4 week old won't sleep during the day - advice please

[loubaby1]

My DS is now 4 weeks old. He is breast fed in the main with one formula feed at night.
At night he will sleep quite well in his Moses basket, going from 11pm to 2am and then after a feed from about 2:30 till 5. After this he's awake on an hourly basis being awake longer in between feeds. After 8am or so he won't go back to sleep after this.

During the day he won't settle at all, he will fall asleep on me but if I try and put him down he'll be awake 5 minutes later. He also wants to feed constantly.

I am feeding him whenever he is upset but he often just wants to comfort and not suck properly. Again he'll fall asleep latched on but if I take him off he'll wake up. I realise some of this is normal behaviour and if he was awake and happy I wouldn't mind but he's often just crying if not feeding.

Could it be colic? He's not inconsolable because if I feed him he will calm down. I worry he's still hungry but he is growing well?

He's 4 weeks old. Relax, go with the flow, you'll both get there.
Does he sleep well in his buggy or sling? If you really think he needs a sleep you could try and take him for a walk. I found that always worked with my DD was tiny, and good for the baby weight .

What she said

Goodness, I could have written your post. Getting frustrated with being one handed! I'm going to wait until 6 weeks & then start some daytime sleep training, rocking in arms to sleep, putting in moses basket, repeat until they learn to settle a bit more & hope it works!

Good luck with it all, hope it works out.

Yeah, what she said. Get a good sling and let him sleep on you. He's waking because he's sensing he's alone and his evolutionary reflexes are telling him to wake up and make a noise so an adult comes and rescues him before a sabre toothed tigre comes in the cave and eats him!

He'll learn that he's safe not in your arms before long, but the best way to teach him that is to let him be with you as long as he needs to.

What everyone else said, although my DS didn't really get like this till around 8 weeks, and I'd not cosider trying to work on it till at least 3 months.

Get a sling and put him in it any time you think he needs a nap. Most babies this age can't stay awake more than around 1.5 (max hours) before needing another nap - shorter for some.

It gets a lot better after 3 months when they stop going into light & easily disturbed 'active' sleep at first, and start going into a deeper sleep at first.