I wasn't sure if any of us would survive it, but we
did, and now she sleeps for 12 hours uninterrupted, and naps happily
for about an hour. IMHO, there aren't any "cures" for colic but time,
and since you've past 6 weeks, it should start to slowly get better.
My advice....

1. Take all the help you can get. Family, friends, neighbors, anyone
who offers to help, take them up on it. Even if you don't want to
leave the house, have someone walk/rock her while you take a nap or a
shower or whatever. Colic is emotionally and physicially exhausting.
I used to routinely work 36 hour shifts with no sleep and let me tell
you colic is worse.

2. Do whatever you have to do to get her to sleep, or just to be
calm. Drive around with her in the car, in a buggy, have her sleep in
a swing, or try a baby sling or baby-bjorn type carrier.
Tell anyone who says anything about sleep hygiene or sleep habits to
stuff it, if you are dealing with colic you are in survival mode.

3. Harvey Karp's "Happiest baby on the Block" is a nice and supportive
guide for colic. In a nutshell, he recommends the 5 S's "shushing"
(loud white noise) swaddling, sucking (pacifier, finger, breast,
whatever) swinging and holding her in a side-lying position. For us,
the vacuum was a lifesaver, we just turned it on and parked it next to
her bassinet or car seat or swing for about 20 minutes after she
finally fell asleep.

4. Try putting her down for her first nap within an hour of her waking
up.

5. Crying it out is not a good idea at this age, and probably wouldn't
work, If you think it is something you'd be interested in, or if you
are worried about sleep training and all that, there's plenty of time
when she's older to worry about that. That said, you are not the
worst mother in the world if you put her down in a crib screaming so
that you can go to the bathroom etc.

6. Some people recommend giving up certain foods like cabbage or
dairy, since there is some thought that they can irritate the gut more,
or dairy allergies etc.....I'm sure others on this group know a lot
more than me about this, but it didn't work for me. I would probably
try to cut out caffeine if you drink much.

7. Most of all, hang in there and remember it really does get better.
There's nothing you did that caused colic, and not much you can do but
just try to survive it. I don't know, but I doubt EBM has anything to
do with it, DD was exclusively BF and she had it bad. Good luck, and
hopefully others may have better advice.

JJ

JJ wrote:
First of, you have my sympathies. Maybe she has colic? Colic tends to
start at around 2 weeks, peak at around 6 weeks, and then taper off so
that it is usually gone by three months. DD (now 15 months) had
terrible colic, and I wasn't sure if any of us would survive it, but we
did, and now she sleeps for 12 hours uninterrupted, and naps happily
for about an hour. IMHO, there aren't any "cures" for colic but time,
and since you've past 6 weeks, it should start to slowly get better.
My advice....

That's what we're thinking... but once she DOES finally go to sleep at
night, she's pretty good. Tonight it took 2.5 hours to get her to
sleep. She'd get into a deep sleep (on my chest), then after 5 minutes
just WHAM... up like a shot and screaming. Then I start all over again
with feeding, diaper, rocking, etc.. etc...

Tonight I tried the pacifier as a last resort. It seemed to work, but
she could have just been exhausted finally. I left it by the
bassinet so if she wakes... she can have it again.. I told my DW that
tommorow night we should try it after the feeding, diaper, burping. If
it works, great! Just hope she doesn't get an oral fixation later in
life and start smoking.. lol...

It's been 22 minutes since she went down.. not a peep and now I hear the
familiar grunting/screeching she does all night.. so I figure that is
her deep DEEP sleep.

Ugh.. when's a daddy supposed to be able to drink a beer (or some
luving... *giggle*)? LOL!

Legbuh skrev:
Tonight I tried the pacifier as a last resort. It seemed to work, but
she could have just been exhausted finally. I left it by the
bassinet so if she wakes... she can have it again.. I told my DW that
tommorow night we should try it after the feeding, diaper, burping. If
it works, great! Just hope she doesn't get an oral fixation later in
life and start smoking.. lol...

If she likes the pasifier - by all means use it. If she's bottle fed she
won't have the risk of nipple confusion.

Also: BF babies get to succle a lot where they actually don't get any
milk - your baby doesn't without a paci. She may need it.

Tine, Denmark

On Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:17:50 -0600, Legbuh wrote:

DD is about 6.5 weeks old. She's never really slept much during the
day. She seems to take 1 or 2 30 minute naps, but other times when you
can tell she's tired she won't fall asleep and likes to just cry.

Moving her around, changing posistions, etc helps a little, but once
shes settled she cries again. (we've tried everything we can think of
to help).

She's being fed EBM exclusivley (for reasons).

At night she's sometimes hard to put down to sleep. When she does, she
sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. But once there's sunlight, she's up for
what seems like all day.

Normal? Too much light/stimulus?

You have my sympathies too. DS is a happy sweet boy but his mood is
affected by sleep problems. I'm afraid for us it wasn't instinctive as to
how to solve it so I bought some books. There seem to be 4 main ones. We
used The Baby Whisperer by Tracey Hogg. There is some good and bad stuff
in it. The good stuff has led to ds getting at least 3 45min naps a day
and sometimes, like this morning, he'll go for 2 hours (yay!). the bad
stuff is pants but I just igrnored it. I haven't found anyone to recommend
Gina Ford's book but it still sells so who knows, I haven't read it so
can't comment. Dr Mark Weisbluth's book seems to have been useful for some
people but I found it too waffly. Though to be fair a lot of the useful
stuff I alredy knew from the other book. The one I have yet to try and may
still buy is the No-Cry Sleep Solution book. Lots of recommendations from
people here but again, doesn't work for everyone. The state of play for DS
at 21 wks is he naps in his cot with dummy and some attention from me for
5-15 mins. Sometimes he falls asleep after a feed just to keep me on my
toes. He goes to sleep easily at night after a feed in an almost dark
bedroom. Unfortunately lately this has been constantly interrupted by
wakings we think due to teething/developmental changes, but that's a
different problem.

I'm sure you will find a way to get your baby to sleep. The key thing is
not to let other people's ways of doing things make you worry you are
doing it wrong. Every baby is different. Only last night someone told us
their first baby was a dream but their second, now at 17 months, still has
big problems.

Good luck.

Jeni

"Legbuh" wrote in message
. ..
DD is about 6.5 weeks old. She's never really slept much during the
day. She seems to take 1 or 2 30 minute naps, but other times when you
can tell she's tired she won't fall asleep and likes to just cry.

Can you tell what her sleep ques are? DD1 would start rubbing her eyes at
pretty young age (probably not at 6.5 weeks though). Where do you have her
take her naps?

Moving her around, changing posistions, etc helps a little, but once
shes settled she cries again. (we've tried everything we can think of
to help).

Do you swaddle her at all? Is she warm/cool enough?

At night she's sometimes hard to put down to sleep. When she does, she
sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. But once there's sunlight, she's up for
what seems like all day.

Get darkening blinds on the windows and put a fan in the room for the white
noise effect. She sounds overtired/overstimulated to me, but some details
about how she sleeps, when she sleeps, and where she naps would be helpful
for me.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

Sue wrote:
"Legbuh" wrote in message
. ..

DD is about 6.5 weeks old. She's never really slept much during the
day. She seems to take 1 or 2 30 minute naps, but other times when you
can tell she's tired she won't fall asleep and likes to just cry.


Can you tell what her sleep ques are? DD1 would start rubbing her eyes at
pretty young age (probably not at 6.5 weeks though). Where do you have her
take her naps?

Yawning, rubbing eyes, etc. Falling asleep then jolting awake.



Moving her around, changing posistions, etc helps a little, but once
shes settled she cries again. (we've tried everything we can think of
to help).


Do you swaddle her at all? Is she warm/cool enough?

She doesn't like being swaddled any more... I know, sounds weird, but
since about 3 weeks she's hated it and busts out of the swaddle.. even
the special made swaddle blankets.



At night she's sometimes hard to put down to sleep. When she does, she
sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. But once there's sunlight, she's up for
what seems like all day.


Get darkening blinds on the windows and put a fan in the room for the white
noise effect. She sounds overtired/overstimulated to me, but some details
about how she sleeps, when she sleeps, and where she naps would be helpful
for me.

I found last night total darkness she didn't like, but a little light
she liked. So I leave a hall light on.

I also found that the paci last night was the thing that put her out.
Even this morning after she woke up (BTW, she slept from 9pm until
3:45am!!!!) after an hour she starting giving feeding cues, but instead
I gave her the paci and she's again out like a light now.

I think we've been mistaking sucking cues for feeding cues, and are
beginning to learn she needs to suck on something. We'll see how things
go tonight I guess!

An update.

I was glad to see suggestions for the paci. It worked great last night
after 2 hours or more of trying to get her to go to sleep for good
(around 9pm).

I woke up to her cries at around 4am and got ready to get up to do the
feeding (that one is mine, and normally I sleep through the midnight,
1am one that my wife does) and my wife got up and did it. I thought she
was being nice. But that was the first time she woke up all night!

I know that' a little long to go for a 6-7 weeker, but I think she
needed the sleep.

Anyhow, this morning I gave her a paci an hour after feeding (because
she was giving feeding cues again) and she went out in 10 minutes.. like
a ROCK!

I hope we're on to something here! This DH thanks you all...

"Legbuh" wrote in message
.. .
An update.

I was glad to see suggestions for the paci. It worked great last night
after 2 hours or more of trying to get her to go to sleep for good (around
9pm).

I woke up to her cries at around 4am and got ready to get up to do the
feeding (that one is mine, and normally I sleep through the midnight, 1am
one that my wife does) and my wife got up and did it. I thought she was
being nice. But that was the first time she woke up all night!

I know that' a little long to go for a 6-7 weeker, but I think she needed
the sleep.

Anyhow, this morning I gave her a paci an hour after feeding (because she
was giving feeding cues again) and she went out in 10 minutes.. like a
ROCK!

I hope we're on to something here! This DH thanks you all...

Definitely sounds like you're onto something here! I wouldn't worry too
much about dd sleeping the 7 hours - I think you're right that she needed
the sleep. Also, some babies *are* able to sleep longer periods at younger
ages with no ill effects. Both my kids slept a good 5 hour stretch within
days of coming home from the hospital, and both are at the top of, if not
off, the charts wrt height and weight. So as long as she's having wet and
poopy diapers, is alert when awake and is gaining well, allow her to sleep
when she will (sounds like you all need it, too!).

Re books to read - I like No Cry Sleep Solution by elizabeth pantley - lots
of good info and things to try.