DS (19 weeks) has now been awake for 4 hours straight....

[trixymalixy]

...have been feeding him for most of that, my nipples are killing me.

He just will not shut his eyes.

All my usual techniques are just not working.

Have just left him lying in his cot shrieking.

Any advice welome......

take a deep breath, make yourself a cuppa and have 5 minutes to yourself. your LO will come to no harm and may go off to sleep while you are gone

have you left him cos you cant take any more and need a 5 minute break? If so have a quick breather, go pick him up and cuddle him
if you have left him cos "you think he needs to be able to do this on his own" then, go pick him up and cuddle him
he will go to sleep eventually, just take it in small steps.

Have left him because I didn't trust myself not to launch him out the window.

Everything has gone quiet. please please please let him have gone to sleep.

He's usually fairly easy to settle which is probably why I'm not coping with it.

if he is quiet he is almost certainly asleep
please dont stress yourself, I suspect that most of us have got to that launch out of the window stage, its not a problem if you leave them for a few mins, it IS a problem if you actually launch them out of the window
go to bed and hope he has a good night!

fingers crossed he is asleep, but don't peek in yet - if he's on the verge, he may stir!

My dd used to stay awake for up to 6 hours at a time from birth. I found that putting her in a sling and getting on with things worked wonders.

Trixy it's hard isn't it. Ethan does this sometimes and the other night was up until 9.30 and then woke after haf an hour for another feed. He regularly stays awake for hours though and only has 2 small naps a day. Just seems to be the way he is. When he stays awake in the evenings I usually just let him play under his play gym or play with some toys with him until he's ready to go to sleep. It is frustrating though.