10 week old won't sleep untill 11pm

[Louise74]

My 10 week baby girl won't sleep until 11pm each night (sometimes much later) and needs about 2 hours of constant breast feeding first!! She then wakes 2-3 times in the night to feed, taking about an hour each time, but settles easily after each feed. She doesn't nap much in the day (1-2 hrs max) unless I take her out in the pram in which case she can sleep for hours. I get her up sometime between 7am and 9am each morning, depending when I lie in until. Also currently she has no real bedtime routine other than putting on her sleeping bag and feeding her in the darkened bedroom - other mums' routines all seem to centre around bathtime but I only bath her once a week due to dry skin. She hardly cries at all, partly because I don't let her (I'm too much off a big softie!) but we really need to reclaim our evenings as we get no time to ourselves whatsoever and I'm starting to feel quite trapped, like I really need just a few hours away from her!!! Sorry for the rambling - hope someone can help!! Also if some people could tell me "typical" (or at least example) sleep and nap times for this age I would be v v greatful!!!

Louise - afraid to say it but that is pretty normal - DS2 is 15 weeks old and goes to bed some where between 8.45 and 10.15 depending on his feed ,he has about 3 naps during the day, anywhere between 30 mins to 2 hours ( have found they have got more as he get older) - he does have a bottle between 6-7 ( before or after bath depending on time) so i could out him down then and do a " dream feed " but he is very active this time of night, i follow the same routine that i did with my first ds and we never ever have any sleep problems with him ( he is 5 ) - she may be going threw a growth spurt aswell at the mo - It will get easier

Louise, my DS was the same as your DD at 10 weeks, going to bed at around 11pm and waking 8 - 9 am (I just enjoyed the lie-ins). Now at 5.5 months he typically goes to bed at 7 - 8 pm though the downside is he's up 6 - 7am (and doesn't sleep through either). He started to bring bedtime forward at around 14 weeks and was fairly consistant by around 18 weeks. He's still useless at daytime naps though.

I do, and from about 6 weeks have, the odd early evening night out leaving DP with a couple of bottles of EBM. Have you tried your LO on bottles so you can get out?

HTH

Hi Louise,
Sorry don't know you but the top tip anyone ever gave me (so definitely not my idea!) was "make a bedtime". It was a gradual solution but it worked. It sounds really obvious but it felt weird at first as I knew we would be up for hours afterwards. So we chose 8pm and did play - bath - feed quiet cuddle bed in dark room. Went away. Squawking ensued and ignored for a bit but then everything else that evening was v calm and quiet (me not baby) in this dark boring room when I really wanted to watch telly with babe latched on but there we are. (er not being preachy -- hope it doesn't sound like it). But the bonus was we felt like we had done a bed time and we did get more time in the evening in the end, and it did work. The evenings are the toughest aren't they, one is really on one's knees.

Sorry but that sounds pretty normal to me too. My DS1 was doing just what your DD did at that age. They do settle down though. After the first few weeks, we had a routine of giving him a wash (we only did weekly baths too), getting him into his sleepsuit and then feeding him until he fell asleep. He didn't sleep long during the day either, unless he was out but the minute you stopped moving he was awake again. He didn't sleep through the night until 10 months I am afraid and he didn't settle into a decent daytime sleep until he was about 1 yr but he got there in the end.

DS2 was a more settled baby altogether and would sleep more during the day and, because we already had a routine for DS1, he kind of fell in with that so it was easier.

It is a killer for a while but by about 20 weeks you will probably start to see that her bedtime has moved forward because she doesn't feed for 2 hours any more, so she falls into a decent sleep sooner and sleeps for longer periods. Hang in there - it won't last forever.

Hi my baby is 10 weeks too. Up until 8 weeks he used to nod on and off in his moses basket downstairs until 11pm then we would take him upstairs feed him in the nursery in the dark with the same music each night then transfer him to his crib in our room .We tried not to talk much and keep the room very dark. At 8 weeks I found that by 11pm I was exhausted as he was hardly sleeping in the day or evening. I decided to try bringing his bottle forward-meant adjusting daytime feeds- and having last feed at 9.30pm-with the same routine. Sure enough after 60mins of dummy in and out he was asleep. 2 weeks on he,s going down at 7.15ish. He still niggles for 15mins or so but after that is fine.
He isn,t a great daytime sleeping and this is my next challenge-but I guess I can,t have everything.
Any how I,d try a simple routine but don,t lift baby out of bed once he/she has been put down -even if you have to lie there with him/her whilst they are awake.
Good luck.