This is all normal, right?

[ateapotandacake]

Hello there I am a new mum and new to mumsnet although I've been lurking for a while.
Just wondering if I could have a little of your marvellous reassurance and advice?

My DS is 5 weeks now and FF. He is taking 2-3oz of formula every 1-3 hours. The 1 hour feeds are always at night. He naps a little longer during the day but at night he wakes 1-2 hourly, without fail. Before the clocks went back it was a little easier as his last night feed was at 5 so I could hand him to my fella as we have a shift system where I do 10-5 and he does evening and early morning (he works 12 hours and doesn't do well on little sleeps whereas I'm a shift worker so can cope better!) but since the clocks went back he is waking at 4 which means I'm doing 3/4 feeds overnight and getting NO sleep. But he's only 5 weeks. This is normal isn't it? He will get older and space out a bit? TELL ME THERE WILL BE A LIGHT AT THE END OF MY SLEEP DEPRIVED TUNNEL!
My DP gave me a lie in at the weekend which was heaven but 1 or 2 hour sleeps for a month has lost it's novelty a bit now!

You don't need any kind of established 'get up' time with a baby this tiny. For the first 6-12 weeks of life basically baby just sleeps most of the time. Any awake time will be mostly taken up by a feed, a nappy check, maybe a little cuddle for 10-15 minutes and then back to sleep. This is 24 hours a day - so day and night time.

I mention this because if you are doing hourly wake ups in the night and are feeding and back to sleep, why are you not just continuing this?

Indeed the newborn stage and early months of a baby's life is the time when you can keep the late mornings with your first child. Why not just continue the 'feed and back to bed' until 9am or even 10am? If you have no reason to get up with older children or work, why get up so early at all?

I am wondering if your baby isn't sleeping enough in the daytime and the disturbed nights are due to over-tiredness? (which in babies can cause a baby to have fretful, disturbed sleep).

Could you try establishing the frequent feeds through the daytime and making sure awake time is limited? No more than 30 minutes really, probably closer to 20 minutes at this tiny newborn age.

Just wake, feed, wind, nappy check, wind and quick cuddle, top-up feed with any left in the bottle - back to sleep. Repeat, repeat, repeat. This can continue day and night at this age. So you can move the same structure to your day/night up to your bedroom (with you in bed) at any stage and likewise keep it going while you are in bed in the morning.

To help with daytime sleep try a bouncy chair and a dummy.

Totally normal.

I hollow laugh at posts that say babies mainly sleep for the first 6-12 weeks. Mine didn't. Could crack out ten hours awake at a stretch. Also ate every 1-3 hours until she was six months old.

The sleep deprivation neaRly killed me. Take all the help you can, get a few nights off a week from DH. It does get better but it can take a really long time. Hang in there.

Both of these are really reassuring thank you! FATEdestiny I had been trying to wake up in the morning in order to Do Stuff but you're right, I can chill out a bit with it I think. And Ifiwasabadger (good name btw) he can merrily wake for the whole of the morning and evening without the slightest interest in sleep so perhaps I've one like you. I'll hang in there: it's not like they keep up this routine aged 16 is it?!

Hi, firstly I want to say I'm a ftm and don't know what the hell I'm doing but I have a FF 5 week old DS too so thought I would share my experience so far. He has 5oz at every feed and goes 3-4 hours between feeds. Has just started having last feed at half ten and sleeping through til about 4am. I am an insomniac by nature so can understand how people are being driven mad by sleep deprivation!! I may be lucky and just have an "easy" baby, but it seems to work for us, so maybe try giving him a bit more milk? I do have to wind one or twice during the feeds as my DS is a complete greedy guts and guzzles too quick! Also whoever says babies sleep all day LIES!! There is no pattern at all, sometimes he sleeps all day but yesterday the little bugger was awake for 8 hours straight!! So I would say there is no "normal"

Ds1 slept like Badger's. Could stay awake for 9 hours straight. Had days of 5 hours sleep in total in a 24 hour period. I went mad but HVs werent very helpful. They wete right about one thing: it doesnt stay like this forever. Things might not get steadily easier, it'll be better then worse then better, but they do get how sleep works.

I second the lie-in with baby. I used to hand ds1 to DH first thing and let me catch up sleep uninterrupted (v important) and he'd bring baby back to me before leaving for work but we d stay in bed. That way if baby dozed so could I (instead of being tempted to do stuff around the house) and if not then at least we were resting. I'd get up 11ish and havr a showet with baby in a bouncy chair in the bathroom.

We attempted sleep training at 4.5months. Ferber method. (We were desparate and friends recommended it). DISASTROUS. So we struggled on. Tried pick up put down method at 10m (much better) and pretty soon he became a champion sleeper. Still is (now 3y).

if you have a non sleeper then it's tough on you, no question. But waking often is very very normal this early. Thy havr womb lag with days amd nights switched over (in utero they would be awake at night because you're not rocking them to sleep like in the daytime and a relaxed uterus made moving about easier).

I can assure ypu though, ots nothing you are doing wrong. I have 3 dc and their sleep habits have been their own and seem hard wired. Dc3 is one of those legendary super sleepers I used to hate hearing about. Naps easily and slept on blocks of 3 to 4 hrs at night. Dc1 was horrendous, sleeping in 20min chunks, amd waking 9x a night. Dc2 was neither extreme and was like the babies in the books in terms of sleep habits and times.

However the best sleeper now is dc1, who started off the worst and I had less trouble with him in toddlerhood than my nct friends.