3.5 week old sleeping advice

[rnicholson1990]

My 3.5 week old tends to wake during night on the 3 hourly mark (often under), however once fed, winded and changed she can take a further hour + to settle back to sleep as she is wide awake so she doesn't actually go the full 3 hours sleeping. We keep lights off (have a feeding night light) and try to reduce any stimulation but she still seems to not want to settle back down. Last night it took 2 hours after the first wake up to get het back off to sleep. She does have bad gas which may impact on it. She us breastfed, i think we may also be having problems with fast let down as she has recently been ''thrashing' during some feeds (more so on an evening and night). Any advice?

Sounds very normal to me OP. I bought a rocking base for the moses basket which did help settle DS at that age although it took ages to rock him to sleep. By 8 weeks we were co-sleeping and that was a real turning point - I could bf laying next to him, didn't have to disrupt him by transferring him to basket and we both got a lot more sleep! 3 weeks is also a growth spurt time so your baby may well be hungrier / grumpier. It does improve!

It does sound normal. It takes time for babies to learn the difference between night and day. Time will improve all of the issues you describe.

It is still such early days. They do wake very frequently to start with, but for rapid re-settling and minimum disruption of sleep, I will probably be flamed, I recommend co-sleeping and feeding to sleep.

thanks everyone. I'm hoping if we can tackle the feeding problem things will get easier (haha wishful thinking maybe)

She doesn't know what is day or night yet. And it is biologically normal to wake and feed frequently- their stomachs are TINY and BM is easily digested.

Thanks everyone. She is doing well with her weight she had put on 2lbs 2oz on 17 days at last weigh clinic; she didn't lose any birth weight. I worry as health visitor said i might be over feeding her, I'm feeding on demand, max we have gone without is around 3 hours but usually its under 2.5, at times alot more frequent than that, although it is very hot atm...

It is not possible to overfeed a BF baby at that age, what BOLLOCKS

You can't overfeed really. They want they want, mine used to purse his little lips closed when he had had enough!

Sounds very normal. Don't worry about a little bit of co sleeping in the early weeks even if you don't plan on doing it long term. We resorted to it a fair bit in the first 3 months but at 1yo now he is very happy in his cot

I thought the same about not being able to overfeed, lm a FTM so after she said that i started to doubt what we had been doing, but ill continue as we are as she is doing well with weight. Thanks for all the help and advice. We have a bed side crib which attaches to bed like co sleeping but may need to explore all other options ☺

Kellymom has some good tips on fast let down - the ones I remember were to feed while you're lying back (so gravity works against the flow), and hand express into a cloth/bottle until the flow calms down a bit. If she's not dirty you should be fine with not changing the nappy after feeding which may also help as feeding/gentle winding can be soothing but a nappy change definitely wakes a child up.

Are you changing her after the feed? I would either not change her or do it during e.g. feed one side, change then the other, as it often wakes them up.

I agree you can't overfeed a breastfed baby. The breast milk changes (gets more watery) if needed, plus you can't judge quantities. At that age DD fed basically hourly from 3/4 am until the evening, when she cluster fed. She then managed 2 3 hour stretches over night. Good luck!