How to break the overtired baby cycle? 5 weeks old

[Bananacake91]

I think my 5 week old is chronically overtired. He refuses and fights naps and bedtime sleep, despite showing sleepy cues. He’s been averaging somewhere between 9 hours sleep in a 24 hour period to 13 hours max on a good day (recommendation is 14-18). He’s also very alert - constantly looking around and getting distracted. I’ve found I can force day time naps by putting him in the sling and playing white noise but he only manages to stay asleep for 45 mins - 1 hour despite pacing around the house/outside. I try to keep wake windows as short as possible but he takes quite a long time to BF so by the time we’ve done that, changed him, maybe I’ve had a wee or grabbed a drink, it can sometimes be an hour before I can get him back down again. But we’ve been managing some consistent day naps but nights are still challenging - only managing about 4 - 5 hours total at night and very broken. Longest stretch has been 2.5 hours. I’m so exhausted. He gets very cranky too. I know the more he sleeps, the more likely he’ll be able to stay asleep for longer periods but I don’t know how we get there.

Does anyone have any tips for breaking the cycle of having an overtired baby?

My newborn has only ever really slept on me outside of the first couple of weeks when she went down in cot. Does he fall asleep on breast and can be left there? It does sound like very little sleep, DD is 9 weeks and still asleep more than she's awake. Bless him and you, it sounds tough.

My little one was the same at around 6 weeks. I was so worried he hadn't had any sleep (8hrs in a day one day) naps were (and still sometimes are) a bit of a battle. He literally wanted to look around all-day rather than sleep, even though he was clearly shattered.

I started with a bedtime routine and a really early bedtime after he just wouldn't sleep for like 3 hours - bath (or wash down) change of clothes, bottle cuddle bed (at 7 to start to try break the cycle) did this for about 5 days and some nights were tough but he seemed to go down for a good solid 4 hours. Nights are so much easier now and i keep to that routine.

Naps still are a bit of a battle but they are easier than they were.. think because I've sort of got him a good chunk at night.

Its hard and I totally know how you feel (alert babies are wonderful but never want to sleep!) Try for a few nights a bedtime reset and routine see if that helps

Sending hugs xx

5/6 weeks are notoriously tough too with growth spurts and I've read a lot of babies having a sleep regression around then so a bit of a double whammy. I found about 8 weeks it naturally got a bit better

@Hugasauras Unfortunately he doesn’t often fall asleep on the boob otherwise I’d do that.