Hi mama 🤍 I hear how difficult this period of time is, you're not alone! I thought of a couple things you might be able to try (we're all just troubleshooting together here 😭😭😭) if you'd like!
My baby is also 8 weeks old and drinks a combination of formula and breast milk. He feeds 90ml each feed, but he sleeps between 1.5-2 hours max when he drinks breast milk and up to 3.5 hours when he drinks formula! It is normal that breastfed babies wake up more often as breast milk is more digestible and lower in calories. I have seen some parents breastfeed in the day and feed formula at night so their babies sleep longer stretches - you might want to consider this if you are open to mix feeding :") alternatively, it might be valuable to consult your paediatrician on how you might be able to work through this as a EBF mom!
My baby also loves being hugged to sleep, it's developmentally normal (though very exhausting for us at times). Some things I've done on my end were to (1) shift bedtime routine earlier - I shower him at 5-6pm then dim the lights in the room already! It usually takes us a few rounds of holding him then putting down in cot for him to be able to go into deeper sleep, but because we start our routine early, he usually sleeps by around 9pm , which isn't too bad for the adults! From there, we make sure to continue keeping the room dark and non-stimulating all the way till morning, so his night feeds have been in very drowsy states - which makes it easy for us to put him back into the cot. (2) I have recently found that white noise helps my baby a lot! I put him down in the cot drowsy enough, offer a pacifier and put on white noise, he wakes up a few times and will whine (if he cries I pick him back up) but is able to self-soothe back to sleep. I gradually lower the volume every few minutes and remove it around 10-15 minutes in. If you don't already have a white noise machine / not invested in it yet (I haven't gotten one too), just go to YouTube and search for "white noise for babies"!
Press on mama, you're doing an awesome job and this will pass! To your little one, you're his entire world and you're already exactly what he needs 🫶🏻
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