Does sleep beget sleep?

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DS is 7 weeks old, and doesn't really like to sleep. He can easily stay awake all day, with just one ten-minute nap. His sleep at night is pretty bad, so I've been trying to encourage daytime naps in the hope that it will improve his sleep at night.

I've spent the last week on encouraging daytime sleeping, and yesterday he managed five hours - longest stretch was one hour, and the rest all under forty minutes. But if anything, it made his night sleep even worse - he did two hours and that's it. (He usually does three, and then two lots of one hour.)

I keep hearing that proper naps during the day will make night time sleep better - should I continue with the daytime naps? I basically have to spend my day getting him to sleep, even for a short while, which is fine - I'm happy to do so. (Sling, sunlight, walks, rocking, singing, white noise, massage, bath, etc etc.) But not if it won't really help - he really doesn't seem to want to sleep. However, he does seem tired - he keeps starting to sleep and then not carrying on, if you see what I mean.

Apologies if this isn't that clear - my sleeping patterns are, at present, following DS's, so I'm in a permanent daze.

Babies at this age can be quite erratic in their sleep patterns. All of my DCs never wanted naps by the time they were about 4 or 5 months old, and if they did nap, then they would stay awake at night even longer, or wake up more often. To be honest I put them to bed at 8 pm every night and they wake at around 8 am each morning. If one of them seemed very exhausted during the day then I'd let them nap if they wanted to, but I'd always make sure to try to wake them up after they'd been napping for about half an hour, as I've found to my experience that the longer they nap, the less they sleep at night. Mind you, my 2 year old DS hasn't always been like this (i.e. sleeping from 8 pm to about 8 am every day). When he was your DS's age, he'd sleep only 2 hours at a time, any time, morning or night. And that pattern of sleeping continued until he was about a year old. My other 2 DCs all started sleeping about 7 to 8 hours through the night every night at about 3 months max. Every child is different so you might have to try different things and see what works for your DS.

It did in our case. If they're massively overtired it can take a while for it to kick in. However as your DS is so young, he could just be working out his pattern anyway? At that age, I encouraged DS to sleep and he fell into a routine by 12 weeks.

My child is eleven months old and has always had daytime naps, she has about three hours a day and twelve hours a night. She sleeps twelve hours a night 95% of the time and has done since she was three months old. She's up at half seven and by half ten she's tired and has two hours sleep, and then 1/2 an hour to one hour in the afternoon and bed at seven. Always put them down awake, let them get to sleep themselves, and don't let them rely on dummies because then they cry in the night and you have to get up and put dummies back in. Ruby sucks her thumb!!

have u tried swaddling?

At that age, most babies can't stay happily awake more than about 1.5 hours before needing a nap - sometimes it might be as little as 45 mins between waking for the day & needing a first nap. If they don't sleep then, they become overtired which makes it even harder for them to go to sleep from then onwards, which is probably what is happening for you.

As awake time goes on, levels of stress hormone in the body increase, and naps bring the levels down again. If a nap doesn't happen and the baby gets overtired, the body releases adrenaline to counteract the stress hormone, which is why it's generally harder for them to go to sleep, and the adrenaline / stress hormones mean they're more likely to finish the sleep before they really need to.

Whether or not more naps in the day = better sleep that particular night is another issue, but I'd definitely keep trying with the naps. Lots of overtired babies seem more tired when they start getting more sleep in the day, because previously they had hyperactive type symptoms masking the tiredness.

I'd not try to put him down once he's asleep as it will likely wake him up again. A nap of less than 30 mins probably doesn't count as a nap.

There are loads of developmental spurts going on in these early days, which mess with both day and night sleep, so it's hard to know what's causing night waking issues.

We found a general correlation between improved daytime sleep and better nighttime sleep, but it took a while for the nights to improve. At that age I spent my whole day trying to get DS to sleep. At 9 weeks I started using a sling for all naps, which improved things, although his sleep still took most of my time, and by 3 months he was much, much better.

I think 7 weeks is a pretty horrible time tbh. You're still in the constant growth spurt / developmental spurt territory, day/night organisation is only just getting going and the biological clock doesn't help you with more regular naps till around 3 months. Irregular sleep patterns, fussiness & colic often peak at 6-8 weeks. By 3 months most babies settle down to just 3 naps a day, when the body clock matures.

Chin up: it does get better. :) (And apologies for the essay. )

Thanks for the responses.

ffried - tried swaddling and he hates it. He hates blankets, too, and will just kick them off. He does like gro bags, though.

AngelDog - really interesting and very helpful. I'd never thought that that might be reason that he sleeps for such short periods, but it makes a great deal of sense. He is definitely overtired - you can see it in his face, poor thing.

Happily, he is right now asleep in his bouncer! He's clearly been staying awake for way too long - I've been trying to settle him to sleep for naps when it's too late and he's too stressed. I shall persist with trying to get him to nap in places other than the swing, so that I can sleep too.

That babies can only stay awake for such a sort time is something I didn't know, and I think I've been mistaking tired cries for hunger/wind. Thanks so much for your answer - just knowing that I should try to settle him much much earlier is a tremendous help.

Sling, not "swing".

I love having him in the sling, and spend most of the day with him there, but he needs to sleep lying down for a few hours at least or else I won't be able to sleep myself.

Glad it was useful - I had similar issues with DS when he was tiny, and I didn't realise how often he needed to nap. I found that once I was better clued up to when he needed to sleep, he 'got the hang' of going to sleep much more easily.

The 'contented awake time' tends to increase during the day so the first period will be the shortest. (For example, many babies from around 6 months need their first nap 2 hours after waking, second nap 3 hours after waking and bedtime 4 hours after waking.)

If you can't tell tired signs (I've always struggled to read DS's) then 1.5 hours is a good period awake to go with - there's some biological basis for this being a common length of 'activity cycles'. The 1.5 hours is from waking to sleeping though, so you need to allow some time (15-20 mins) for getting him off to sleep.

If you're trying to put him down when he's asleep but he wakes up, try waiting 15 mins after he's gone off before putting him down. Until about 3 months, babies go straight into 'active' REM type sleep and wake really easily until they go into a deeper sleep about 15 mins later. After about 3 months they go straight into a deeper sleep so it's much easier to put them down.

If he doesn't like sleeping lying down, I'd be inclined to try co-sleeping, as long as you're bf, not on medication and no-one in the house smokes. It's not recommended to do it this way, but I'd lie on my back with him lying on my chest so he can be on his stomach. I do this with DS still sometimes if he's very unsettled, although we didn't start properly co-sleeping till 11 months, which is a huge difference. It wouldn't work for everyone, but I was amazed how easy it was for me to (a) sleep on my back and (b) be aware of DS. We put the mattress on the floor so if he did roll off he'd not hurt himself.

Hope things improve for you soon. :)

Both my dcs were poor sleepers. I had to actively manage their day time naps. They found it difficult to get to sleep and (here's the key) stay asleep. If I left them on stationary, they would wake within say 30 minutes and not have had sufficient sleep and would be permanently sleep deprived and grumpy. So I would constantly rock/push them in a buggy, for an hour or so, if necessary to make sure they got their full complement.

It was hard work. I lost a lot of weight. But they needed it.

I know all babies are different but once I had DS napping regularly in the day, he immediately started sleeping through (well, sort of) the night. And like the other posters have said, this was around 3 months. At which point I rejoined the human race. Yes, it was hard work, but it did make everything so much more fun for him and me as we were both less tired and grumpy. The things I found best for keeping him asleep were (1) grandma - he always loved sleeping in her arms and she loved it too and (2) in grandma's absence, playing soft music in his room.