Overtired 6 week old, please help!

[MamaPingu]

I'm losing my mind over my little boy
He's 6 weeks old and is having trouble sleeping.
For example he slept 6 hours and then another 2. So he woke up at 7am basically, he then cried a lot and slept an hour 1pm-2pm. He has then cried since and now I've left him upstairs to hopefully cry himself to sleep.

He cries if I cuddle him, he cries if I lie him down, he cries if I even rock him or anything! I've made sure he's fed and changed and he's now upstairs having a good cry.
There are no tears and he settles quite quick if you go in the room but then starts again a minute later.

9 hours isn't enough for a 6 week old is it?
He isn't a happy boy when he's awake through the day but sleeps relatively ok in the night.

I'm so fed up and tempted to take him to the doctors if he doesn't improve shortly.

Is it ok to leave him to cry? He's been up there 40 minutes now crying for the majority of the time

Sometimes babies go through a bit of a funny stage around 6 weeks, at least mine all did. He may need a bit more feed to settle him down, he could be having a growth spurt, they often do around 6 weeks. If it was me I'd offer more milk at the moment and cuddle him to soothe him. If he doesn't settle in the next day or two then maybe get your health visitor to check him over. I personally wouldn't leave him to cry for too long, it's awful for you and he'll get himself much more overtired and worked up and then he won't settle at all. Good luck.

Oh poor you, I had the same thing with dd it was awful. No 9 hours isn't enough, I think it's supposed to be 15 hours at that age.

If it's just overtiredness then the doctors can't help, what he needs is sleep. Which of course is exactly what he won't do...

my solution when dd got overtired was loooong pram walks without any stopping (as she would wake if I stopped). Basically I would walk till she fell asleep, then keep walking until she'd had at least an hour nap. repeat x3 per day. exhausting! but it did work to break the overtiredness cycle. Blackout material or dark scarf across the pram helped get her to nod off. The more I did this the easier it became to get her to sleep, both in the day and at night.

I wouldn't leave him to cry at this age no. (though I admit there was one evening I did do that with overtired dd, well she sat in her bouncy hair crying while I assembled a baby swing that was useless). Maybe try rocking him in the pram in your hallway? Or go out for a walk if your local streets are well lit? or a drive (not a good habit to get into but just to break the overtired cycle) or walk round the house with him in a sling. Motion of some sort.

th next question is how has he got so overtired, ie why did he sleep badly in the first place. in my DD's case she had terrible wind which was waking her up all the time. Do you think there is something like that going on with DS? if so then the GP may be able to help with that ... but I'd get the overtiredness sorted first as otherwise it's hard to tell if there is any undrlying issue.

good luck!

I ended up leaving him crying for a while, he'd cry for 15 minutes, sleep for 15 and cry again and it kept alternating. Did your babies do this?

I think his overtired started with his acid reflux as he was up every 1-2 hours. He now sleeps in the night but is terrible in the day time. I thought it'd be round the clock if he was over tired?

He's also trying to eat his hands but won't take his bottle?

Hi, when my dd was a baby she would become very overtired if she was awake longer than two hours. I could only get her to sleep by pushing the pram back and forth outside or rocking her in the car seat but I would have to make sure I started this after she had been awake an hour and a half so that she could drop off easily. If I left it longer than this she would really struggle to go off and get over tired and ratty. I also found that her sleep during the night was worse if she's not slept enough during the day.

My DD was another who needed to be out walking in her pram and in constant motion to get her day time sleep. On the plus side, it helped me get back in shape pretty sharp ish!

Another thing that worked was dancing - fast upbeat dancing to something poppy and boppy like Bruno Mars - with her in my arms. Don't know why but if she was tired that always seemed to send her off!

Babies definitely have a developmental change at around 6 weeks which makes them more fretful and hungry. Some babies don't sleep quite so much, one of mine hardly slept in the day but was always good at night.

I would try to make the daytimes different to the nights. Try playing with him for periods during the day, singing and rocking him as he's becoming a bit more alert between sleeps, maybe prop him in a seat where he can watch you. Go for walks and carry him around the house during the day, then offer extra feeds and a sleep. It's good that he's sleeping ok at night. Sounds like it's a tough time for you though.