Can I change her routine?

[ohgoonthen]

Hi everyone,

DD is 10 weeks old today and ever since she was born she has been a brilliant sleeper. I know she is too young to have a routine yet, but she has always fed and slept at the same times up until about 2 weeks ago.

Now she is up for a long period during the night and I'm really struggling to cope on 1 hours sleep a night!!

She has a feed around 5pm, she's always pretty grumpy by this time and eats just a little while fussing and crying then completley zonks out. I let her sleep in her pram and wake her about 8.30 for bath and another feed. She seems to be in a really deep sleep at this point and is happy when I wake her. After her feed she goes to sleep easily again (usually about 9.30) and sleeps till 1.30am. I change her, feed her and she is totally impossible to settle until about 5.30 am when she will happily sleep until lunchtime!
I have no idea why she has started being wide awake during the night. She is now napping very little during the day but she doesn't seem to be any more tired at night.

I have tried tonight bathing her at 5 and managed to keep her awake till about 6.30 at which point she was very overtired and took ages to settle, I'm hoping I will get an extra hours sleep!

I know that she probably doesn't know the difference between night and day yet but any tips on shifting this awake period even by an hour would be greatly appreciated! I rarely get to bed before midnight and need to be up at 6 so am struggling at the moment

She's going through a growth spurt - wait two weeks, things will get better :)

Babies are hard work.

She's so young still. Things will change and change again at breathtaking speed so don't worry, this will pass. Can you go to bed after her 9.30pm feed? I trust you're not doing housework til midnight?

You could initiate a relaxing bedtime routine- bath,dim lights, massage, feed- at around 6pm, with the aim of her being in bed by 7. 5 seems too early to me for a bath etc, and 8.30 too late ifyswim.

This sounds a bit namby pamby but it worked wonders for us (and helped me feel sane!).

The other thing that helped during growth spurts is cluster feeding. I'd feed dd every 2 hours during the day. It's hard work, but less hard than being up all night!