Baby wont sleep until 2am every night. Advice please!

[Joanna191]

Hi first post on here.

Please can anyone offer me some advice, my little girl is now coming up to 14 weeks old, (my first baby) she has never particularly settled well at night but she has got in to a routine of just never managing to fall properly asleep until 2am, sometimes she falls asleep when we put her to bed around 7-8pm but only ever for a couple of hours, without fail she is awake by half 10/11 and unable to settle again until 2am at the earliest. When she has finally fallen asleep she will then sleep through until 9-10am so she is are getting a good amount of sleep just at the wrong time. I just basically want to know if this is normal and should I just accept this is how it will be for a while which is fine if it is.

we have tried everything to get her to sleep, routine, rocking, white noise plus most other things. Even when we wake up earlier around 7 to go for an appointment we still end up not falling asleep until 2am. (Also I have considered it’s colic but I don’t think it is now)

I think she is most likely chronically overtired and in a massive sleep deprivation as I see that babies her age should be getting 10-12 hours sleep a night and she is probably getting 8 at a push. I am just wondering how I can reset her sleep, do I let her sleep longer in the day? I am trying to stick to a daytime schedule but it’s not really working. I just feel like I have tried everything and nothing changes :(
thank you

What is her daytime sleep like?

Usually with older babies split nights (when baby wakes up and is awake for a long period) are caused by undertiredness, as a result of too much daytime sleep or being put to bed too early, but since your baby is so young it's hard to say.

At 14wks we were probably just hitting the 4mo sleep regression, which was really tough. Fighting sleep, lots of night wakes, very early morning starts. You can drive yourself a bit bonkers (I did) trying to look for patterns and figure out why, but you only need to look on Mumsnet to know it's really normal. Hard, but normal.

My baby is 10mo now and we've only really had a 'routine' for a couple of months, which is still a bit of guesswork on my part and can vary by day.

Sorry, I should add... For some practical advice, have you tried a later bedtime? I know 7pm is what the guidebooks will tell you is an appropriate bedtime for babies but mine has only ever gone to bed this early if he's skipped a nap.

Might be worth playing around with.