Newborn not napping well in the day

[bleachblondemom]

My baby is 3 weeks old and for nearly a week he’s struggled to nap during the day. Sometimes he has 2-3 hours, but a lot of the time I can only get him down for about half an hour. He spends so much time awake it worries me as I’ve read they should only be awake for about an hour at a time at this age. His feeding is all over the place because he wants to eat when he wakes up then by the time he’s ready to sleep again he’s also hungry. He’s also noticing he’s hungry faster because he’s awake so gets into the habit of eating little and often. Advice online is confusing me because it says to keep day times bright and noisy, but that baby needs quiet and darkness to sleep. So how do I do both? For a start my house is not dark at all during the day so I can’t even take him to a darker room just to get him off to sleep. By the end of the day he is very grizzly and overtired because he hasn’t had much good quality sleep in the day/evening. But to be fair to him he does sleep some really good 4-5 hour stretches during the night. I feel like I can barely breathe when I put him down to nap during the day as I know he will wake up at any moment. Also feel like I’m having to force him to go to sleep rather than being able to spot his sleepy signs and just put him down and let him go happily to sleep. Any advice?

Are you trying to get him to nap in a cot/Moses basket? At 3 weeks you'll probably find he naps much better when held. I know it's a pain but he's only 3 weeks and it won't be forever. I find my DD (12 weeks now) naps best when she's in the sling, it totally knocks her out and she will peacefully sleep for hours and it means my hands are free to play with toddler DS/do housework/make tea etc. If he's your first then I'd just enjoy the baby cuddles as much as you can and settle on the sofa with a good box set. He won't nap on you forever and you can gradually work to transfer him to his cot etc. I'd really recommend the book The Baby Sleep Solution by Lucy Wolfe, sets a great base for healthy sleep as they get older and more able to sleep soundly alone.

Hi, congratulations! It can be a challenge for you and little one to work out the best sleep approaches for day naps to start with. Mine is 14 months now, for day naps I either went to my bedroom and closed the curtains and turned all lights off and sat with them if I wanted quiet time and a lay down too :) or if I wanted to carry on with things I used a carrier and just let them sleep on me, or I also had a sheepskin blanket that I started off with in the pram and put them to sleep in there in the living room, again turning lights off but otherwise carrying on as normal. I wouldn't say you need to have it super dark or be really quiet if you don't want to, they will get used to usual noise in the house and sleep through it.
Saying that, I also did a lot of contact naps on me and lounged in front of the tv or went on my phone as my lo didn't often like to sleep on their own which is fine too.
I can highly recommend thebeyondsleeptrainingproject.com if that's any help, it still reassures me when I doubt what I am doing for all sorts of issues.

4th trimester, barely knows he's not inside you any more. Will he sleep on you? (that's nature helping you to recover from birth I think, I did a lot of it while I was anaemic)

You're not meant to make it dark in day either to help develop circadian rhythm etc

It's also very normal for them to be grizzly in the evening.

How are you feeding? Little and often is actually totally normal. Their stomachs are tinyt

I just took him for an almost hour walk where he slept most of it and as soon as I took him out the pram at home he woke up 😂 unfortunately I couldn’t leave him in the pram as I was afraid he’d be too hot in his pramsuit. But at least he got some zzzs. I’m now standing with him in one arm and he’s nodded back off. So yeah I guess he does like to sleep on me! But then wakes as soon as I put him down. Sling sounds like a really good idea, I did look into them briefly before he was born but I wasn’t sure if they were safe for newborns. Any recommendations for slings for newborns? He is formula fed, and he’d just started taking bigger amounts at longer intervals but only when he’s had a nice big sleep.

Mine was exactly the same! Would only nap on me so I ended up going with that. I see another poster has mentioned the fourth trimester and I did read a bit about that and found it quite interesting. They're so small that they do need a lot of closeness at times.

I still feed on demand and they do tend to want little and often. They know when they're hungry so I feed when little one shows signs of needing a feed.

You don't need to worry about normal day to day noises or the lighting. I've found it much better to carry on with the normal day to day noises otherwise it can cause issues with a baby only being to sleep with complete silence and with a busy household that isn't possible here! Same with lighting you don't need to close curtains etc for them to nap.

They all do seem to get a bit grizzly at times so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Sounds like you're doing a great job!

Also, that is a really good chunk of sleep during the night! My youngest ended up being really good at sleeping chunks of the night as well which makes such a difference to things

Thanks everyone you comments have made me feel better. We were having trouble with him sleeping at night and now we’ve sorted that out the trouble has moved to the day 😆 definitely interested in a sling as its frustrating when he wants to be held and I can’t eat my lunch or make a drink or put away the washing that’s been sat in the washing machine!
I’ve always got the telly on during the day so when he does fall asleep the telly doesn’t bother him so that’s good.

Don't try to put him down! My 6 month old has only been napping in the cot for a month! It is worth being immobile (Netflix...) to get the requisite amount of sleep into them. Seriously you will have far less stress if you just go with it.

If you must be up and doing things get a stretchy wrap for a newborn. I have one called Flow by a company called We Made Me which is amazing.

I started by renting one from here - you can email and they'll suggest a suitable one

itsaslingthing.co.uk

Oh and, depending on budget, for the lunch thing we bought a Stokke Tripp Trapp chair with newborn set. It is the most £££ thing ever so worth trying to get second hand.

It is like a high chair with a baby bassinet that they can lie in and be next to you at the dining table.

Forget the washing or get partner to do it!

Look up fourth trimester theory - don't worry about anything apart from baby soothing for 3 months then You can go back to normal!

You'll probably find sleep (day and night) changes so much over the first year, you think you've got it sorted and then it all goes wrong!

I really like a wrap for a newborn, I've got a Hanna one, it's nice and cozy especially in the winter but I've seen close caboo get good reviews which is more of a pull on style. If we've been out for a buggy walk I normally just remove any extra blanket, take DDs hat off, unzip her pram suit and leave her to sleep. Our house is pretty chilly though and I check on her regularly.

I just bought a sling! Can’t wait to try it out, it will be lovely to have baby with me without feeling like I can’t do anything else!
I did unzip his pramsuit and take his arms out and consider leaving him like that but I was still too worried about him overheating. But I think in hindsight he’d have been alright as the kitchen felt a bit cool once we’d got back in, I could’ve kept the heating off and I’m sure he’d have been ok. I’ll do that next time!

He’s asleep on me right now but sadly I will have to put him down as I need the loo and a snack 😂

I use the Ergo Baby Aura sling and it's been great, though can be a pain to get on when out and about as it is literally just a long piece of fabric. Maybe see if there's a sling library in your area where you can try out different slings and see which one works best for you before you shell out on one.

Half an hour since I put him in his crib and no stirring yet. I think he’s finally had to just give in to the tired lol

We have an ergobaby aura and a close caboo, DS is in it now in fact.

Also have a look at tuppence and crumble star wraps, they're a lot easier to get on and off a sleeping baby than a pramsuit!

@addler just had a quick look at the star wraps, they look really good. Cotton or fleece? I guess fleece as it’s winter.
Also hope you and baby are doing well, we were on a thread together a few weeks ago about our overdue babies :)

We have fleece!

Oh I didn't clock the name, congratulations on finally getting that baby out how are you doing? DS was four weeks yesterday which seems to have gone so fast

We have the star fleece wraps too. V useful

@addler ah wow it feels like yesterday we were all desperate to get our babies out 😂 3 weeks yesterday for my little one. We are doing great thanks apart from he never wants to nap just like his mom 😆

I was about to say that DS is normally quite a good sleeper but he then didn't sleep for three hours and just cried while DP tried to get him to nap while I tried to catch up on sleep (impossible due to hearing him cry).

DP only went back to work today and was so excited to cuddle him when he got home and is feeling quite dejected now. Normally he's very good at getting him to sleep after a feed!

I've just fed him again and he took forever as he was basically asleep the whole time and even now hasn't woken when I burped him so hopefully he'll just go straight to sleep on him, and then I can sleep too 😴

Well he went to sleep at half 2 in his Moses basket and woke up at quarter to 5! I couldn’t believe it. And at about half 6 he fell asleep on me and I’ve put him down in his little crib in the living room and he’s happily gone back to sleep instead of crying! We are in the kitchen cooking dinner and he has slept through the noise so far. Let’s just see how long this lasts... 😂

My baby is 11 weeks old and I've only ever been able to get her to nap during the day by rocking her in the pram. It's not ideal but it puts her to sleep quickly pretty much every time! The main problem is she'll usually keep waking up unless I'm constantly rocking her 😅

@Erina2110 oh dear 😅 I do worry about getting him into habits, but luckily just because I rock him to sleep sometimes doesn’t mean he needs it every time, it depends how tired he is, if he needs a bit of coaxing or just zonks out.
I’ve just tried the method of not taking no for an answer (don’t know if this exists or I’ve just made it up...)- I put him in his basket to sleep and he woke up quickly, so I gave him a bit of milk and a quick cuddle then back in basket. Woke up again soon after, I did the same thing again, and put him back in. And now he’s actually asleep! The thing is, I’m destined to listen to his white noise teddy for the rest of my life 😂

He’s not sleeping again today. He’s been up for 5 and a half hours now, 3 of those I’ve spent trying to get him down. He won’t sleep for more than 5 minutes. Yesterday he was up for 4 and a half hours until he thought about sleeping, and then that took a couple of goes. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with him, why he won’t just sleep when he is obviously tired and I am doing everything I can to help him. Every day I wake up and think, how am I gonna battle to get him to sleep today. It’s making me really not enjoy looking after him. And then that makes me feel like a horrible person. All I’ve done today so far is cry and I keep getting cross with him. I don’t know what to do.

@bleachblondemom sorry you’re struggling. My baby is 8 weeks and is so hit and miss with naps too. I didn’t mind until recently as she was sleeping so well in the night but she’s had a couple of bad nights this week too 😱
One thing I would say is, I was stressing so much about getting her into an evening routine. Literally wrestling her to sleep for hours and getting so stressed, then I decided just to give up for a while and everything felt so much more relaxed. Long story short, try (if possible) not to put so much pressure on yourself and baby, maybe forget sleep and get out with the pram (it’ll probably happen anyway!) or drive to somewhere with a drive through and grab a hot drink.
It’s so hard in this stage but sometimes we push ourselves too much to get them into routine that it’s more harmful than good for us and them