8 week old and sleep- Please help!!

[RocketQueen87]

My lovely 8 week old likes to sleep a lot during the day but is then wide awake in the evening. Usually going to sleep around 12/1ish. Yesterday he slept for a couple of hours in the morning, had a short nap after lunch and then fell asleep between 2.30 and 6.15pm. He was then wide awake until 12.20am. Add in night feeds and I'm not getting much sleep at all.

Baby is FF and Dad often helps but is working lates this week and isnt home till 3am. Meaning, I'm awake with him till he goes to sleep at 12.20 and then I'm up for 1 or 2 feeds before he wakes usually between 6-7am.

We usually do bath time between 7-8pm and get him changed for bed. I should add that sometimes he falls asleep between 7-7.30pm but its always a really short 30-40 minute nap.

Do you think its the sleep he is having during the day that is keeping him up during the night? A few people have suggested to me that I shouldnt let him sleep after a certain time- maybe 3pm or 5pm, has this worked for any of you?

I'd love to hear how you managed to get your little ones to sleep in the evening.

x

I have a 9 week old and she never naps more than 45 mins in the day...i think this has deff helped her sleep more at night, although she doesn't sleep more than two hours at night usually.

It takes a while for them to know the difference between night and day.

Are you keeping day time naps in a light room?

His day time naps tend to be either in the sling when I'm at home or in his car seat or pram when we are out and about. He won't go down in his crib or mosses basket during the day and if he does it's for ten minutes at a time!

When you say your 9 week old sleeps 45 minutes in the day is that for the whole day or when she naps several times throughout the day?

I would be more than happy for him to be up during the day but he starts yawning and getting cranky so clearly needs to nap.

x

Agree with Kelly - babies have no concept of night and day so they have to be taught the difference. Naps during the day should be different from naps at night, eg keep the room lighter, make sure there's noise in the house.

You could try waking him up a bit earlier to try and give him the idea that the afternoon nap is a 'nap', not his full blown sleep, then hopefully he will be able to nod off earlier than midnight!

My son's longest sleep started off around 5pm-10pm but by around 14 weeks I'd managed to nudge it gradually to 7pm-3am which was more manageable.

A baby that young needs more than 45 mins a day. It could be that no sleep after 5pm is your answer with a very early bedtime and a no fuss bedtime routine of change and feed.

I remember my ds doing similar - we kept trying to do a bedtime of 7-8pm and it was too late. He actually wanted to be asleep by 6.30pm. Once we sorted that by no naps after 5, he settled much better!

hi iv just won this battle with my 10 week old .. she would sleep for hours duren the day either if we where out and about or just at home butt the last few days I completely changed that... normally she'd wake up at like half 11 in the morning and id be lucky if she went to bed before 2 in the morning ..because I needed sleep I would let her sleep that long so I could sleep ..
NOW I wake her up at 8 in the morning for a bottle shell have a morning nap in her swinging chair I don't let her sleep pass 4 ill give her a bath about half 6 ish and then she's in bed by 8, I don't hear nothing from her till 8 the next morning ..
When she's sleeps duren the day I keep the room light and either the tv or music on so she cant go in to a deep sleep.. sleeping 12 hours through the night is bliss .. I hope this helps iv been there and its no fun butt it will come you've just got to find a sleeping pattern that suites you and your little one :)

OP, I mean 45 mins at a time, maybe twice a day in the day time.

There have been a fair few days when she has stayed awake for 12 hours straight in the day...a medical miracle?!

I have a phone consultation with the millpond sleep clinic as I have no real idea of what is normal or not and want a professionals advice...I'm an only child with zero experience of babies!

I'm sure I read somewhere that a baby of that age needs around 4 hours of sleep during the day, and a total of 16 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, they should get plenty of sleep.

You have to give nature time to sort out the difference between night and day in your little one's brain, so that they gradually start to sleep more at nighttime and less during the day. Some believe you can help this by taking your baby out for walks in the daylight. In my experience, if you put a young baby in a pram and go for a walk, they go to sleep. Hey ho. Worth a go anyway.

Otherwise keep doing what you're doing. They say sleep breeds sleep and I thoroughly believe that. My DD needs plenty of sleep during the day in order to be settled on a night. Do you have any routine to naps? My baby used to fall asleep at the drop of a hat so a routine was pointless, but at 12 weeks I started being more keen to encourage her to go 2 hours between naps, then she would have a good kip.

So he had a two hour nap in the morning, an hour early afternoon and an hour that lasted till 4.30. I have used every trick in the book to keep him awake since then. We started bath time routine at 6.15, offered a bottle about 6.30 and he just played with it till I put him down at 6.50pm. He's asleep upstairs and the monitor is on!

He only had a bottle a couple of hours ago, so I'm not surprised he didn't want it. I'm guessing it will be easier to time the bed time bottle once a routine is established.

I'm nervously watching the monitor because he's upstairs and I'm just waiting for that sound of him crying! I hope he doesn't wake up at 7.30 wide awake- he's done that before :P

I will keep you posted with how tonight goes. Thank you for all of your suggestions. Its such a huge help when you are sleep deprived. I love being a mummy but night times are so hard! Getting my little one to sleep for 12 hours a night feels a million miles away, even though people tell me it won't be long and that the first year goes so quick.

x

So I'd say my first attempt at getting him to sleep longer at night was a success.

He went down at 6.50pm, woke at 7.20. I stayed upstairs and rocked him back to sleep and he then slept till his 9.30 feed. He slept till 1.30am, had a feed and then slept through till 7.10am :)

I'm really starting to think those late afternoon naps may have been what has been causing the problem all along. Although this was only one night and I have no doubt he will continue to keep me on my toes and change things just as I think I've cracked it!!

I will try again tonight :)

gosh 8 weeks old is the earliest I ever got any of my 3 into the very beginnings of a routine. To do it, I woke them up after 1.5hrs during the day and bf them, changed the nappy, burped em, wandered round with them for a bit while they failed to stay awake and then let them sleep again for another 1.5 hrs. After a while (we are talking 5-14 days here) they started getting it and began to switch to longer sleeps at night. I believe it has something to do with getting lots of cals in them during the day to help them rest for longer periods at night, thus the wake ups and feeds during the day. Good luck.