4 week old awake for hours overnight, any advice?

[Lm1245]

Just looking for some advice please?

My baby usually wakes around midnight and stays wide awake until around 3am sometimes later. I am exhausted and just want to know if anyone else is experiencing this and what you do to help baby to sleep and settle? Baby is 4 weeks old

Just sending solidarity in wide awake club (mine is older but ill). At 4 weeks , their sleep is just all over the place, there's not much you can do. I absolutely truly deeply promise you it WILL get better. Sending strength.

Another one sending solidarity as I feed my 6 week old. I know they say that newborns are too young to know the difference between day and night but I have found that trying to make a difference between night and day has helped. Black out curtains, a white noise machine that shines red light so I’m not putting on the big light to change nappies (apparently red light reminds them of being in the womb) and very quiet environment. I think these have all helped my baby to be a bit more sleepy at night

DS used to want to sleep all day and perked up around 6pm until midnight. I used to deliberately wake him up during daytime wake hours & it took about 6 weeks of this to get him into routine of going to bed at night time & being awake during the day. Once he was in this routine he slept really well & for 10-11 hrs with a dream feed at 10-11pm.

Before anyone accuses me of baby cruelty, he never really cried & was definitely never left to cry himself to sleep. He would have a 2hr lunch nap & then sleep either 7-6 or 8-7. But it took a lot of effort.

Mine went through phases of doing this from 6m-2y. Sometimes just occasionally (with other wake ups obviously) but sometimes every night for weeks. It was HARD. Take it in turns if you can, and put something on the tv to keep yourself awake but that's quite soothing. Wildlife documentaries were my go to.

For a while she needed cuddles but not a lot of interaction so I'd just work (I had a lot of flexibility on hours, which is good as I went back at 3 weeks).

Get up occasionally for drinks, snacks etc, and if you can catch up in the day, do.

Yeah we have videos of our son on the playmat at 4/5 weeks old at 2am. It's normal.

Take it in turns with DH.

My DH handled wakings up to 2am (he'd bring him to me to breastfeed) and then I handled 2am until morning so that my DH could get a 4-5 hour stretch of sleep to be able to go to work.

Don’t worry, this is common for small babies. I am working as a nanny in Dubai, and I saw the same thing with a family I work for. Their baby used to wake up around 1 or 2 am and stay awake for a long time, like it was playtime. We slowly helped baby by keeping the lights dim, talking softly, feeding, changing the nappy if needed, and then settling baby back to sleep quietly. It does get better, even if it feels very hard right now

DD hardly slept at all as a baby, not even in the day. In the day we gave her plenty of attention, but when it came to night (unless she was crying) we left her in her baby basket. If (and when) we did have to get up in the night, we just had a side light on, fed her&changed her and just sat quietly with her, ie we didn't engage unless we had to.

You realise that some babies don't just sit there? Mine would have screamed and vomited from the screaming if judt left like that.