Mumsnet Talk

I am currently sat on my sofa at 5:30am with a very lively baby in his chair next to me, he's kicking and gurgling away as happy as larry. I on the other hand am ready for a straight jacket, this being the 4th consecutive night like this.
He was born at 31 weeks and is now over 3 months (7 weeks corrected). I appear to have failed to get him into anything even close to a routine. He still sleeps off and on all day and I'm sure this is the problem, but what do I do? Am I supposed to wake him up during the day? He is breastfeeding and falls asleep at every feed. It is rare for him to be awake for more than an hour during the day. I'm at a loss as to what to do, just completely knackered, got school run in a few hours and just want to sleep for a hundred years...

I have two preemies and am awake because pregnant with dc3 and hungry! No great solutions to offer but do remember that developmentally your baby is seven weeks and it is totally normal to have little sense of routine at that age. To save your sanity, do you have a partner who could take turns getting up early? Or is there any way you could lie down and rest with baby awake but in a safe place? We coslept to survive with ds10 who was am awful sleeper, and his dad has not so fond memories of kylmg on the sofa watching bad films with him early in the morning.
Try to grab any rest you can whenever you can, it won't last forever, and he you hear anyone else talking about how marvellousjw their baby sleeps ignore them.

Omg I meant ds1 not ds10 I'm not that crazy!

I did wonder at ds10! Yes it's other people's seemingly perfect babies that are driving me crazy, I was googling sleep problems/routine before I tried mumsnet and all I could find we're people bragging about how their 2week old was sleeping through. Not helpful!
He had a couple more hours this morning and has now been awake about an hour but is starting to grizzle, I know he now wants to go back to sleep but I want to limit his sleep and see if it has an effect tonight, then again I don't want to deprive him if he needs to sleep!
My partner works so I don't like to wake him, he's pretty useless in the middle of the night anyway...

A few things to bear in mind
a) people lie. And in any room full of babies where 1 mum has a baby who apparently puts himself to sleep at 7 pm and doesn't stir until 7am I promise you there are 5 other mums thinking 's**t what am I doing wrong?' and not daring to admit that they were up 5 times in the night
b) if you look at statistics about 'sleeping through' most research studies class sleeping through as a 5 hour stretch. This could be at any time so not necessarily the 5 hours that you want to be sleeping!
c) babies do loads of growing and brain development when they're asleep and a prem baby has a lot of catching up to do - he may well be exhausted from the stimulation of being awake for an hour especially if you have other children around. Some babies get really frazzled if they don't nap enough and then struggle to get to sleep or stay asleep -a bit like when you've had a really hectic day and your brain is whizzing round and you can't relax. MOst babies his age are sleeping 14 -18 hours a day.
It will get better - it can be hard with a preemie because it does take them longer to catch up and I think sleep is a common area where they tend to be more unsettled. Good luck :-)

Thanks. Hoping for a better night tonight

No better tonight...