Why is my baby so fussy at night?

The form was filled out at 3 am. I got it at 8 am when I was checking through email for the day, and noted the time it came in. 3 am is common for a sleep request form. It is when parents are often the most discouraged and it feels like nothing they do works.

By the time parents reach out to postpartum doulas for support, they have put their brains together to problem solve googled a hundred different things, asked their immediate circle for ideas, and probably even asked ChapGPT or Reddit for the hive brain of honest ideas there. So much info, maybe way too many suggestions, and some well meaning loved ones have encouraged them to just get through it however they can. Science-minded articles may have explained the cycles of sleep that infants experience, and some hopeful blogs or books suggest a type of schedule that might resolve it. Parents try all these things before they reach out to us.

But what we know as overnight doulas is that babies are NOISY during these hours. They grunt. They fuss. They wiggle, kick, and struggle. They make a bunch of different noises they don’t make during the day, or it sounds different at night. And this is often when parents are feeling more hopeless as they really wanted to get a stretch of a few hours of sleep and that window is closing with only short stints ahead. They feel desperate.

This was my assumption when reading the request sent at 3 am. Parents who are googling are looking for answers, support, and solutions to this challenge. They have exhausted all their ideas and are ready to get someone else to take a shift to help them sleep, help figure out this little noisemaker, and to gain some respite from many nights strung together of tough times. And the good news is, we can help!

First, we recognize that parents who don’t arrange for help ahead of time don’t really budget for it, and they are often desperate for a solution in a time and budget crunch. They need a quick turnaround, both for their mental health and for their hope. We can do both. Here are the ways doulas can make a difference.

We know baby sleep

The first thing an overnight doula can do is reassure you about what is happening. Babies are more commonly noisy at night, especially during those 2 am to 6 am times. They do move more. They do wake up more. They are just HARDER then. It isn’t a parent’s fault—you aren’t doing anything wrong. It is just a restless time for babies and for many parents it is especially difficult to sleep when their babies seem unhappy. We know this because they are hard for us as well! We know those hours will require more as an overnight doula. Babies are often working hard to pass gas, poop, get comfortable, or just to be settled. We devote ourselves to helping with this, and know that those are the more demanding hours on a doula shift and we go into them well rested and ready to support whatever they need. This is much different than expecting to sleep and having an infant wake you consistently with grunts and fussing. That is torture for your brain when it is expecting to sleep.

We create calm

Overnight doulas can address the discomfort because we are watching and learning from your baby. We can observe what they are struggling with and address that need. Are they especially gassy at night? We can look at ways to burp or pass baby’s gas during the previous feeds. Are they needing to poop but haven’t figured out how to do that easily yet? We can hold babies upright, work their little digestive systems, and help them get out whatever they need to be at ease. We can also observe for temp regulation, as some babies experience a temp drop at that time that needs an additional layer, or some babies that run warm need less layers to be comfortable. And we can do all that by being awake and attentive to their cues, and running them through our doula inventory of baby cues that we have accumulated over years of serving newborns and their families.

Parents get to sleep through

One of the biggest requests we get is just to help the parents sleep! Some parents adapt easily to newborn schedules, waking regularly to feed and tend, and go back to sleep easily. Or they have easy tiny humans who sleep well without a lot of fuss. These babies exist, but we don’t see them often! Most of the parents who hire us have normal babies who wake often at night, fuss and complain and vocalize their needs, and don’t let their parents sleep much. These parents are working significantly harder than those with those easy sleepers, and they need more support.

Having an overnight doula means you can click that box in your brain that says, “I need to be ON at all times and never miss a moment” and put that on pause for a few hours. It means you can sink into truly deep sleep, knowing someone is attending to your baby and will absolutely wake you if there is a need that only a parent can fix. You can get some respite with someone else that not only will attend to your baby, but will problem solve, will try out new approaches, and will give you a report of their time with your baby while you sleep so you can consider new ideas once you are more rested.

Doulas can help create a routine

Parents are reading online ideas constantly that suggest newborns can be put into a routine. While this is true for many babies, some babies require that a routine be worked around them vs. working them into a routine prescribed by someone else, and some are naturally more chaotic and difficult to coax into a routine. An overnight doula can help establish a gentle routine that creates some infrastructure around baby sleep, care, and feeding that hopefully can translate into easier nights for parents once their overnight doula support has ended. We support many sets of twins at night and routines can be a lifesaver for those families. We know that creating some framework helps parents problem solve at night, and we can show you what will might work best for your baby and your family.

Did the family get a doula?

So back to that family that reached out at 3 am…while I would have loved to have answered a call then to reassure and offer comfort, I did the next best thing and reached out first thing in the morning. We set up a doula overnight visit for respite quickly and helped the family regain some mental clarity to start tackling the fussy night behavior. It didn’t work miracles, but it was helpful to the parents to get another set of well trained eyes on that baby, a calm voice in the midst of chaos, and created a sleep bank that the parents were able to lean into that week. Did the doula end up holding their baby much of the night? Yep, and that is what was needed for this family at that moment. But the family was also left with ideas that the doula provided by cuddling, adjusting, experimenting, and learning all about their baby at night. And this led to better sleep for everyone. (And yes, they scheduled more night support because they said it was the best night of sleep they had in months!)

So why is your baby so fussy at night? Loads of reasons that are real and not just invented by your anxious mind. Some of them are real struggles your baby is having while developing and growing and they can be problem solved with gentle guidance. Some of the concerns will also quiet once your brain gets more sleep. Solutions can be baby focused and also parent focused by getting an extra set of well trained hands that are loving and gentle while parents take a short break. Either way an overnight doula can help!

We serve families in Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR metro areas, and a few families outside that area when we have doulas available to travel. But there are now postpartum doula everywhere! We can suggest some colleagues in other areas if you live outside our service zone.