7-week-old baby evening naps and bedtime feed timing advice needed

[Appleblossom31]

I am not sure if I have posted this to the correct topic but I am a FTM and would really welcome some advice.

My DS is now 7 weeks old. He is formula fed, I aim to feed on demand but he mostly feeds every 3ish hours or so, with an occasional longer stretch through the night.

I realise he is likely too young to establish a sleep routine at the moment, however, his most consistent feed before “bed time” is about 9/9.30. I often like to do this feed in the bed room, lights dim etc and go to bed.

How long am I supposed to let him nap for before this time? This evening for example, he is due a feed at approx 9.30, but he just slept from 7pm to 7.20pm, at 7.30pm he has fallen back to sleep. He is incredibly over tired as refused to sleep for hours before this. Am I supposed to encourage another nap or just try and keep him awake now until 9.30?

I am struggling with trying to build sleep pressure vs having an overtired/ overstimulated baby. I can achieve this in the day, but I am not sure how to get this right in the evening. Or do I just follow the same pattern I would in the day? (Feed, change, play, sleep).

Am I being too rigid at the moment?

Also, at what point would i expect some longer stretches through the night? I know every baby is different (mine is big and hungry) but I have seen on some threads that their babies at this age could sleep 5/6/7 hours - or is this actually quite uncommon?

I would really like some reassurance please!

At that age, any sleep before 10/11pm would be treated like a nap by my son i.e. sleep for 45-90 minutes and be awake for an hour or two. I breastfed him on the sofa, watched films with DH and went up to bed around 11 when everyone was sleepy.

Too soon for routine.

Hello, congratulations on the new baby. Wake windows are very short at this age, I'd be doing absolutely everything to ensure they're not awake longer than 60 mins (90 mins at most) to prevent over tiredness. Have you tried bouncing them in the sling or a buggy walk or letting them sleep on you. Whatever works! Nothing worse than an overtired baby.
Don't worry about sleep pressure or routines at this stage, just focus on preventing over tiredness and feeding responsively. The routine will naturally develop as they grow and they're able to stay awake longer between naps.
As soon as they wake up from a nap, set a timer so you can keep track of how long they've been awake. If you see any signs of tiredness, do your best to support them to nap again. Babies need help falling asleep and it's amazing how much they sleep at this age. Good daytime naps support good nighttime sleep.
At this age, both my babies fed as much as they wanted and slept on me all evening until I went to bed myself and put them in their moses baskets. Basically the whole wake windows in the evening were spent cluster feeding (I breastfed)

I wouldn't worry at all about timings at that age. Best thing to do is get them exposed to daylight as soon as they wake, and get outside in the morning, to help them learn day/night distinction. You say baby refused to sleep for hours, what did you try? Buggy, carrier, contact, car all worked well for us the first 12 months. Never even tried to get baby to sleep in her cot in the day. overtiredness isn't really a thing, it's massively oversold by the 'sleep consultant' community. I think wakes every couple of hours are normal at that age. Mine didn't do stretches of 5-7 hours until closer to 12 months, and has started sleeping through (sometimes) at 18 months. Baby sleep doesn't 'improve' in a linear way either, commonly babies do decent stretches initially but then change at the 4 month sleep regression!

Thanks for your replies.
Sling and dummy works wonders during the day and 9 times out of 10 I can get him to sleep within his wake window and I do make sure I try to time this so he is not overtired. Witching hour can make this a little more difficult!

It’s the nap time before “bed” that throws me. He is formula fed (I really wanted to and tried to BF). He tends to feed at around 6.30 and then 9.30 which is when we aim to go to bed, but it’s after the feed at 6.30 I don’t know really how long to let him nap for. Guess I should just base it on his wake window and watch for tired cues?

I honestly wouldn't be worrying about any kind of routine or schedule at this age, my FF baby didn't start following a routine until about 4-5 months, I think at that point he used to have a bottle and fall asleep on me on the sofa, then we went up around 10 and had another bottle before 'bed' although would have another 2 bottles during hte night at that point I think.