Correlation between daytime and night time sleep??

[tintinenamerique]

My 5.5 week old tends to sleep really well in the day and okish at night (usually 7.30pm-10pm, 11pm-2am then 3am-5am).

There have been some nights more recently where he's waking every 2 hours for a feed and doesn't settle as easily back to sleep.

Should I be thinking about trying to prevent him from sleeping so much during the day (he probably sleeps for around 5-7 hrs throughout the day). And if so, how and at what point?

Or might this latest behaviour be down to 6-week growth spurt and/or the heat and he'll go back to his original sleeping pattern of his own accord?

He is definitely likely to be feeding more for the 6 week spurt - it's a big one!

There are two schools of thought. Old school tends to go for - keep them awake as much as possible in the day, tire them out and they will sleep at night as they're so tired. I know a few babies who this worked for, with a ten minute nap or so after each feed. DS needed his naps big time though and would have been an overtired mess if we'd have done this!

On the other hand, there's a school of thought that sleep begets sleep. I go for this one. I used this chart to gauge how much sleep by age and found it a good guide, worked for DS anyway.

www.mybabysleepguide.com/2013/02/average-sleep-charts-by-age.html

So at 6 weeks, an awake time of an hour before they're off to sleep again. Living the dream! This includes feeding time so mainly waking up, eating and then back to sleep again really.

Sounds like they're doing pretty well to me. You could try and make sure that the daytime naps are a maximum of two hours so along the lines of the following;

7am wake and feed
8am sleep
10am wake and feed
11am sleep
1pm wake and feed
2pm sleep
4pm wake and feed
5pm sleep
7pm wake and feed. Bedtime routine
8pm feed again and sleep

Nighttime however you can. Maybe a dreamfeed when it's time to go to bed. I just used to take a mental note of the last time he woke up/ate/went to sleep and went from there. Every day was a little different.

Thank you so much - that's really useful. Looks like we're not too far off the mark, let's hope the eating every 2 hours sorts itself out!