Hi all,
My 6 week old spends stretches of 5+ hours awake at a time, several times a day, most days. She’s pretty chill now we’ve cut out the dairy (EBM) and isn’t particularly ratty given the apparent lack of sleep she gets. She’s currently at 9 hours awake (aside from a 20 min nap in her bouncer!) and is still going strong.
I’d estimate she sleeps a total of 8 hours a day except the odd day, say once a week, where she gets the ‘normal’ 15+ hours of sleep.
She will easily go hours and hours on end laying in her cot flapping her arms about and muttering to herself, absolutely wide eyed, alert and responsive and most definitely wide awake. I’ll regularly pick her up every 15-30 mins to try and cuddle and soothe her into a tired state but if anything this just seems to piss her off and she’d rather be put down. It’s like she’s actually sleep resistant.
I’ve done the obvious stuff like remove all forms of stimulation, swaddle her (she hates this), read books to her, sway with her, initiate sleep routine as soon as she yawns etc, but nothing really gets her to go down unless she passes out herself, usually semi-upright in her bouncer! Sleep always comes on her terms and there doesn’t seem to be any method which regularly works.
All seems well otherwise. She’s gaining weight, nice and alert, feeding well and overall actually seems pretty happy, but it strikes me as very strange that this baby can sustain such long periods of awareness on such little sleep…
It sounds weird but I’m worried that I’m not more worried about it. She’s my first born so nothing to compare with but she genuinely doesn’t seem to mind all that much, but surely, surely this can’t be any good for her.
Any thoughts? Should I be concerned?