7 wo baby gone from hardly sleeping in the day to sleeping 18hrs is this normal?

[pearl297]

My 7 week old DD has gone from not wanting to sleep very much at all during the day (just catching the odd hour in the car or out in the pram) to being very sleepy. In the last 3 days she has slept approx 18 hours a day where previously she'd been doing about 13/14 max.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar? it just seems like a big shift!

thanx

You could phone your health visitor and see what she says, but if there's one thing I've learnt in my ten weeks of being a mummy it's that everything is a phase and that things keep changing for no discernible reason! My DS slept pretty much all the time apart from feeds for first three weeks then stopped sleeping at all during the day and was a cranky, grouchy nightmare for a fortnight or so. Then he had a week of doing a huge 5-hour nap in the middle of the day but nothing else and now he does lots of little 30-minute catnaps.

When it comes to daytime sleep I just roll with it! He sleeps brilliantly at night which is the main thing. From talking to friends, it seems that a more consistent daytime pattern will hopefully emerge at around 16 weeks.

I wouldn't worry about your change in sleeping - am sure it will change again next week! I think the 'rule' is that as long as they're still waking up to be fed, sleeping lots is rarely something to worry about.

Thanks debhawk, she had a slight viral rash last week and the health visitor told me it was a virus 'coming out'. The rash cleared up and she has no other symptoms but i was concerned the sleeping meant she was under the weather. She still sleeping well at night so i'm thinking perhaps she is just getting over this virus. Last week i was worrying she wasn't getting enough sleep and this week its too much, think i perhaps need to relax a bit more.

No worries. I stress about daytime sleep too - generally, I don't think he gets enough. Any advice on daytime sleep that I've read is all about strict routines for naps and I just can't be bothered with it. There's only so much monotony I can handle!