8 week old sleep - am I expecting too much?

[hopingforapeainapod]

Hi all, FTM here and son is 8 weeks old tomorrow. At night baby boy still wakes up every 3 hours religiously for a feed (he is bottle fed and we do a mixture of expressed breast milk and formula). I know that’s not ‘bad’ for a newborn but a) by the time we finish the feed / change his nappy / settle him again we may only have 2 hours max sleep before he is up again, and it can often take me a while to drift off back to sleep myself… and b) lots of babies on my NCT group now seem to be sleeping for 5-6 hour stretches - a friend of mine’s baby who is only a week older sleeps regularly from 12am - 6am/7am - what I would give!! My husband and I do shifts but he has a demanding job and I know he’s finding it exhausting, and I find myself getting frustrated because it has been this way since he was born and I thought he might be able to go a bit longer now…

Basically I’m wondering if there is anything I can realistically do to try and get him to sleep for longer stretches at this stage or if I just need to accept this is normal. Should I try and give him more feeds / bigger feeds during the day? He’s still averaging 7-8 feeds a day at the moment…

Honestly I think that sounds really good for an 8 week old! I know it is really difficult but honestly it does pass and get easier. If you think he’s waking due to hunger though you could try a dream feed or increasing day time feeds x

That’s really good. I changed the nappy before the feed. My second slept in three hour blocks it was brilliant. My first woke every 45 mins for almost a year!

Completely normal and really good for an 8 week old. At the same age my dd was feeding every 2 hours at least. My 11 month old now still has a couple of night feeds.

I would say though that unless it’s a poo nappy you don’t need to change the nappy at every feed. It wakes baby up and disturbs the night.

3 hours is great for a 8 week old! My first was a 1-2 hour waker at night for a fair few months. Then up every 3-4 hours until at least 1 years old.

My biggest advise is do not compare with NCT or friends babies. It will just make you miserable and honestly probably isn't the full picture. People only brag about the good things not the bad.

Do not compare your child to others, no good will come of it. I remembered wants to cry when someone I knew complained their child had started waking up once a night, when mine wouldn't sleep for longer than 45 minutes!

One thing to check is whether the nappy actually needs changing every time? Wet is fine to leave as long as it isn't leaking. You will be waking the baby up more if changing it more than you n3ed.

Sounds normal to me.
Do you really need to change his nappy at every feed? Once mine stopped doing poos during the night, which was around two - three weeks old, I never changed nappies during the night. I also fed lying down with the baby next to me, which meant I didn't have to get up to feed.

Thanks all! I don’t necessarily change his nappy at every feed - we have had a few leakages recently as he’s a bit between sizes so have been a bit more paranoid! I should probably just be grateful it’s every 3 hours and not worse - I think I was just thrown by NCT friends celebrating their babies sleeping longer and suddenly felt like I must be doing something ‘wrong’… I think also as a first time mum I knew I would be sleep deprived but I just didn’t realise for how long for…!!

There's always someone at these groups that declares sleeping through the night by a month old. I found out very quickly that my definition of sleeping through the night was different to theirs! There are some miracle babies who do sleep well but their parents tend to be quiet about it because they don't want to jinx it. I had one baby who slept really well early on but it was to make up for his brother who woke every 39 minutes for a year and a half!

Perfectly normal, just exhausting…

Re leaking, make sure baby’s vest isn’t too tight!

There is a huge range of normal when it comes to infant sleep. It really is best not to compare.

Tbh you have a very long road ahead with regressions, leaps, illness and teething. Don’t start stressing about baby sleep already!

Whats feeding like during the day?

My DD is 7 weeks tomorrow and can do a 5/6 hour stretch at night but tends to snack all afternoon feeding every 2 hours or so and catnaps her way through the day.

That said my 1st was the same so it's probably just that I make good baby sleepers. (Eldest DD's sleep went to shit at 18 months when I could count a night's sleep in minutes- so I feel like I paid penance for the good sleep early on!)

@stackhead so he generally feeds every 3 hours, sometimes 4. He did have quite bad day/night confusion so tended to be sleepier during the day (and could sometimes go up to 4.5/5 hours between feeds) and more alert during the night but that seems to have got better and I’m making an effort to try and feed him every 3 hours during the day so he gets more calories before bedtime. He’s generally been having 120ml/4oz a feed, so we are going to try to increase that to 150ml/5oz to see if that makes a difference…

mines still like that and she’s 11 months!

Their stomachs are tiny at that age, it’s totally normal to wake regularly to feed, it’s actually less normal to sleep longer.
it can all change instantly too, all these good sleepers could have a terrible 4 month regression or suddenly stop sleeping in their own bed as toddlers,

It's perfectly normal.
All babies are different.
Lots of newish mums lie about life being wonderfully super.
The truth slips out when the babies start school

Sleep isn't linear so they may be celebrating now and in a few months be having less sleep again while you get more! I was rather smug at having a baby who slept 7-7 from 8weeks then bang on 4 months he started waking a lot again and didn't consistently sleep through the night until he was 4 years old 🤣

The golden advice I received when having my first was "lower your expectations and assume everyone having it easy is putting on a good face". Also that most babies see an improvement at about 6 weeks and a big improvement around 12 weeks. This latter was true but DC1 was so bad that the big improvement was still rubbish :)

My first was horrendous sleep wise - still waking up when DC2 was born - just didn't seem to need sleep. DC2 was a miracle sleeper right up until catching chicken pox at 8 months - took a year before night sleeping was fully restored.
The other two were variations on the first two.

Your NCT friends may be just lucky, they may have a wakeful toddler in front of them but all of you will look back on this "endless hell" and see it as a brief flash of time when they are grown. It just doesn't feel like it when you are amidst it.

Really pretty good for a 8 week old.

But it's exhausting

Don’t worry that your baby isn’t doing the same as others, their sleep will probably change soon anyway. It constantly changes. I’m still sleep deprived 4 years in!

Sounds ok to me and it's actually better than my 10 month old.... congratulations op

That's good for 8 weeks. I fed my son every 2 hours in the day which I think helped him sleep long stretches on a night