Understanding daytime sleep

[Deliaskis]

Hi there,

My DD is nearly 5 weeks old and we've had our ups and downs since she arrived (including re-admittance to hosp due to weight loss), and potential PND issues for me (not helped by cr@p Dr), but I do think we're starting to get to know each other a bit better now.

We're lucky in lots of ways, DD sleeps during the night, I just wake her for a small feed, and we're starting to get a bit of an evening bath & bed system. The thing that seems completely random is the daytime sleep. Some days she sleeps loads and some hardly at all, and I never know when it will be. Often she drops off into 'good' sleep right before I need to feed her so I need to wake her (still on feeding schedule due to weight issues). She always sleeps in the pram, but then I worry if we've been out twice in one day, she has slept a lot, and may not sleep at night (this has only happened twice actually so probably not an issue). Other days she really seems to hardly sleep at all. Over a 24 hr period she is sleeping anything between 10 and 15 hours, and given that around 8 of those are at night, it makes the days extremely random with very little rhyme or reason to them.

I know she is too young to have a daytime 'routine' and I'm not expecting that, nor is that what I am asking. I guess my question is at what point did other new Mums start to understand their baby's daytime sleep needs a bit better? I really just don't know from one day to the next what she will do, which is fine, but I would like to know when I will feel more in tune with her needs so that I can respond and plan accordingly.

Please be assured this is not about trying to force her into a routine, but totally to do with when I will start to feel I understand her better.

Any comments would be gratefully received.

Ta in advance
Dx

A lot further on anyway!

Ds1 was an 'easy' baby and we got into our grove about 3 mths.

Ds2 is a bit harder (understatement) but about 4 or 5 mths.

Well done on your new baby btw.

In my experience sleeping a lot during the day at that age doesn't affect night sleeping.

Mine slept a lot at that stage. They were never really awake for more than a 2 hour stretch and sometimes not for more than an hour. If they went past the 2 hours they were over tired and struggled to get to sleep (I learnt this eventually !).

I would try putting her in the pram after may 1 and 3/4 hours since she woke and see if she settles to sleep. Once asleep mine would sleep for up to 2.5 hours - although waking after about 45 mins is common (something to do with sleep cycles).

Congrats on your dd!

My ds is nearly 16 weeks and can stay awake no longer than 1 hr 20 mins. At 5 weeks, I'm pretty sure he woke, fed, changed and slept again with a little bit of activity somewhere in the day.

Not sure how common my experience is, but up to approx 4 mths I found DD either had "sleeping days" where she never seemed to be awake for more than an hour at a time, or "active and feeding days" where she hardly seemed to sleep at all! She always slept well at night too, and how she'd slept during the day made no difference to that at all.

What I found helped was to start writing down her sleeps and feeds from around 8 weeks to see if a pattern was emerging. To be honest, it didn't really until she was around 4 months but it felt like I was beginning to understand her needs a bit better. Also very sweet to look back on these little notes now she's so much bigger and more predictable

Also agree with throkenholt re 2 hrs being about the longest she would stay awake most days up until she was about 6 mths.

At that age DS was all over the place, slept whenever he felt like it, which for him was pretty much all the time. He'd eat and sleep and was rarely awake for longer than 30 minutes! I think as babies get older (around 10 weeks plus) they need at least 3 hours total of daytime naps, in addition to their night time sleep. I think the first 'routine' my DS got into (other than bath, feed and bedtime) was needing a morning nap about an hour and a half after waking. This was from about 8 weeks i think. But only when they reach 12 to 16 weeks (sometimes longer) will a more concrete napping routine appear. 14 to 16 weeks is about the earliest you can actually start physically putting them down for 3 x naps per day. DS is 17 weeks. The only given is that he needs 3 naps a day, totalling at least 3 hours, but they each vary in length from 45 minutes to two hours. As long as he gets at least 3 hours per day he seems happy enough by the time the evening comes.

I have to say i really miss the flexibility of DS being a newborn when i could take him anywhere, any time and by any method. He currently needs to be in his moses basket/ cot at home to stand a chance of napping properly - he's just far too alert when we go out anywhere!

Feeding schedules for weight issues can wreck havoc on sleep as I found out the hard way :-(

I discovered that our DS had a natural amount of time that he could be awake for which has gradually increased as he has got older. After this amount of time there is a window of maybe ten minutes when he'll fall asleep relatively easily, before or after that and he'll scream his head off.

If you figure out the equivalent time for your baby and try and start the day at the same time (easier said than done if they wake up early!) and get them to sleep each time this interval has passed since they last woke up, you'll probably find they naturally fall into a routine after a while.

For the first several months, three naps a day seems to be normal - a medium-length nap in the morning, a longer nap at lunchtime or in the early afternoon, and then a short late afternoon nap to see them through to bedtime. The third nap is the one that they drop first at some point during their first year. But don't obsess too much about this - if the naps are short then they may have more than three. It's good to try and get at least one longish nap of 1.5-2 hours in at some point during the day from my understanding.

Thanks ladies, some really helpful stuff here. I know I probably appear to be trying to jump the gun, I'm not, I'm just trying to provide what DD needs at the right time.

Ta again
Dx