17 days old and won't sleep during the day!!!

[Bex88]

Hey mummies! I need help!!!

My son is 17 days old and does not sleep during the day any more =\ He sleeps really well at night as of about 5 days old, only waking for feeds and the occasional unsettled period (that doesn't happen often now) so I'm really lucky there, but before that he used to be up all night crying and feeding constantly (I've had to put him on formula so he shouldn't be eating so erratically!). Now, as of about 8 days ago, he's been a nightmare during the day! He usually wants to be up after his feed between 5-6am, so I bring him out of the dim bedroom and into the lounge area where we spend our day times. From then on in, he refuses to be put to bed no matter how early I catch his tired signs (I'm not too good at picking them though) or what method I use to try to get him to sleep! He was happy in the first week to sleep in his room during the day and spent 99% of the day sleeping. Now he's started becoming more alert, he'll spend majority of the day awake and fighting sleep, crying and being extremely unsettled the whole day! For example, this morning he had me up at 5am and it's taken until about 11am or so to be able to get him to sleep again for a couple of hours at least. I've tried pretty much everything you can think of to get him settled for sleep: walking in the pram, carrying him around the house, rocking him in his bassinet, bouncing him in the bouncer, putting him in his swing, burping him, feeding him, changing him, keeping the noise levels up around the house (he isn't a fan of silence), turning things down, you name it and I guarantee I've tried it!! Just wondering if any one else has had this problem? I don't mind if he wants to be awake longer, when he's not over-tired, he's a very active and alert bubby, but I can't stand him being so miserable when I can't get him to sleep =( I'm worried it's going to affect his health/development if he keeps this up and it's REALLY REALLY wearing me down, I've had a couple of break downs now due to having such an unhappy baby for the last week =(

Get a sling and keep him with you would be my advice at 17 days ds would change him mind about how and who he'd want to go to sleep with. So I just went with the flow and the sling helped a lot.

Also while I don't know your reasons for stopping bfing, from what I remember feeding erratically is normal at that age, they cluster feed to up your supply and only have small tummies anyway so need to feed often.

Sling! DS was like this.

We used to wake up, feed, dress, 10 mins tummy time then he'd get tired. It was that quick. So I used to stick in the sling. I did a lot of walking outside - that got him to sleep pretty quickly.

Sling most definitely - at that age they need to be close to you, nothing better than the warmth and heartbeat of mummy - not to mention the movement - to send them off.