What were the signs your dc were tired/sleepy?

[Asturimama]

I have a 10 week old ds and I think I may be missing some of the signs to recognise when he is tired, thus resulting in him getting overtired and me spending more time settling to sleep. He is a very alert baby and people have always commented how "wide awake" he was from day one, so I think due to this, we may be overstimulating him a bit.

Although I am happy to hold him and bob him up and down and I am not expecting him to self settle for a long time yet, I would like to try and reduce the amount of time I have to do this for (especially in the evening) since my shoulder muscles are not so happy with the bobbing...

Any clues to help me recognise when he is getting tired will be greatly appreciated!

I have an alert wide-awake baby too, who goes from super happy to super tired in about 2 mins. At 10 weeks old I was really bad at knowing when she was tired but I'm getting better now.

There aren't many signs so I keep a bit of an eye on the clock and pay attention to how long and when she sleeps. I'm getting better at predicting naps now. The other thing she does is get extra alert and a bit frantic just before getting overtired. Her movements get jerky too. Especially early on, her head control would start to go and her head would be bobbing up and down.

I think it's very easy to overstimulate her as her tiredness signals are easily confused with excitement!

Dd2 gets grizzly. Then I look up at the clock and if it's between an hour and three quarters and two hours since she woke up she's probably tired. No eye rubbing, no yawning, just fussy and not wanting to be put down. 5 months now but has been like this since just about three months.

Eye rubbing, staring into space, getting fractious/grizzly.

To be honest, feeding sent my kids off to sleep at that age, so I didnt ever have to notice the very minute signs. Once your baby is a little older it will start to become more obvious, promise!

Agree with eatmedates same signals here....and I missed them or at least they weren't as obvious to me until just recently (ds nearly 5 months). I think a lot of the behaviour I put down to colic/tummy ache etc in the early days were actually due to tiredness....not that there's any way to tell now. If signs not so obvious at the moment they will soon become more so. Good luck.

DS is 17 weeks and we have noticed that when he is tired he starts to "talk" a lot, just grizzling but it sounds like he's having a conversation with himself! He doesn't yawn or rub eyes much, but will writhe in your arms, try and spit his dummy out, basically it's like he's trying to convince you he is Not Tired At All!

Touching ears is also a giveaway. We have videos of dd1 grizzling and me bobbing her around while she throws up the last feed she didn't need. Having had more dcs it is obvious now that she was tired

By the time I got the signs it was too late. Liked scheduling naps and even if they didn't sleep then they just had a rest from stimulation (yes they would scream the house down initially but then realised that I wasn't coming in to play until later). Depends if you are a wing it kind of person or more of a routine person. I am the latter. Gina Ford is much maligned for good reason, but she worked for my two. If you do venture down that sort of route just use it as a very rough guide or you will jump out a window before lunchtime.

Gina worked for my two as well. Just the fact that a baby that age can't generally stay awake more than two-three hours without a nap made me look more carefully for cues. DD2 only sign is that she starts shouting loudly and won't be happy doing any activitiy.....

I think half the battle is heading it off before it starts - which a routine does but it is not for everyone. If mine got to the going postal stage I would sit them in a rocker in front of the ironing board and just iron with radio four on very quietly. Bored them into a calm stupor. Ran out of ironing though and ended up pretending. That was two years ago, should see the pile of ironing I have now.

Thank you all for your messages, BrianButterfield, your "trying to convince you that he is not tired at all" does sound like my ds

Sometimes there are obvious clues, he will yawn, stop giving you eye contact or rub his eyes, but I was wondering whether there were some earlier signs I was missing, although I am now thinking there may be no other signs and he just doesn't like to sleep during the day except when we are out and about for long periods of time.

I am not much of a routine person myself, but we'll see how it goes... I don't know whether he is overstimulated or just an insomniac... He does really well at night (we co sleep, and although he can wake up a lot most times he goes back to sleep straigt away, except for the one time around 3 or 4 when I get up change his nappy and go to the living room with him for around 30 minutes, so not bad at all), but today for instance, he hasn't had a nap longer than 40 minutes between 8am and 11pm, and I've spent the last 4 hours trying to get him to sleep.

He did fall asleep 4 times but always woke up again within 5 minutes, twice after transferring him to the carrycot and twice still in my arms while I was waiting for 5 minutes before putting him down...

I really hope he doesn't wake up before I finish typing this sentence....

things really start to settle down around now, particularly for a bedtime routine.
i had a gina book and a baby whisperer book with ds1 - baby whisperer had a good chart for signs and what they mean but i think worked on a 1 1/2hr routine and my babies were 2hr babies! i tried GF from day 1 with dc3 and he started to settle into the routine after a few weeks. he's always self settled, with a comforter and dummy now. With ds1 I would be sitting with him for at least 30mins most of the time to get him to sleep but now I put ds3 down, walk out and that's it.

touching ears

My ds starts to play with his ears. Once we hit two ears I know he's pretty shattered. My mom tells me I did exactly the same.

my dd use to raise her legs. took me forever to relise it was tiredness and not wind

Will look out for the touching the ears as I remember doing that myself until I was pretty old (probably 8 or 9), although I don't think ds even knows he does have ears yet :)

they would become very calm, just for a couple of moments.
miss that, which i did a lot of the time, and overtired messiness ensued.
no ear pulling, staring, grizzling, yawning - just straight from calm and still to screaming. nor would either feed to sleep.