Teaching Night and day?

[WrensNest]

Hi, I have a 6 week old dd who was born at 36 weeks and does not know night from day. She sleeps pretty much all day then wakes at 10pm for cluster feeding till 1am. She feeds pretty much every 2 to 3 hours (breast feeding). At night she is wide awake after feeds but during the day falls asleep on the boob. Any tips on teaching her the difference. I've taken her out in the pram and sling during the day but it just sends her to sleep again.
I feel bad turning the light out on her at night but don't want to encourage her to be awake at that time.

Thats babies for you! It does get better though :)

We learnt though our mistakes with DD1 and DD2 is a MUCH better sleeper.
Yes she was still up at night but not so bad and not for long.
With DD1 when she was wide awake at night time we would take her downstairs with the light on and tv going albiet quietly. We would spend ages trying to get her back off.
With DD2 from Day one, Night time was dark and boring, day time was fun and light.
We would settle her in her own room with the lights down very low or off, minimal talking/stimulation etc. Sounds cruel but isn't really.. just helping them learn the difference.

Aged 6 weeks my DS was the same - isn't cluster feeding in the evening really common? If you are EBF, there is while after the birth where the baby is growing, establishing rapidly increasing supply needs, etc. which equates to cluster feeding horror. So long as you act 'as if' it is night-time (low level lighting, minimum playing etc.) I wouldn't worry too much - it will sort itself out. I remember feeling like I had to teach DS everything, and also had really swallowed the 'your baby should feed every 3 hours' stuff so panicked a bit, but what you are saying is normal IME of breast feeding a teeny baby.

We found co-sleeping very handy at this time as it meant that we were all at least in bed for the evening marathon, so if there was any sleep to be had we were in the right place! Plus, the skin-to-skin helps your supply as it stimulates oxytocin (sp?) production, which is part of the process of making milk and can help you and the baby sleep. Whether or not you co-sleep, I did think that the current advice is not to have the baby sleeping in a separate room until 12 weeks as the presence of others is thought to protect against SIDS.

Most of all about this time I remember feeling gripped with horror if anything wasn't going as I expected, envisaging a lifetime of poor sleeping habits if we didn't get it right NOW and poor eating habits if he didn't eat well TODAY. We are a bit more relaxed now, DS is 10 months and still mainly BF with a bit of food rubbed across his face/ mine/ the floor during the day. It does get much easier, your baby will settle to daytime/nightime because you have that cycle, and you are mere weeks away from the end of cluster-feeding hell. Good luck darling x

Perfectly normal - you can't really teach it, they just learn eventually! Though I would say definitely don't turn on any lights for nighttime feeds, that'll confuse things, and don't blackout the room for daytime naps or anything either.

Have you tried doing masses of feeding in the earlier evening? Between 6-9 kind of thing? It might stack up the calories a bit so she isn't ravenous at 11pm. Six week old babies do sleep a lot, and sleep begets sleep, so don't assume that because she's sleeping in the day she will be awake at night. But I definitely wouldn't let her sleep through feeds in the day - how often do you feed her? I used to feed DS about every 90 minutes through the day.

I heard of a study that showed that the more daylight babies get, the better they sleep at night, (daylight helps them regulate melatonin or something like that!) It has worked for me with my 11 week old, she wakes up about 3 times a night to feed but always goes straight back to sleep after, and that has been the case since about 2 weeks. I always go for an hour walk each day, if I stay in she always sleeps worse,