Newborn Daytime Sleep - awake times

[LovelyLionfish]

I have a 7 week old DS. A couple of weeks ago I started really struggling with daytime naps - he would go to sleep OK usually but always seemed to be in a light sleep and require constant rocking to remain asleep (he has his naps in a Moses basket that rocks). I could sometimes rock enough to keep him asleep up to 2 hours, but he would be in such a light sleep and disturbed so easily. Often he slept somewhere between 20 minutes and 45 minutes. At this point I had an awake time of 45 minutes which sounded about right for his age.

I experimented a bit with awake times and I am now finding if he stays awake about 1 hour 45 minutes he still goes to sleep easily and will sleep for 2-3 hours with only a little occasional rocking and seemingly in a much deeper sleep. He is pretty cheery during the day, although he has a terrible witching 'hour' of screaming from about 7pm - 10pm, but this hasn't got noticeably worse since I changed his awake times. Sometimes he seems grouchy/tired a bit earlier in which case I put him down to nap sooner.

I feel like this works better for him, but 1 hour 45 just seems such a long time for a newborn to be awake. From my memory my older daughter slept pretty much constantly apart from feeding at this age. I worry he yawns a lot, but I don't think his yawning has increased and my daughter always yawned a lot so maybe I just have yawny babies!

I guess I was just looking for other people's ideas/experiences as I am really bad at trusting my parenting instincts, and I am worried he is suddenly going to become overly tired and I am going to massively regret it!

My 4mo doesn’t stay awake for 1h45!
At that age, they should be awake For 30-60 mins but no longer than 60 mins including settling time.
I would think the witching hour is still over tiredness if not from the long period awake, from the light sleep they’re in.
If they’re massively overtired, they’ll find it hard to get into a deep sleep so will wake easily and contribute to the over tiredness issue in general.
My DS went through a similar thing at that age so I played around with loads of settling techniques and had him nap on me for a few days straight to catch him back up.
Of course every baby is different but 1h45 at that age is a bit north of what they should be having.

1h 45 is a long awake time, but 2-3 hours is a very long nap so that may well be the reason.

Are all naps in the 2-3h range? In which case, I could imagine that an awake window in the region of 1h30-2h is about right (I wouldn't go more than 2h though).

If you get naps of differing lengths, then assuming an inflexible awake time (ie always 1h 45 regardless) is not going to help. For example if you have a baby having long naps then it's not unusual to fall into the routine of a long morning nap, long lunchtime nap, shorter tea time nap. That then lends itself to shorter awake times alongside shorter naps, longer awake times with longer naps.

The witching hour is often a nutritionally based issued, made worse by over tiredness. Not unusual for baby to want to constantly feed in the 7-10pm range. So up, up , up the feeding volumes and frequency in the evening. Also make evening a no awake time zone. So have a constant cycle of feed, sleep (even if just a doze in your arms) wake, feed, sleep, wake, feed, sleep, wake, feed, sleep... without having any proper awake time from 7pm through to your bedtime.

Thanks. Yes @FATEdestiny if he had a shorter nap for any reason then I would usually then have a shorter awake time. Although that does sometimes then lead to another dozy, short nap and we get stuck in a cycle.

The evening period I really struggle to feed him properly - he sort of latches on and off and pulls his head back with my nipple in my mouth. So it's quite uncomfortable and I don't think he eats much. We tend to have a cycle of ten minutes half feeding, ten minutes screaming, ten minutes dozing over and over all evening. But I do remember similar with my daughter and she stopped doing it very suddenly at 12 weeks, so we were kind of just riding it out.

Every day is very different, but with yesterday as an example do you think this looks OK:

8.30am - wake up
10.05-12.30 - nap
2.15-5pm - nap
6.00-6.30pm - nap
7-10 - dozing/screaming/feeding
10pm - sleep (usually 2 night feeds).

I just feel like I'm really struggling to work out what he needs.

(oh for an 8.30am wake up, you are sooooo lucky!)

Routine looks perfect to me. You could try for stretching the 5pm awake time through to 6.30-7pm ish in which you do bedtime routine (bath, night clothes etc) and call that proper bedtime, rather than a nap. Might not work, but worth a try.

The witching "hour" (or 3) screeching is a thing, as you know. Could be overtired. Could be feeding. So prioritise both in the evenings.

Would be worth starting to reduce movement to sleep (you mention rocking moses basket) and putting baby down awake - all of which will help develop better quality sleep habits.

Thanks @FATEdestiny (You gave me some very helpful advice under a different name when my DD was 10 months and awake for hours in the night so I trust your judgement!). I seem to remember my daughter had a lovely lie in every morning, until around the time we introduced an earlier bedtime when she started to wake up 5am so I'm just enjoying it while it lasts!

I think I would struggle with stretching the 5pm awake time at the moment because it's still very all over the place and sometimes he wakes from his 2nd nap nearer 4.

I just worry he is awake such a long time sometimes. Today has just felt a bit rubbish as he randomly only napped 25 minutes after lunch and then I couldn't work out when he needed to nap again and I struggled to get him back to sleep. I was worried he wasn't going to sleep enough today so he's napping on me at the moment.

Does him being a bit grizzly mean I have left the nap too long? He really doesn't seem to have any other tired signs apart from yawning lots which he just does all the time regardless! I don't mean full on screaming or anything, just a bit more unsettled and grumping if I put him down. Because usually I find if he is just a tiny bit grizzly he actually goes down pretty well.

Oh and I had thought it would be good to reduce rocking and start encouraging him to fall asleep himself as my daughter had a horrific sleep regression which lasted months and I would rather avoid that! But I feel like I need to crack putting him down at the right time before I have any chance of success.