2 month old awake at night

[cds5163]

Is it normal for a 2 month old to be up all night? He's up most around 12am to 8am but will sleep all day. What can I do to change this?

My DS wasn't up all night but def every 3 hours for milk.
I know someone with this problem whose baby was premature. She copes by napping in the day. I hope you get some naps in and can sort this out. Sorry I don't have any advice.

Thank you and yes we can sleep all day, just hard when you have things to do during the day.

You're welcome. Of course, I bet it's tricky. Here's a website I found with tips: www.babycentre.co.uk/x553863/my-baby-is-up-all-night-and-sleeps-all-day
I've take a photo of most but the full article is in the link. Might help?

Another one:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.todaysparent.com/baby/baby-sleep-when-your-newborn-is-up-all-night/amp/

I'm sure you have googled but sometimes we don't have time for these things ourselves.

Thank these are great articles, I will pass them on to my boyfriend, since he's so worried.

Yes...Its common to see a 2 month old being awake at night. The baby is still getting used to the timings. You might have to be a bit patient.

At this age, baby should be mostly sleeping all day and also all night. Not one or the other. Awake time should never be more than 1h in one go at any time

Do you wake him for feeds in the day?

Hi thanks everyone for the replies. He most definitely stays up for longer than an hour and no I don't wake him up for feeds I just let up wake us, because I'm usually sleeping as well during this time. I'm trying to have patience with him I know he just a baby, but my boyfriend he just doesn't understand.I wish he would read up on it himself, its like he doesnt believe or he'll try to compare our baby to others. Is it too early to start sleep training, his schedule is all over the place?

@FATEdestiny gives consistently great advice on sleep on these boards but here’s my input

Our baby is the same age as yours and when he was turning day into night at 4 weeks old we had to follow a schedule. This included waking him for feeds. This was so:

• we could be secure in the knowledge he was eating enough for his weight in a 24h period

• we could monitor his health.. he was jaundiced at birth and hospitalised at 12 days old. I wanted to make sure he was actually ok and hadn’t “slipped into illness” IYSWIM

• we wanted to be able to see daylight. Personally I don’t think it’s normal for a baby to be asleep ALL day and awake ALL night. As FATE says it should kind of be both.

Imposing a schedule on a nocturnal baby feels counter intuitive but it’s helped my DS and the family as a whole. He’s now showing signs of going down to one feed only a night (at 0300). This has left us feeling much less frazzled and anxious and let’s us know that one of us will be up at that time and we can mentally brace for it if that makes sense?

I don’t envy you your position and all this is easier said than done, so massive and a big too x

From 8w until 16w my DS was awake from 11pm until 6am. He might have had a light snooze about 3am for about 20 minutes but that was it. He would then sleep from 6am until 11am and a few short naps throughout the day. I was on my knees with exhaustion. I went back to work when he was 12w and I also have an older child. I was very depressed because of it all.

I was very strict about waking him every 3 hours to feed and I would try to keep him awake as much as possible in the day but it didn't change anything, he was just really crabby all the time. No matter how long he was awake in the day he just couldn't seem to sleep at night.

A few weeks ago it all changed one night. He went to sleep at 10pm and I thought it was just a nap but he slept through until 5am, woke for a feed and went back to sleep until 8am. The third night he dropped the 5am feed and slept 10pm until 8am. He's done the same almost every night since.

One thing I have noticed is that if he doesn't get enough sleep in the day then he finds it very hard to fall asleep at night. So now I aim to feed him every 3 hours with 3-5 hours of naps throughout the day and 10 hours sleep at night.
It's working for us so far but it has only been a couple of weeks so it may change at any point. I hope not!

Hi thanks for the replies. I'm going to give sleeping training a try and put him on a schedule when my boyfriend goes on Christmas break. I can't do it alone, its just hard when I have him almost all day and lethargic. I fell asleep on him once and felt terrible. I just want enough energy to play with him. He's a good boy, I guess I just have to set up his days with a little more structure. @thelegendofbeans I hope your little one is doing ok. @poemsformyson I hope you're doing ok. I understand how you felt, but I can't be depressed, I try so hard not to get depressed because I got to find the strength to take care of my baby. My therapist told me I had post partum anxiety and it doesn't help that I'm too worried to sleep anyway but I'm patient and I'll get through it.

Have a look at 4th Trimester.

Are you breastfeeding or bottle feeding cds5163? It's much easier to go with a routine and structured day when formula feeding (but by no means impossible when breastfeeding).

The key thing to remember at this newborn stage are to be responsive to the point of predicting.

Aim to feed baby before any outward signs of bring hungry (but when you expect baby to be hungry). If you can't read baby's natural rhythms to predict feeds, at the very least feed as soon as you see the first signs if hunger.

The same is true for sleep. The ideal situation is to have baby asleep before showing tired signs. You for this by paying careful attention to baby's rhythms, but it's likely to be around 40-80 minutes from last waking when baby will be ready for another sleep.

If you feed baby when he wakes, it makes understanding baby's distress signs easier. After waking up, if baby has a full feed and a good winding, then you can know gorgeous certain that the next grumble, no matter how slight, is a tired sign (because you should be able to discount hunger causing distress).

This feeding on waking will only work if you have a method to get baby to sleep that us not feeding. I'd suggest a dummy and movement (bouncer or pushchair)

Is baby in a sling in the daytime with you?

Thanks for the replies. I am breast feeding and I do feed him the second he wakes. I guess I do feed him to sleep the majority of
the time too, but he can fall asleep in his chair or with his dummy too. No I don't have him in the sling often, he's probably in there once a week, but he's fallen asleep in there as well.

It might be harder this time of year but I always insisted on getting my DS into as much daylight as i possibly could through the day and then very dark after bathtime. I had the moses basket directly under the living room window for all daytime naps and made sure he went outside every day. During night feeds i would only use the torch from my phone on the bedside table. I basically tried to communicate with his instincts to say there are two parts of the day, one is light and busy, the other is dark and calm.

I read on here that 'sleep begets sleep' so i was careful to not let him go more than two hours maximum without a sleep, even if that meant going for a drive with him.