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3 week old baby wide awake all night

1 reply

babyhamish · 05/06/2017 09:07

Hoping someone has some good tips to help. 3 week old baby has decided that her favourite thing to do is be wide awake from 1am til 5am for the last couple of nights. She feeds when she wakes so its not that shes hungry as wont go back on breast when shes had enough but then wont go back to sleep or back in moses basket. She's very content if I hold her just not at all sleepy and just cries if I put her back in moses basket. She has a good balance of sleep and awake through the day and I have tried keeping the bedroom dark and quiet/bright and with normal background noise in day. Any tips greatly appreciated to help her sleep at night as I don't wanna run the risk of falling asleep on her!

OP posts:
FATEdestiny · 05/06/2017 12:22

This isn't an hour night and day, it's an issue about your newborn awake time.

A newborn baby should be asleep most of the time. Over 24 hours, so day and night the same.

Awake time at this age should simply be a matter of baby waking, being fed, nappy check, quick wind and cuddle and back to sleep. Depending in how efficient breastfeeding Is, this may just be 30 minutes awake, or maybe 45 minutes. But that's it.

Over 24 hours you should just be expecting baby to be awake when a need isn't met (primarily hunger, also comfort from nappy or temperature or pain) and then in the passive state, when all needs are met, to be asleep.

So the red flag in your post is 4 hours awake.

It would make no difference when that happened - day, night, morning, evening. It's wildly too long to be awake. It's therefore going to kead to baby being over tired and exhausted.

It suggests you maybe need some guidance on ways to help baby get to slerp. What do you currently do to ger baby to sleep? I would suggest:

  • no longer than 1h awake, at any time. Less in the night.
  • comfort sucking will help baby get to sleep. So feed to sleep or give dummy.
  • recreating the right, enclosed, secure feeling of the womb nay help. Try swaddling.
  • movement. Try gently rocking or swaying baby whilst swaddled and with a dumny in their mouth. In the daytime a bouncy chair may help.
  • feed, feed, feed, feed. The most common reason for a newborn newborn to not sleep is hunger.
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