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3 week old witching hour happens in the early hours

4 replies

Peonyyyy · 16/01/2025 09:04

Our second child is 3 weeks old, so far she’s been a dream and has the usual fussiness in the evenings. The first few nights she needed to be held to sleep, we don’t want to get into co sleeping so we started to put her in the crib for short bursts overnight and she got used to it, going 2-3 hour stretches in there before waking for a feed. Usually we have her downstairs with us until we go to bed around 10, as we have an older child and want an evening.

this week she has started to get very unsettled overnight (for the last 3 nights) she will go down a bit in her crib before midnight but only 40 mins ish at a time and then between 12-3am ish she will be wide awake and not settle in the crib or even on us, her eyes are wide open. From 3-4am ish she will go down for a much longer stint eg 3-4 hours and will usually sleep in in the morning which is kind of useful while we get ourselves and the older child ready. I tend to get her up around 7.30-8 but she could probably sleep longer.

does anyone else have this issue? She seems very uncomfortable and sleeps better once she is worn out at the end of the night.

she is very sleepy and chilled during the day, having a feed (she’s formula fed) then goes back down in her Moses basket which we carry from room to room with us. We take her out most days but she is mostly asleep in the pram/carrier. We have her in the daylight all day and her older brother is usually playing noisily in the same room, mostly she is sleeping or feeding but sometimes she watches us.

is this just day/night confusion and being a newborn and we just need to wait until she is more awake in the day? Or should we start putting her to bed earlier in the evening to move the good bit of sleep earlier so she’s more in sync with us?

we don’t think there’s an issue with her formula, she is fine during the day and weeing/pooing as normal, it’s literally just in the evening (although sometimes she’s very chilled in the evening) and at night until 3am.

we are knackered!

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
VerityBlueSky · 16/01/2025 17:07

She doesn't know the difference from night and day until 4 month sleep regression. It's way too soon to think you'll have her asleep all night. There is no bedtime for her, so to speak.

Peonyyyy · 16/01/2025 21:11

@VerityBlueSky i think I read they know the difference between day and night from 4 weeks? My first slept 12 hours a night from 3 months so I don’t think it’s as late as that that they learn day from night.

obviously I’m not expecting her to sleep through already, but being awake for 3 hours in the middle of the night isn’t ideal, especially when she doesn’t settle much before that. We’re only getting about 3 hours sleep a night at the moment 🥱

i think I’ve just forgotten the newborn period and not sure how to handle it, with a second child we don’t get a lie in and when he’s not at nursery the days are full on!

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littleluncheon · 16/01/2025 21:29

Try an eat-play-sleep routine in the day, so after each feed do a little activity whether that it floor time, baby gym, a bath, carry her round the garden so she's awake for a bit before you settle her back to sleep. I'd just interact and encourage her to be awake for 30 minutes or so after every feed in the day.

Peonyyyy · 17/01/2025 09:38

@littleluncheon thank you that’s great advice! We did that with our first and it worked very well but I don’t think we started until later, and with our newborn I think we’ve been so tired and busy during the day with our older child that we’ve kind of been ok with her sleeping all the time. But if we could get her awake more in the day it would help us get longer stretches of sleep at night which would be better in the long run x

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