day vs night sleep with 7 week old

[curlyLJ]

Anyone know why there seems to be such a vast difference in how babies settle for naps in the day compared to nighttime sleep?

DD2 (7 weeks tomorrow) settles and sleeps beautifully in the day, she can self settle for naps in her basket with white noise and (sometimes) a dummy, or will sleep in the car or pram if we're out - she will sleep happily for 2hrs, sometimes longer.

Nighttime however is an entirely different story and she takes ages to settle, wont take the dummy, gets angry/agitated, fights being rocked/cuddled to sleep etc etc and we're both awake into the early hours. Even if I get her settled at say 10.30pm, she will often wake after as little as 5 or up to 45 minutes, and it all starts again. Last night it took until 3.30am for her to properly get to sleep and that was after me sitting with her while she cried until she zonked out (20 mins) as she was getting worse the more I picked her up. She then slept for 3 hrs.

I don't get it, the only real difference is that the room is dark (and that I want to sleep too of course!) She has managed a couple of 4 and even two 5hr stretches, so I know she can do it.

It's a mystery to me.

Aren't we meant to be diurnal? So you'd think babies would be pre-programmed to sleep at night. Seems like the little buggers know different.

My only advice is sleep when she does if you can. She'll sort it out in the end - with a little help from you.

Good luck!

Could she be overtired? My LO (12wks) can be much harder to settle if she's been awake for too long come bedtime. At about 7 wks she was napping til 6ish for a 7:30ish bedtime?

(I know it's not common to have implemented such an early bedtime this soon but it worked for her and us)

I guess she could be overtired, but she spends all evening cluster feeding and doesn't conk out until she is suitably full!

I am hoping things will settle down a bit once she grows out of the cluster feeds.

She woke up after 45 minutes last night again, despite going down at 10pm relatively easily. I then couldn't settle her without feeding. Again. Although she did go back to sleep by midnight, so not as bad as the night before...