My baby is a hamster...

[gdmpmtpp]

As in she's nocturnal!

Naps a lot during the day (gets tired usually after an hour) as is pretty easy to get to sleep, but from the evening onwards she's wide awake and fights sleep.. meaning she ends up overtired and gets herself badly worked up. It can be after midnight before she's settled and I can't ever imagine her settling for the night at the usual 7pm ish time.

If I let her nap less during the the day, she's horribly grouchy and generally ends up crying loudly and angrily

Any ideas of what I can do?
She's 9 weeks old. I know that's young but I have a lot of NCT friends who don't see to have the same issue and babies bed down for the night mid evening

Sounds normal and sounds like your NCT friends are liars. Mine didn't go down for 7pm til 16 weeks and according to friends that was early!

She shouted and cried with colic most nights til she was 14 weeks, too.

Are you breastfeeding? She probably just wants to cluster feed for hours in the evening. Or she's like mine and it just sort of wore off eventually between 3 and 4 months. Now she's nocturnal still but at least I'm lying down and it's quiet.

Thanks for the reply! Yes am BFing and mine also suffers from colic. She does seem to want to feed a lot in the evening, and I think it's partly for comfort too (she won't take a dummy).

The problem is that she feeds/uses me as a dummy and that seems to increase her intake of air, especially if she's been crying (I make sure her latch it ok, but she still manages to gulp air. This then exacerbates the colic and she finds it even harder to go to sleep (or wakes up soon after with a painful belly/wind). It's like a viscous circle and is much worse in the evening! Im using infacol, gripe water and trying to feed as upright as possible...

She's particularly tired from 5-7 and I can barely keep her awake. Then 7 onwards I can't get her off (she's either wide awake and happy or over tired and screaming!)

None of my three settled until midnight until they were about 4 months old. They cluster fed from 7pm-midnight.

Honestly, Infacol and gripe water are just snake oil. I'd give them up, give up trying to get her to settle for a particular time – she won't know day from night yet, let alone what bedtime is – and just cluster feed or, when she's doing the witching hour screaming thing, take it in turns with your partner to hold her.

Ours used to conk out if we ran the shower really loud. Then we'd take it in turns holding her - so she'd stay asleep - while we ate. Then bed and cosleeping. It's tough but it passes, it's all a phase.

I remember being in your position thinking that everyone got babies down for the night for this mythical 7pm and I was the only one up until 11pm trying to settle mine! Until he was around 13 weeks old we had the ‘witching hours’ - wasn’t quite colic but he was crying, whining, overtired and couldn’t sleep from around 6pm-11pm. He either didn’t want to feed at all or was constantly cluster feeding, it actually felt like he was angry at me! This eventually stopped and bedtime gradually got earlier. He didn’t start going to bed at 7:30pm until he was around 5 months old and this was completely led by him as he started dropping naps. What you describe is completely normal and it will pass, you’re doing a great job. Try not to listen to NCT friends, for some bizarre reason I have found that some mums tend to fib a bit when it comes to sleep!

9 week old babies sleep every couple of hours day and night - 7pm bedtime won’t be the norm for a veeeerrrry long time yet.

Top tip: don't believe anyone in your NCT group. Seriously, don't even ask them. Just don't.

Enjoy your baby.

If your baby is sleepy 5-7, have you tried bathing her at 5 and trying to put her down 'for the night' at 6? Mine were all in bed by 6pm from being a few days old. They slept in the dark and just woke to be fed and went straight back down.
I think a lot of the recommendations made today discourage sleep. If your baby is tired 5-7, why on earth would you not do the obvious thing and put her to bed?

@cathf yes I've tried putting her down earlier (6.30) and she just wakes up shortly after and treats it like a nap. I've tried putting her down at lots of different times 6.20, 7, 8, 9 etc to see if there's a sweet spot. We got a couple of nights where she slept from 8.30 which was great (one night she slept until 2am, the next it was 11pm) but at the moment she won't settle for a proper sleep until approx 11pm on average (and then tends to wake up at 2am ish, then every hour unless I let her sleep on me. The exhaustion is really getting me down.