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how old is she right now?

i don't have any suggestions, sorry. just came here to say it definitely gets better -- ds was the same and had outgrown it by two months or so. now he usually sleeps like a rock!

She is young, she will outgrow this...

Sorry, you're probably not up for humor.

Ok so they say that babies who fight the swaddle are the ones who need it most. We have had good luck with the miracle blanket -- it's easier to get a tight swaddle they can't break out of than with a blanket. Or the halo sleep sack, it's super easy and may not wake her.

Basically I feed him from one side then swaddle him once he's nice and happy and half milk drunk. Then I feed him the other side until he drops off.

Infants enter light sleep first so they're easy to wake for the first 20-30 minutes of their sleep cycle. Then again between sleep cycles, which are 45 minutes to an hour. If she's in pain (gas, etc) she may wake sooner. I think that it can be painful/uncomfortable for newborns to pass gas so she should grow out of that.

LO will usually naturally sleep more deeply for his first stretch if the night but he didn't start doing a stretch longer than 2-3 hours until he was around 6 weeks. Then he's up every 2-3 hours after that. In terms of soothing him, we've had success with the 5 s's all at once. Have you read the book? We swaddle him, put him in the reverse cradle ( like breastfeeding but facing out so he doesn't think he's getting boob) with some light pressure in his tummy, shush loudly past (not in) his ear, and sway him moving our hips side to side. He won't keep a paci in in this position but once he's calm we'll put him in the rock n play and give him a paci. I think you've said before you don't want to do this so you could offer a finger or comfort nurse. Karp's got some other tricks in HBOTB.

Otherwise I just say, whatever works. To get him to sleep at a friends house recently I put him in his car seat with the canopy down, rocked him on the time floor, and played a white noise app on my phone. Ideal? No, but it worked.

Oh if you're able to get her to sleep in your arms and want to out her down, wait around 20 minutes or until she has limp limbs. Or else she'll wake up!

Otherwise... Growth spurt?

I will say LO has only now begun going down fairly easily for naps, at 8 weeks. Up till now it was a 30-minute affair rocking him madly in his rock n play up to 6 times a day for a pitiful 30 minutes of sleep.

@shopaholic: nursed, haha. just nursed and nursed. it was hard at the time but looking back, i'm glad i spent so much time wrapped up with him. and i'm sure i'll be even more grateful when he's too cool to cuddle with me! the constant nursing definitely didn't do anything to "spoil" him like others had warned me; he's so independent at 8 months, it's kinda scary. and he fell into his own schedule with no training.

since i couldn't do much except to lay with him and feed him, i had things to help pass the time, like my tablet, moleskine, magazines, and quiet crafts. and i made absolutely sure not to neglect myself in the process, so i didn't just feel like a milk slave.

oh, and i think it helped that i was co-sleeping, because i didn't have to shuffle him when putting him in a crib. i could just sneakily roll over and tiptoe away.

i'm sorry though, you'll get through it i promise, good luck!

So sorry, friend! I hope you can get some sleep soon! I'm with @ladyfingers & @hilsy85 - give her a little time once she's in the swaddle. She may be angry at first, but eventually she'll give in!

@shopaholic: how long does she whimper before you decide she's awake? We do our best to ignore it when they're little whimpers, and often she passes ask out again, and that has been the case from the beginning.

Oh yeah, I meant to add that the 5 s's never put him to sleep or even get him close. They just shut him up temporarily so we can get him to even take a paci, etc. He hates the swing, and if he's pissed it won't calm him down -- it usually won't for any baby so you're not alone. He'll hang in it for like 10 minutes tops then start crying. I hate people who are all, oh, LO takes epic 4-hour naps in his swing, la di da. Pfffft.

It sound like you are doing everything you can, I'm sorry I don't have any other ideas! I really think she will grow out of this soon. Growth spurts are such weird and wild times for them, so much is happening and they don't understand any of it but when they come out the other side it's like night and day. I felt like we were in a constant growth spurt for the first 6 weeks but now we have a (mostly) happy smiling human baby instead of a mewling gremlin!

I don't have any advice, but I remember those days and don't miss it at all. It is ROUGH. All I have to say, is hang in there mama, it DOES get better.

@shopaholic: hang in there! It's totally normal for her to want to be held all the time too. DS started playing more independently last few weeks, for about 15 minutes at a time. That'll stretch out over time as they can start entertaining themselves by grabbing, etc. He also loves the crap out of his fisher price rainforest bouncer! I got it on Craigslist barely used for $25. Best purchase ever!

My LO is a light sleeper too...we joke that he has sonar hearing because any little noise will wake him up. We started using white noise on full blast pretty early on. It doesn't help him fall asleep (he sleeps fine without it if we forget to turn it on) but it helps us do things around the house without having to worry about waking him up. If we do need to wake him up though, he often wakes up as soon as we turn on the lights or when we shut off the white noise.

DS was not a sleepy newborn either. He outgrew that phase at like, 10 days, and it was exhausting!!! I wore him in the Moby often and walked around the house holding him in the sidelying position all day! Swaddling helped us immensely (as others have recommended). Most babies hate the process of being swaddled but relax once they're fully wrapped up. We never tried to swaddle him after he was asleep though...he was always awake and being swaddled helped him fall asleep. The HBOTB jiggle also worked well too.

At around 6 weeks he napped exclusively in his crib in the dark with white noise. He's a nosy, over-observant baby and we've always had to limit stimulation to get him to sleep well. While it would have been awesome to have a transportable baby who slept anywhere and everywhere, I knew I couldn't force him to be something he wasn't :). He is a great independent sleeper though and has been that way since very early on!

(Sorry that was so long!)