Can a baby have too much sleep

[lborodad]

Hi All,

My daughter is 3 months old and some days it seems that all she does is sleep. She will sleep at night from about 1 - 2 am until 7 in the morning and this a quite consistent. Some days though she will only wake for short periods during the day and then fall asleep while she is being fed or just after she has fed and then sleep for a few hours, until it's time to feed again, or just before it is time to feed.

Today has been particularly bad as she has been grizzly when awake with it, and other than a short period this morning, it has been hard to get her to smile and engage for any less than 10 minutes or so.

This isn't every day, there are other days when she is awake a good portion of the day, and very happy with it, but days like this do worry us as first time parent.

So is it possible for a baby to sleep to much ?

Many thanks in advance.

It sounds completely normal but why she is going to bed at 1am?!

Most babies sleep from 7pm to 7am (with wakes up for feed) and sleep every 2 hours at that age during the day.

I was over generalising a bit, it's usually between midnight and 1. It's just the timings of her feeds, she eats every 4 hours, 5 times a day, so if she has her first feed at 7, that's 07:00, 11:00, 15:00, 19:00 and 23:00. Give or take an hour. She will usually sleep between the 19:00 and 23:00 feed and then wake up for the late feed and go to bed after this.

I honestly don't think you should worry about over sleeping. Just enjoy all the peace and quiet you get

(My DD never slept for more than 30 min at that age and had to be held upright to sleep!)

Sounds like a dream baby!

The sleeping between 7 & 11 is sleeping at night too you know!!

Mine at that age did the same - dreamfeed at half ten/eleven then up at seven. DH would feed her and pkay with her til he left for work (while I slept) and then put her back down to sleep and we would both wake at nine am.

Bloody marvellous!! It only needs adressing if her night time sleep gets bad.

Quick heads up though, they go through a random patch at about four months where their sleep goes haywire, but it will settle down after a few weeks, usually.

My DD was similar at this age. I wouldn't worry about it, it will hopefully mean she'll always be a good sleeper.

One thing I would recommend is having a bedtime routine to help her recognise that it's nighttime when she is a little older.

Hope it continues following the dreaded four month sleep regression!

I posted the same message about my DS a couple of months ago. There were days when he was hardly awake till 4pm in the afternoon (I remember once dropping him into a bath at 12 to check whether he was ok... he woke up briefly and then went straight back to sleep).

Enjoy your sleepy baby!

DS started waking up at about 20 weeks, but even now at almost 10 months he still loves his naps (3 a day of varying length). Nursery is amazed about his ability to play in one minute and lie on the floor sleeping the other, no settling / matrass / cuddly toy required...

Mine were sleepy babies too and only properly seemed to wake wake up around 6 months. They were still having 3 naps a day until 6 months. Enjoy it, when they start moving they don't stop!