Forceps babies = Wakeful babies?

Hi there

My DS was a forceps baby and I have been taking him to a cranial osteopath. She happened to say, just off the cuff, that she generally finds that forceps babies are very wakeful babies and have trouble settling themselves to sleep.

My jaw dropped a bit. This is my DS all over. Since he was a newborn he has never been able to "shut down" - he just couldn't/can't relax into sleep. And he still wakes up during the night, he has never slept through, not once. And we are still rocking and breastfeeding him off to sleep for every nap and at night time and in the middle of the night. He is nearly 15 months old. Sigh.

I'm sure that part of the problem now is that he is so used to being rocked or fed. But that's not what I want to talk about. I'd really love to know if anybody else out there has a forceps baby that has sleep problems. I don't know anyone else who had a forceps delivery so I can't compare notes.

Hi curly!

We had a forcep delivery. Myles is quite a good sleeper he started sleeping through at about 5 weeks but since his needles he is a bit restless!
I have never heard of forcep babies being more wakefull, I think it just really depends on the baby itself?

Hope I have helped a little bit:)

Good luck x

my baby was forceps too..and i know he is very young still but he has never slept through and always needs to be bf, hugged, rocked to sleep. i thought it was just his age though, i really hope it's not to do with the forceps...

It was along the lines of them having residual tension in their little heads that means they find it difficult to feel relaxed...I can't remember exactly the words, I was having a rush of euphoria at the thought that there might be an actual physical reason for it.

DS did have a bit of a violent birth in the end, they yanked him ALL the way out after 2 hours of pushing...my coccyx is a bit tucked in and I couldn't push his big head past it LOL. So he might be somewhat of an extreme case. No permanent damage done to his head, it can be fixed, I'll just have to undo the bfing/rocking habit at some point.

My brother was a forceps delivery and he was an excellent sleeper, but an early riser.
I think it just depends on the baby as well, but I do see the CO's point, its very possible that they can be related.
Oh and I b/fed DS to sleep and not problems on settling him with a story now that he is a bit older. DO whatever works best for your family.

My DS was a very forceful forceps delivery in the end, he was quite stuck, after four hours of pushing.

He is not a bad sleeper (except ATM!) but he has never been great. He is terrible at self-settling, I still rock him to sleep. I was hoping we might have broken that by 15 months!

Have you had any success with the osteo?

My DS wasn't a forceps delivery but it was a very fast delivery. He was very unsettled when we first brought him home so we took him to a chiro who said that a lot of babies have huge amounts of tension in their necks, backs and their little heads from the pressure of the birth and this can make them unsettled (has an impact on the central nervous system or something! Still not entirely sure how it works!)

Not sure if he is just improving with age or if the chiro visits are helping, but DS is definitely more settled and sleeping much better. His chiro has said that the tightness/tension in his neck is now only about 30% of what it was when we first took him. We actually noticed that when he first came home he would only ever hold his head to one side. The chiro asked us at our first visit if he was doing this too. He now rotates his head both sides.

I find it interesting and maybe there is something to it but I agree that not every baby will be the same.

I was hoping we might have broken that by 15 months too LOL!!!!

I initially took him to the osteo when he was about 4 or 5 months because he seemed to be in discomfort when rolling. Turned out he had tension in his pelvis from the forceps which was making things uncomfortable for him. After one treatment he rolled 3 times that very afternoon. She also picked up that the little bones in the side of his head near his ear were compressed and they needed treating because it would probably lead to ear problems. Sure enough he had a bad bout of ear infection that lasted for nearly 3 months.

But then we moved to Sydney and it's a new osteopath I am taking him to now. The osteo in Melbourne wanted me to get him checked out when we first got up there and the new osteo picked up on the pelvis and head issues but is concentrating more on his head and ears (balance issues for walking), whereas the osteo in Melbourne concentrated more on his pelvis. DS is always in a fabulous mood after an osteo treatment - he's had 3 treatments up here in Sydney now and I can pick the difference in his posture and his confidence when trying to walk.

I'm not expecting miracles in the sleep department because after nearly 15 months of rocking and feeding he is unlikely to just magically settle now, there are habits to undo.

While I accepted a long time ago that DS needs help to sleep (I'm not great at falling asleep myself, so I have sympathy for him - he might just be a bit like mummy) I'd be lying if I said that I'm not longing for the day when I can tuck him up in his cot and know that's the end of it for the night! It does burn a bit because I was very conscientious from the word go and did all the things you are supposed to do to get babies to settle themselves off to sleep and there were many weeks, even months, of tears (from me) and feeling inadequate and exhausted because it was such an effort to get him to sleep and then he wouldn't sleep very long anyway.

I hasten to add that DS is vastly improved in the sleep department and has done it on his own. He will generally sleep for 9-10 hours before waking up at about 4.00am for a quick breastfeed and then sleep till 6.00am and he has one big long nap of 2-3 hours every day. Rayray, you give me hope that things will only improve, perhaps not as quickly as I would like however...

But anyway - that was all a bit off topic, sorry.

Curly, do you mind mentioning who the osteo you saw in Melbourne is?

Not off topic for me, it's interesting to *talk* to someone else whose child is similar. I too have accepted that DS needs help to sleep, but that doesn't mean I don't look forward to the day when he dozes off on his own consistently!

No I don't mind LOL! I'm a bit of a convert actually (as perhaps you can tell) because I can always see a change in DS after an appointment. Plus he does always have a really good sleep afterwards too...:lol:

All my future babies will go to an osteopath just after they are born for a post-birth "iron out", as it were.

Okay - I saw Tennille Challinger at TLC Osteopathy at Ashburton. She used to work out of the Cotham Road Osteopathy clinic in Kew but now works on her own at Ashburton.

I initially spoke to Elissa O'Brien from Cotham Road when I was first investigating osteopathy for DS - I found an article written by her on Google, but she was on maternity leave and only working part time from her home in Croydon, she may still be doing this, maybe she would be closer to you. Kew was closer to where I was so I just rang them and they set me up with an appointment with Tennille. There was also a great sounding clinic at Northcote (can't remember name now) that I heard about but that was too much of a hike for me. HTH.