When/how to get baby to sleep?

[bunnyrabbit]

Silly question. DS is 1 week old. Problem is as I'm a new mum I'm not really sure how/when one starts to introduce the concept of night time anyway. I am demand feeding at the moment until he's put on some weight, as we had some trouble in the first few days, and he goes to bed when we do in his moses basket in our room, but I only want to do both of these for the first 3 weeks.

DS was very fractious last night and took two hours of nearly constant feeding till 12.30 this am, and then letting him fall asleep on me, to get him to calm down.

He just didn't seem to want to sleep, but wouldn't stop crying. He didn't have much sleep yesterday at all. Not really bothered yet cos he's so young and he did then sleep for 3 hours in between feeds, but I really don't know when and how you start getting baby to understand the difference between night and day, and what time you 'put them down for the night'.

BR

In our experience, our two have both cried when they're tired and in both cases, we've fallen for the 'they must be hungry' - will he fall asleep sucking? If so, you could let him suck a finger, while he's in the basket, then you don't need to move him after he's fallen asleep. I think they can get to grips with day/night pretty quickly.

I wuld eckon wind for the crying if you have fes him - try and avois feeding him more as it makes it worse - remeber babies cry. Its all they can do and its awful but hey are OK.

I have always done it this way. At night I keep the lighting to minimal - no eye contact no talking no interaction just business. Inday tme curtains open loads of chat etc.

I found that they started to go longer in the evening at about 6 - 8 weeks and so introduced a bath and massage and snuggle really quietly at ,say 6 30 (or whenever fits in). Put them in their cot after the feed and go away for 10 minutes. Dont forget to wind them thoroughly... even if they wake up at 11pm its bliss to get an evening to youreelves. then revert to noght routne above.

HTH(mind you my 6 monther should read this and obey)

Oh yes - fingers are VITAL

bunnyrabbit I seem to remember that for the first few weeks we put dd in her moses basket in the living room with us during the evenings. Sometimes she slept and sometimes she didn't. I don't think you can force this one, they just sort of slip into it.

I don't agree with much of Gina Ford but I do think her sleep routines are a good basis for first time mums. As long as you remember that the baby will sleep when he wants to and eat when he's hungry and don't get frustrated when it doesn't work, I should say get the horrible blue book and just read a bit about the suggested routines.

Don't remember dd being very into night/day stuff until about 8 weeks.

(But then being a little draculette she sleeps at night of course )

Hi Bunnyrabbit, it took a couple of weeks for my DS (now 12 wks) to know what night and day was. He slept for 2-3hr stretches during the day and was up for a couple of hours after each night feed (which were every 2-2.5hrs in the night). You've just got to work at the lots of light, fun and games during the day and v.v. low light in the night with no eye contact or talking. We would just pace and bounce baby for the 1-2 hrs until he understood that we weren't up for playing in the dark.

The first couple of weeks are very knackering, but you will eventually swing it round and gradually the 2-3hr sleep starts to happen in the evening and he will fall into a eat-play-sleep-eat-play-sleep pattern during the day.

Good luck and enjoy being a new mum!

I found with dd that it really helped us to leave landing light on all night and bedroom door slightly ajar. This gave me enough light to bf by in the early days when I was still learning without waking her, dh and me up totally by putting a light on. She was about 3 weeks old before she twigged that at certain times of the day mummy and daddy didn't chat to her if she was awake, just fed her and snuggled back to sleep.