Every day around this time I get anxious and dreading bedtime. We do not have a great sleeper and it’s so stressful. She’s 7 weeks old.

Well, correction we don’t have a great INDEPENDENT sleeper. She sleeps GREAT if we hold her in our arms, in her crib though... no way.

She has silent reflux and lately bad gas. We’re on meds for the silent reflux that don’t seem to make much of a difference and have been trying gas drops, also not seeing a huge difference. I’m not even positive either of these are the root cause of our issues or if it’s that she just wants to be close to us. Maybe both.

We’ve tried everything, and lately we’ve been focused on doing the same thing for consistency but it’s just not sticking. We get typically about 20-30 minutes before she wakes up, but when we pick her up she falls immediately back to sleep in our arms. This goes for naps and night time sleep.

Sometimes we get a random 1-2 hour stretch but really it’s only been a handful of times. Usually its 20-30 minutes, if we’re lucky.

Even when she is sleeping, I don’t get much rest because every noise she makes, makes me anxious and I’m just waiting for it to be the time she actually wakes up. Usually once she gets noisy it does lead to a wake up.

(and by “we’ve tried everything”I really do mean we’ve tried all the safe sleeping tips. Swaddling, not swaddling, different kinds of swaddles, white noise, wearing the crib sheet so it has my smell, warming the mattress up, and different types of sleep areas (crib, mini crib, pnp, bassinet. Nothing seems to stick. We make sure she’s sound asleep, like arm limp asleep and has been for about 20 minutes. Then we slooowly put her in her crib and then 15-30 minutes later she’s back up and crying for us. We’ve also tried Taking Cara Babies tip for having them fall asleep in the crib.)

I’m not looking for her to sleep hours and hours on end right now, I know that’s not feasible for her age but 10 minutes doesn’t get anyone rest. If she’d even sleep 1-2 hours that could be maneagable, we could sleep during that time but it’s usually less than 20 minutes.

Ugh, it’s bringing both me and my SO so much stress and anxiety, not to mention exhaustion. We have to take shifts being with her so that someone can be awake to hold her. It’s so hard though- even with a sleep shift, if I’m stuck rocking her in the middle of the night for hours I always fall asleep doing so- which of course is not safe.

I tried co-sleeping with her and the first two days it went well. She had some long stretches and it seemed like at least for now this was what we’d do for sanity. It made us both nervous though. However, even with co-sleeping she has stopped sleeping any long stretches. I think it’s because I won’t hold her close to me, and make her sleep in her own space on her back (so she’s not getting the immediate comfort of my body next to hers) but again we’re to nervous to fully co-sleep.

I hate the anxiety this brings and I just don’t know how to get her to last longer in her crib.