Day time naps, routine etc for a 6 week old

[boopdoop]

My DS is 6 weeks old and so far in the day I am just feeding on demand, then let if him nap when he wants etc... But I am concerned he isn't getting enough sleep and if getting overtired then distressed.

My question is how much should he be sleeping during the day now he is 6 wo, and when! I know it's too early to expect a routine but I don't want to get him into bad habits and if there is anything I can do to improve things the I want to!

He is so rubbish at going down to sleep at night I unless it's on someone, but that's a whole other post to do!!

Any advice appreciated. Thank you!

He "should" be doing around 5.5 hrs in the day and 10 at night but all babies are different so he may need more than this, he may need less. He's so new, if it were me I'd just enjoy the cuddles for now. You can do gentle sleep training including teaching him to self settle by putting him down drowsy from about four months if you like and more hardcore sleep training from about six months. He's too little to learn at the moment, if you see what I mean. If you want to get some structure into your day you could try following the EASY method - eat, activity, sleep, you. I forget who it's by, but if you google you should get more info.

For what it's worth I bf both mine on demand. They were both excellent sleepers until 4mo (DD) and 5mo (DS) and then regressed. With DD, our precious first born, we had spent months trying to encourage independent sleep from about 6 weeks and continued to wrestle with her from 4-9 months when we finally got her sorted. With DS we gave him a free pass until 6 months, held him, fed to sleep - all the things you shouldn't do - and enjoyed him. Last week we started sleep training after a month of incredibly poor sleep and after three days he was self settling for night time and the majority of his naps and establishing a napping routine.

I guess I'm saying, he's very little and there's plenty of time to get him into good habits, but make sure you do lots of cuddling too before he gets squirmy and curiouser about the world and won't sleep in your arms. Hope this helps.

My LO is 8wks and roughly feeds every 3hrs and is usually ready for a nap 1hr-1.5 after waking. Will sleep anything from 20mins-2hrs, I usually try to encourage her to sleep at least 40mins or she struggles.

Thanks, much appreciated.