Resisting sleep - does it improve?

[Katekoom]

My 5 week old does ok at night, sleeping 2-3 hour stints, but resists sleep throughout the day. Getting maybe 30mins at a time if i can get her down. As i type this shes had no more than 10minute cat naps since 11 o'clock.

Firstly should i be worried about this? And secondly does this improve with age?

Hi Kate

In that newborn stage babies basically just eat and sleep. You may get up to half an awake and happy after a feed, but mainly if baby isn't feeding then she should be sleeping or trying to get to sleep.

What are you doing to help her sleep?

My recommendations would be a bouncy chair (minus any play arch) for hands-off foot bouncing to sleep and a dummy, to allow for comfort sucking.

If you are doing all you can to get your baby to sleep and she still isn't, my next suggestion would be to consider if hunger is a factor - since a full tummy usually gets a newborn to the 'milk drunk' dozy, malleable, easy to sleep stage.

If you are already working hard to get constant sleep and you are confident she is feeding enough, then the next suggestion would be pain from wind.

To answer your questions - good sleep tends to promote better sleep and unfortunately poor sleep promotes worse sleep. So I would look at working very hard to get her to sleep more. Getting good sleep habits and lots of sleep are really important.

But shorter catnaps (of, say, 40 minutes) are common so don't be put off that you don't get naps of several hours in the daytime - that won't happen until somewhere around 4-6 months. Newborns need to feed more often than that through the daytime.

My baby started napping for longer than 20 mins at 4.5 months. He can now sleep for over an hour, sometimes even two hours, and I get to nap too which is wonderful! I read somewhere that nap length is genetic and there is nothing you can do to make your baby nap longer, but that at some point as they get older, longer naps will happen.

My baby was the same. Infact, I thought she was simply the kind of baby who didn't sleep in the day until I realised I had to work at it!

Feeding to sleep, a dummy and rocking (standing up) and white noise are the only things that have ever worked for us. (She has only fallen asleep out of my arms in the crib once!!)

She has only just started napping for more than 40 minutes at a time and she's 13 weeks old. She tends to have 2-3 naps a day.

30-40 minute catnaps are very normal for little babies. You will find they lengthen in time. Mine started sleeping 1-2 hours at a time after 6 months.

Just make sure baby isn't getting overtired. Only let them stay awake for an hour or so before trying to settle them again by feeding/rocking/swaddling etc

Forget trying to put them down too - if they sleep better in arms/sling then just roll with it.

I used white noise, my DS was like this as a newborn. It turned out that he needed help getting to sleep before he became overtired and the white noise used to help with this. Once he was overtired it was impossible to get him to sleep, he's the same now and he's two! But the good thing has always been that if I could catch him before he was overtired then he'd sleep very well.

5 weeks is still tiny, it might be that a sling might work as the movements you make will remind him of being in the womb. At this age everything is different and it can be very unsettling for them.

My DD (now 4.5 months) was the same in early weeks. If I could go back, I really would do it differently...ie get her to sleep more than she did at the time. But within a couple of weeks I'd realised all the triggers & patterns & got her sleeping more. Few tips-

• swaddle (full swaddle with hands inside)...keeps them from hitting themselves or other things around them
• as much silence as you can afford (made everyone else tiptoe for weeks! & got majority of the sleeping don't before DD1 got home from school)
• naps every 2-3 hours...so about 5 naps a day of min 40 mins & max 1.2 hours (1 nap a day if I was lucky)
• always put her to bed in the same room as she sleeps - for familiar smells/sounds & sights

Keep at the trial & error & find what works for you, but as PP said bad sleep promotes bad sleep...so work hard to get her to sleep & keep her asleep.