7wk old sleep habit

[digsydel]

So I know new borns are meant to be exhausting and I should learn to live with it, but really looking for any advice here as I'm battling.

My 7wk old DS is invariably awake from about 8/9pm to 12-1am every night. He might have the odd 20 minute power nap in this time but nothing solid like he does the rest of the day. He's clingy, resists being put down and will spend a lot of this time crying too, especially towards the end as hes trying to get to sleep. He eventually drops off, will wake for a feed during night and again somewhere between 6-7 am at which point 3yr old DD wakes up, I get up with her for the day while DS sleeps on until next feed and often goes straight back to sleep after that one too. Essentially he's about 4 hours out of sync - staying up late and sleeping on late.

Can anyone suggest how to help him shift this because I'm not coping! I'm getting about 4 hours sleep a night, spending all day with DD and just as I get her to bed, DS kicks in to his wide awake phase and we go through the whole process again. At least with DD a few years back I could catch up on missed sleep when she napped but that's not possible this time and frankly I'm starting to break down. Spending a lot of time in tears at the moment and also worried that one night when I pass out mid-feed or while trying to settle DS in bed (as I invariably do) that I'm going to have a safety issue.

Please any suggestions how to help him break this late evening habit!!!

[FATEdestiny]

7 weeks old is the newborn stage. That said, this phase doesn't have to be exhausting.

Have you tried a dummy? They sometimes need some persistency but are an absolute God send.

[Timetogrowup2016]

Can your dp take him until 12? .
Then he gets 12-6 solid for work

[Bananice]

I was told by my HV to put them on a very rough three hour cycle during the day to try to encourage longer sleeps at night. The theory was that you never let them sleep more than two hours at a time during the day from about two weeks old. (The next hour was feeding, changing, getting back to sleep etc). I still fed on demand/didn't make it a proper routine but I found for both of mine, this really worked. Neither slept through until 10 months, so def were not innately great sleepers, but as soon as i started waking them after two hour naps in the day, they started to get their circadian rhythm in line. It feels counterintuitive to wake a sleeping baby, but was worth it to be able to get more regular sleep at night! Good luck OP

[digsydel]

Thanks for advice. I started to try the 3 hour pattern today with little success. Managed to limit some naps to 2 hours but ended up letting him have 3 this afternoon as I was trying to run errands with my toddler in tow and needed the extra time. He last napped properly then which was until 16:15. Since then I haven't been able to get him to sleep for more than 30 mins at a time - it's now 1:30am and he's still going.

I actually though I had timed it well tonight - managed to get my eldest in bed and him ready for feed and bed at 7:30. Well he fed for about half an hour, fell asleep but when I tried to put him down afterwards he just popped right awake again. We've repeated that several times since. In fact since 4pm this afternoon he's only had about 90 mins sleep in total.

Yesterday we had a really bad nap day - wouldn't sleep more than 20 mins at all during the day. I hoped that would give us a chance to reset his clock a bit and get him to bed at a decent time but it was just more of the same, fell asleep at 7:45pm was up with half an hour again and eventually went to sleep at about 11:30pm.

At the moment he's only averaging about 13 hours a day total which I'm sure is too little for him but he just seems to flat out refuse to sleep between 6 and midnight, sometimes later.

I'm going to keep trying the 3 hour routine - although admittedly it's hard to routine anything with a 3 year old involved - as I know I've only tried a day of it, but I'm also slightly at my wits end here. I'm absolutely bone achingly exhausted and I don't know what to do. I'm so tired I feel like I'm being a crap parent on all counts - to my newborn and to my toddler who I'm too tired and impatient to properly engage with.

Wish there was a magic fix for this sort of stuff!

[mrsmugoo]

Classic cluster feeding - Just hunker down and it will pass by about 12 weeks and the sleep will naturally come forward. I posted an almost identical thread a few months ago because I'd forgotten with my second how my first managed to bring his sleep forward - the answer is - they just do it by themselves around 12 weeks.