Newborn awake throughout night

[HannahB264]

Hi!
I have a beautiful 1 weeks old baby boy. He is so settled and content during the day - sleeps, eats, winds well. During waking windows he does cry, but once he's fed, changed and cuddled, he settles.
During the night, he is waking up at around 11pm and staying awake until around 4am. I change, feed, wind and rock him. Myself or my husband walk and rock him, but he will drift off then wakes up within minutes.
I'm still in the 'baby blues' so crying at the drop of a hat and this seems to be getting to me at the moment!

Advice please?

They don't know night from day initially, it takes a while for them to work it out. It does improve over time. I think it took a few weeks for mine to get any semblance of night and day!

Congratulations on your new little one! These first few weeks are tough with hormones and adapting to your new life.
Newborns bodies don’t yet know day from night. So for us darkness signals night time and so we start to wind down for our longest sleep. Newborns don’t have that yet so may do their longest stretches of sleep during the day. Totally normal.
The best things to do is to get baby outside or in natural daylight during the day. This helps their circadian rhythm to get into the correct routine.
It’s never too early to start a bedtime routine either - though it may not have proper effect until about 6 weeks or so, it can be so helpful to have a consistent nighttime routine and it’ll help signal to their bodies that it’s time for a long sleep.
It’s not foolproof or a quick fix necessarily, but can get you on the right track for longer periods of sleep at night hopefully 🤞

You won’t like me for this, but it’s completely normal! Babies have no concept of day and night and won’t have a settled circadian rhythm until around 12 weeks. You can help baby get to recognise day and night by making it bright and keeping usual day time noises during the day (ie don’t try to be quiet because baby is sleeping) and keeping it dark and quiet at night time. Otherwise though it’s a case of riding it out and looking after yourself. It will get better. I cried A LOT in those first few weeks - at music, at tiredness, at baby crying, at looking at baby, at people being nice to me. My hormones have settled now (baby is 7 weeks) and I don’t cry at those things now, yours should settle too but if they don’t make sure you speak to your HV or GP for extra support x