Nocturnal Newborn

[WatersBroken]

Hi everyone

Hoping for some advice!

Our newborn (12 days) is hardly awake during the day but at night it's a different story! During the day he hardly even opens his eyes.

We've not really been able to play with him much in the day, have tried waking him but doesn't work very well.

Obviously means he is awake most of the night.. so he's probably then even more tired in the day

Any tips to switch this round so we have day time play and longer than 45 mins sleep at a time in the night?

Thanks

Babies that age don't really play. It's just a cycle of feeding, changing, sleeping and occasionally their eyes are open for a bit.

Try and get out for a walk first thing in the morning to help get his circadian rhythm going, and the usual dark and quiet during the night and light bright and noisy during the day. Soon enough his body clock will adjust to normal

When DD was that age we made a big deal of night time (dark, quiet, uninteresting) and of day time (bright, engaging). It took her a few weeks for circadian rhythms to kick in. Bear in mind, she'd been in the dark for 9.5 months by that point, darkness and daylight meant nothing to her.

I don't know if it approach helped, but over time she gradually got used to night time being rest time and daytime being more active.

Oh and the 40-45 minutes sleep cycle is very normal at that age, it helps to get them to switch from one sleep cycle to the next, we did that with Ewan the Dream Sheep. She woke up, we turned Ewan on, she dozed back off (kinda, I mean, or wasn't magic). If she didn't size back off we took it as a sign she was hungry.

Newborn babies mostly sleep all of the time, day and night.

It's an endless cycle of

• Wake
• Feed
• Nappy Check (which counts for floor time play)
• Wind
• Back to sleep

There's no real "play" or very much awake time at all at 12 days old.

Just keep your daytime light and nightime dark, but don't limit sleep for either.

It doesn't n ed to be Ewan, I'd imagine any rhythmical white noise/wombish sound would help.

A 12 day old baby doesn't exactly play

I don't necessarily mean play but even looking around, or even tummy time.

We've not been able to do any as he's just asleep straight after a feed in the day.

But at night he's looking around for ages after a feed! So if it was in the day we could then do some tummy time etc.

Babies don't know what day and night are. Keep night time dark and quiet while feeding / changing. He'll get it eventually.

Is the belly button healed where the umbilical cord came off?

You can't do tummy time until it's healed.

Your rushing, no need to run before you can walk. Plenty of time.

It will take a good while for this to change. There's nothing you can really do to accelerate normal development.
I found getting outside and going for a walk outdoors made me feel like I was helping the baby learn day and night, but it was good for me too.
You are going to have a lot of broken sleep for months to come I'm afraid. Try and nap yourself during the day when the baby sleeps.

@FATEdestiny oh I didn't know that! I read they can do it from day one in the hospital not that it matters as I've not been able to do any lol

Yeah I wouldn't bother with tummy time just yet, 12 days is very early for that. All they do at that age is eat and sleep. Make the most of it!

@blindmansbluff oh okay, maybe I've done too much googling as it's all saying I should be trying to play with him and do tummy time was feeling like a bad parent!

We've been going for walks etc in the day so hopefully it'll start switching round soon, in the mean time lots of day time naps for us I think

I just didn't want to be doing anything wrong and mess up his sleeping long term!

I know they say tummy time from birth but I don't know anyone who has done that. Most start a few weeks in I think. DD developed head control quite early as she was a nosey monkey and I don't think we started til she was over a month old.

I wouldn't worry at the moment, baby will get it as time goes on. Set yourself up to be nocturnal for a bit if you have to and like PP said get out for a walk in the mornings to try and encourage the circadian rhythm. It will just come at some point. Until they're a few months old I don't think you can really do anything to help sleep, it just happens when it happens so go with it. I was really lucky with DD, she's never really been one for being up in the night. But she was a poor napper in the day for ages and hated the pram until it could be a pushchairs so barely any walks until she was 5 months!

Not sure what your night time set up is but things that really help babies settle for sleep are white noise (sounds like in the womb) being swaddled (you can buy zip up grow bags so they can’t get out of them) and using a really dim red light instead of the traditional yellow light. All these things help to replicate how they feel in your tummy. The sleep will come eventually, it feels like it never will but it does. I wouldn’t worry about baby sleeping all day especially this young :)

At 12 days old I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m nocturnal anyways so it didn’t make a difference for us, but try to be a bit nocturnal yourself. We watched ALL of Law&Order:SVU at night when he wouldn’t sleep and if I hadn’t gotten any sleep at all I just slept with him in the day time. So I guess my advice is enjoy it, treat night time as day time if you can, it’ll get better.

My baby was awake cluster feeding all night for the first two weeks. I barely got any sleep at all overnight so had to try and catch up during the day. Was horrible! But gradually from two weeks or so onwards she started sleeping more and more at night. I heard that getting them lots of daylight through walks during the day can help set their internal clock.

As others have said the days of the first few weeks we're just sleep, feed, change nappy, +/- cry then repeat. I think we got the playmat out once she was 4-5wks old. Before that I don't think they can engage much with play do you're not missing out yet!