new babies - when to start keeping them awake in the day

[bethski]

I have a 10 day old dd who, so far, has pretty much eaten and slept round the clock. Her more "awake" moments tend to be during the night - she is a fantastic sleeper during the day but seems hard to settle after a feed at night. Last night, she wouldn't settle after her feed to the point that dh got up with her (and stayed up all night). This is my second child (not that you'd know it - I can't remember a THING!)but I do remember my ds being restless after a feed and we thought that we were keeping him awake as we couldn't sleep until he was sleeping, so in the end we moved him into his own room at 2 weeks and he slept much better. I was very strict about enforcing a routine at the time (suffering pnd) which I don't think worked and he was left to cry far too much imo. Dd is feeding every 3 hours-ish round the clock - should I be trying to keep her awake more in the day so that she sleeps at night?

I would maybe leave it until she is nearer a month old. Babies do tend to wake up a bit then. At that point I would encourage wakefulness during the day - i.e wake her if she sleeps more than 2-3 hrs in the day (if she sleeps that long she's due for a feed anyway) after feeding her try and keep her awake by playing for 20-30 mins max than let her sleep. I don't think a routine as such is a good idea so young (though I found it a blessing when ds was about 6-7 months old) but it is definitley worth trying to encourage day wakefulness.

Don't try and keep her awake all day she will just be exhausted - just let her sleep for a while and then wake her if she doesn't wake after a couple of hours of napping, feed her and play, then sleep and so on.

We put ds in his own room at 6 weeks but then brought him back at 3 months - but his night time sleep until he was 11 months old is another story

Personally I would NEVER wake a sleeping baby!

If you keep her awake when she wants to sleep, she'll be overtired and grouchy and be less likely to sleep at night, or at all. Go with it - she's still really, really young.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

My baby is now 12 weeks and still likes her sleep. When she was a few days old she started sleeping through the night (11pm to about 5am) and the midwife told me to wake her up and feed her at 2-3pm. This I did once before coming to my senses and since then I have let her sleep. I do try now to keep her awake in the afternoon a bit more so she goes down well at night, but in the early days I just let her sleep her way round the clock and only woke her for a feed between 7am and 11pm. This was because she lost a 1lb of weight after birth. My first baby slept about 20 hours a day for the first 6 weeks - in fact people used to say that they never saw her awake. I wouldn't worry about keeping a baby awake until it was at least six weeks old.

Sorry I meant 'wake her up at 2-3am'...!