when do babies start having awake time?

[MamaChris]

I'm sure I remember ds1 was awake for a couple of hours at a time by 4 or 5 weeks. my dts are 9 weeks, and rarely awake 2 hours. dt1 was awake for less than an hour yesterday in total. this sounds blissful, but they like to sleep on me, and ds1 needs some attention too. when awake they are either grumpy (in which case I try and help them back to sleep) or happy, alert and chatty. I'm not particularly worried, but keen to know when this pattern will start to change? or should I be making more effort to get out snd entertain them?

Lots of babies aren't awake for much more than 1.5 hours a time until 3 months or so. By then the day is mostly awake with defined naps. But I think they all vary - my DS started having more awake time from 3 weeks, and by 4 or 5 weeks he was awake a lot. But he was a really difficult sleeper, so quite a lot of that was awake & overtired. :(

It sounds like you're doing things exactly right, and I really wouldn't worry about entertaining them at that age. As long as they're near you they'll be fine.

A sling would help if you're not already using one.

thanks AD. s9ounds like my ds1 was like your ds. am enjoying having babies who can sleep this time round. a sling has helped, but the two of them together are getting too heavy already. need to persuade at least one of them to be put down, somehow! 3 months not very far away now :)

my twins were very sleepy for the first 6 weeks. I look back now and have very fond memories of that time!

They slept for blocks of 4 to 5 hours at a time during the day, mornings imparticular they slept from 8am till well past noon every morning and i can remember midwife and HV both concerned that they should be feeding/awake more frequently than that, HV even suggested i actually wake them to feed.(i didn't!)

They became more wakeful gradually from about 6 weeks onwards i think. I think cos twins are usually small (mine 5.5lb each) and typically a bit early (mine 37 weeks) they are bound to be a little different to singletons

A good point ktc. Mine weren't particularly early (38 weeks), but ds1 was 40 weeks, and 2 weeks at that age is a big difference!