Hi mummas -
So baby number two is a week old today, and I’m lucky enough to have my husband home helping with our 3 year old for the next few weeks.
Like any parent of a newborn, I am extremely sleep deprived, shocker!
Baby currently sleeps the day away, he falls asleep right after feeds and will be asleep for 2-3 hours. While my husband is home, this would be the perfect chance for me to catch up on sleep!
However - I cannot sleep during the day for the life of me. Bub is always unsettled at night, and usually won’t sleep more than 1-2 hours at a time, and takes ages to go back to sleep. And the whole night I just lay there waiting for him to wake again.
I know this is common, I just need some coping strategies.
It doesn’t matter how tired I am, if I use black-out curtains, white noise, etc.. I cannot turn my brain off. The whole time I lay there telling myself I need to go to sleep, and also feeling guilty for not spending the time with my eldest while bub is down.
Any tips on how to make the most of the help while I have it and just switch off and have a nap or 2??
8 Replies
Practice, lie down in a dark room. Do some relaxation exercise or a meditation.
Give a bottle of formula at night, might keep Bub fuller for longer
Routine is key. I used to stay awake for nap 1 and spend time with other people/getting things done. Nap 2, I’d pop on a familiar sitcom on down low and nap next to the baby. Baby would nap longer cause I was there and the tv show would put me to sleep because I’d seen it sooo many times before.
Start waking your baby every 2 hours during the day and feed them. It's just they've got days and nights mixed up. You wanna feed more often during the day to begin with and then they'll find it easier to sleep the longwr stint over night. And you'll get more sleep at night.
I always lived by this and my kids slept through from early on. I rarelyr let them go over 2 hours for a feed during the day in the first month.
Also just lying down and relaxing when they do sleep during the day, was okay for me most days (unless I dozed off) but I couldn't sleep a lot either during the day.
What worked for us was that hubby got up after the 5/6 o’clock morning feed to do the resettle or just nurse bub and I’d sleep for a couple more hours - baby is usually more content in the mornings and could hold out a bit longer for a feed than later in the day. Plus our other kids are in bed until 7 so it was nice dad and baby time for my husband. Once feeding is a bit more established I would pump a bottle and I’d go to bed early and hubby would stay up and do the next feed so I’d get a good 4 hour solid block of sleep. I also found I could relax and sleep much better if hubby took the other kids actually out of the house for a couple of hours
Feed, play, sleep during the day. Force awakens time to avoid day and night confusion. Lie down with bubs and have some white noise playing or a meditation podcast :)
Bub needs to take naps in the living area or somewhere it's light. Helps them regulate their night/day rhythms. I've only had one baby, and by gosh it's hard to get her to sleep nowadays, but once she's down she's down for the night and can sleep through anything (she's nearly 9, haha) but when she was very new, she napped in the lounge room or in the bedroom but with blinds/drapes open, and with normal household noises including tv. She shortly regulated her day/night cycles, would sleep from around 8pm, feed then down from around 11pm would give me 4-5 hours straight. It's probably going to be easier to start working on trying to regulate their cycles than trying to nap during the day.
For me, nothing worked with any of mine other than co sleeping