5 week old baby - trouble getting to sleep

[potas]

Help - dont know if this is a problem as such or just due to his age but I have had it drummed into me not to let bad habits start so I'm fretting about what is best to do.
Baby is almost 5 week - is really good in general - naps during the day in car seat, rocky chair, in my arms, in sling etc. Feeding well. Generally happy.
About 5.30 at night he starts getting cranky and feeds more often - every 1 - 2 hours rather than 3 hours. We bath him and feed him and try to put him to bed about 7 - 7.30 - He is never tired though and is always unsettled and never falls asleep - we end up with one person up in our room till about 9.30 till he is fast asleep. He cries as soon as laid in moses basket - unless he is completely fast asleep. We usually end up having to feed him to sleep or rock him or shush him etc - occassionally we put him down just as he is falling asleep and he falls asleep in his moses basket but usually is coaxed to sleep and transfered
Basically I m I just setting myself up for problems later on by the way I am getting him to sleep - everyone says ..... you'll be rocking him to sleep for years or he'll never be able to get to sleep alone etc.
Is this true?
I suspect I need to get him napping in the day without using movement though sometimes he will nap in the rocky chair but without rocking. And progress from there.
Bizarely he is often very good at sleeping at night - some blips but often when I feed him I just put him back in his moses basket and he falls asleep himself again. I dont undertand why he does it then but not at 7pm.
Long and rambling question I know but if anyone has any advice I would be very grateful.

5 week old babies cannot form habits, bad or otherwise!

I think you're crazy to be sitting in a bedroom for 2 hours trying to get him to sleep - if he's not tired til 9.30pm, just keep him up with you and feed/cuddle him until he's asleep.

He is 5 weeks old. Tiny.

The goal at this age is to get them to sleep. Doesn't matter how.

You can worry about self settling etc etc when he's 5 months because quite frankly unless you have an easy baby, you're just stressing for nothing.

Your baby sounds tired hence being cranky come half 5 and wants to cluster feed. Let him. Try an earlier bedtime too - mine wanted to be asleep by 6/6.30pm.

5 weeks is very little wouldn't really worry about the 'rod for own back' type of argument. Neither would I worry about extra feeding during the evening, it's cluster feeding and although a pain now is usually helpful further down the line. What sort of time is the last nap of the day? Could your baby be overtired by 7pm? Are you breast feeding or bottle?

You're really overthinking this. He's 5 weeks old - you can't possibly be fretting about bad habits yet. The routine will come, and yes, there are things you can do to help that, but not yet. If he's not tired at 7 then don't put him down at 7. Your sanity is way more important than his routine.

Thanks. He is breastfed on demand. I can't work out if he is too tired or not toured. Stupid I know! He sleeps for about. 2-3. Hours mid afternoon so I think he probably isn't tired but then why does he get so cranky at half five? Like I say he is fed on demand and usually every hour around this time of day. I agree it is stupid to sit upstairs comforting him for hours in the evening but bringing him downstairs doesn't make much difference.

DS screamed constantly from 6pm til 10pm every night til he was 3 months old because he wanted to cluster feed. I thought he needed a bedtime routine. I was wrong. Unfortunately you probably just need to tough it out and accept DC will mostly be attached to your boob in the evening. It's hard work, but it is a good thing. No need to hide upstairs, I used to sit watching tv with DH downstairs but with the lights low. Just feed feed feed feed feed and enjoy the cuddles. DCs grow up so fast

Hi there, my baby is 7 weeks old and I agree with the rest of the posters, at such a young age you just have to go with the baby, routine comes later.

It is very normal for babies to be cranky from tea time onwards, my mum, midwife and health visitor told me this is likely to happen, it's something to do with them setting our hormones off to produce more milk to last through the night. What you are experiences is supposed to happen!

What I do is keep the baby with me till I go to bed, sleeps, changes, feeds all continue in whatever room I'm in, then after last feed before my bedtime he goes into the Moses and we get into bed.

I understand the 'rod for your own back theory' but at the moment I'm going with the flow and enjoying every minute of my gorgeous first born, I'm quite happy to get into a routine when he is a bit older.

So I suggest you stop all this and keep him with you until you go to bed or at least until he's got over the tea time craziness. You'll enjoy the baby more that way :0)

Sorry I've just seen you state 'it doesn't make much difference we take him downstairs'. Well it won't to the baby but it will to you when your sat watching tv cuddling baby with your feet up on the sofa instead of leaning over a Moses basket for 2 hours!

Plenty of time for relentless bedtime routines when they are avoiding sleeping in their own cots in their own rooms!

I agree with the others - at 5 weeks he doesn't have a clue what bedtime is so you're just making life miserable for yourselves trying to implement one. We'd let ds fall asleep in his bouncy chair / moses basket downstairs and then just carry him up with us when we went to bed.. He's now 10 weeks and goes to bed at 7pm as he just sort of seemed to get tired about them at about 8 weeks and so we capitalised on that and started settling him upstairs... He now sleeps 7-5am ! So it will happen... :) - wouldn't worry a jot at 5 weeks though!

mine is 4 months old and I'm not worrying about routine or settling. he's having a big growth spurt and wants to feed a lot in the evening, so he just cuddles on my knee on my feeding pillow till i go to bed.

the rod for your back stuff is pants.

i did the same with his big brother, also fed and cuddled him to sleep till he didn't want it any more and he sleeps well.

I'm so going to miss cuddling DS2 of an evening when he actually has a bedtime!

He gets tired at 5.30pm because he's 5 weeks old. Most babies that age only tolerate being awake an hour, 2 hours at a maximum before they are exhausted. Many books which have routines such as gina ford are a little unrealistic for tiny babies. also if you read the gina ford book, it says that her routines are based on the easy babies

I've had my second DC and I had forgotten just how tired they get! I had to get dd asleep by 6pm until she was 4 months old otherwise she'd flip then not settle until 9/10pm. I also got her up at the same time each morning which helped her get into a loose routine (her older brother dictated that).

I did like another poster says, kept them with me downstairs til I went to bed. Their routines change all the time when they're little, so he won't get into 'bad' habits. He's also coming up on the 6 week growth spurt. Enjoy the cuddles and being waited on while you're stuck on the sofa!

Sounds like he wants to cluster feed. My DD was like this from 7/8pm every night for approx 5-6hrs until she was 12wks old. She'd feed practically non-stop for those 6hrs just going from side to side and crying inbetween. It's tough but hard going. I'd try feeding him and when he comes off one side put him on the other, repeat as necessary. She'd also fuss at the boob during this time. Sometimes she might have a 15min nap during that time but then it was wake, scream and boob again.

He's only 5 weeks. It's too early for routines. Just go with the flow and ignore the people who tell you otherwise.

What he does at night is called cluster-feeding and totally normal. DD has feeding on and off constantly between 5 and 11 at night. It's what tiny babies do.

I'm with everyone else far too early to worry just keep baby with u until u go to bed. I had a baby who would need rocked to sleep but by 5 months he'd grown out of it and settled for bed and naps, he does all his naps in his bed too.

I agree with all the other posters that it is too early to create bad habits. But I do agree with you wanting to get some sort of a routine. It is hectic in those first weeks, that just have a rough idea of what was going to happen at a certain time really helped me - if not the baby :) Also I was desperate for her to go to bed, as I was bloody knackered and wanted an hour or two to myself before having to wake up all night and get up at the crack of dawn and repeat the whole thing again.

To give you some idea that things will develop and you are not "making a rod for your own back" - that classic bashing stick!

• My little daughter first would only go to sleep on my chest at night - that is where she slept for the first 6 weeks. (Baby nurse nearly had a fit when she heard that!)
• Then in the middle of the night she would sleep by herself in the cot after a feed
• After 2-3 months she would allow herself to put into the cot at the beginning of the night after feeding and rocking (while I watched the tv)
• Now at 6 months she goes down to bed by herself and can soothe herself to sleep (on a good day) and even sleeps through the whole night (again on a good day).

I believe that babies need to develop their self-soothing and getting-to-sleep skills. Some of them just need a little more help.