9 week old overtired all the time, is this normal??

[docket]

My 9 week old DD seems to only be able to stay awake for about 45 minutes at a time before getting horribly overtired. We can't even give her a bath before bed as it sends her into a frenzy and takes us hours (and hours!) to calm her down. She is a happy smiley soul for the little time she's awake but it seems ridiculous that she wants to sleep so much. Or am I worrying over nothing (probably)?

Docket

[bababoo]

My ds was similar at that age (as far as i remember),i'm sure he had a nap every hour or so, and spent most of his time feeding when awake. If she's smiling and seems happy i shouldnt worry too much, but if you are you can always take her to the gp and ask, they never mind seeing babies. Some babies just sleep alot i think. Hope that helps

[laudaud]

As they go through growth spurts they tend to sleep more - it will pass (or at least that's my experience)

[lazycow]

Ds was identical. Also he found it really difficult to get to sleep when he was outside so would get really overtired and hysterical. TBH it was real pain but if you take the trouble to ensure he gets enough rest now he won't be so overtired on the odd occasions when he doesn't get enough rest.

I do remember ds being so tired in the evenings that there wasn't enough time to feed and change him let alone bath him before bed. He was often asleep for the evening by 5pm and slept until 11pm or so. He did wake a lot at night which is the reason I think he was so overtired in the day.

He was certainly not happy as he had a lot of trouble switching off to sleep. He needed 2-3 naps a day until he was about 8 months old and still has 2 naps sometimes at 21 months old, though some days he only has one.

The best way we found to deal with this was to make sure that most of ds's naps were in a quiet room at home. This was bit of a nightmare for me as I was always in a rush to get home (if I ever went out !!) but it did make a difference to his sleep at night and then when he wasn''t so overtired he was able to have a few of his naps while out etc. Overall though I did need to make sure his sleep needs were met most of the time - if I did this he was much happier.

It is a phase though - one of the reasons I find having a toddler so much easier than a newborn is that I stopped expecting to be able to take him everywhere with me and stopped expecting him to sleep when we were out. I had always though babies were portable when young - some are - ds certainly wasn't if you wanted him to be well rested. He was mega sensitive to noise and being outdoors so getting to sleep was really difficult.

I still remember my amazement when at a baby group, one of my friends said her 6 month old baby was tired so went to get the car seat, seated him in the room with 10 other babies crawling and making a noise - and he went to sleep with about 2 mins of grizzling . I on the other hand had to take a screaming tired baby home as there was no way he would have slept there. In fact he didn't even sleep in the pushchair on the way home as I'd let him get so tired he couldn't switch off even then.

[docket]

thanks, good to know that it's not an exception. i suppose i should be glad she wants to sleep alot, it's just a case of making sure i allow for it and avoiding the overtiredness.