Advise on 9 week old sleeping pattern

[Becky77]

Hi there,

Nothing really urgent just wandering if you lot could advise me how I should be approaching aiming to get my 9 week old DD to sleep through.

She is a pretty good sleeper but I want to know what I should be doing to get more sleep or which feed I can expect to be dropped.

She is bottle fed at 7pm and DP puts her down in her cot... She usually takes about an hour to settle but then stays down until between 11pm and 1am when I bf and she settles quickly back to sleep in bed with me... Then she wakes at between 3-5am for another bf... She then doesn't settle so well and tends to wake every hour or 2 and I try and settle her back to sleep (obviously if she's not a had a feed in 3 hours I'll give her one).

Thoughts?

Too early to be worrying about it I would say. I drove myself nuts trying to figure out what was the best thing to do with my DS but everytime I thought I had things figured out he would change what he was doing, have a growth spurt or a jab and it all went out the window!

I was interested in this thread too but thanks Stefka.

I was just speaking from my experience - other people might have different advice. I wasted a lot of time getting stressed about this issue when I would have been better just relaxing and going with the flow for the first few months.

I think it is hard to predict which feed she will drop first - all the babies in my antenatal group have done totally different things.

Thanks for the responses... Anyone else got any differing views?

Um, 9 weeks is, IMO, too early to expect a baby to sleep through. a 12/1am and 3/4am wake up are pretty standard I think.

Just seeing 9 week old and "sleep pattern" in the thread title made me concerned. I think people have unrealistic expectations of when babies should "sleep through" often driven bt grandparents, friends claiming their kid slept through at 6 weeks etc.

Not having a go at all - I just think you shouldn't expect too much.

When should you "expect" a baby to "sleep through"?

Oh and she does co-sleep but this means my dp is in the spare room hence my asking about sleeping through.

Also I didn't say I was expecting her to sleep through NOW. I asked rather sensibly when and how I could expect her to sleep through... Surely this is a reasonable question and not one which should raise "concern".

Well based on my epxerience I'd say when solids were well established so should be after 6 months.

A bit of carrot puree will make bugger all difference to sleep patterns but when my ds was regualrly eating protein we started to see a difference.

I'd like to stress at this point that this is by no means encouragement to start early weaning! As I said - expectations need to be carefully set.

Becky I was trying to help - your thread title genuniely led me to believe you were expecting your dc to sleep through at 9 weeks.

I didn't want to see a bombed out mother fretting over something that was highly unlikley to happen.

As I said - I was trying to be helpful.

I'm sorry to say that I don't think you can do a lot to change a LO's sleeping pattern at such a young age. If she is your first, grab naps during the day when she is sleeping, it may feel wrong but will do you a lot of good.

You could try cluster feeding in the evening to see if it helps her to sleep longer but you may just have to wait until she is ready.

One night you'll wake up when her feed is due and she won't, simple as that. The strange thing is desperate as you are to get more sleep, it'll seem odd and it may take a few days to adjust your sleep pattern.

The joys of parenting. This is just the start of your sleepless nights, you'll still be missing sleep over her when she's 18 but for different reasons

my DS didn't sleep through until he was nearly 2. not what you want to hear but every baby is different. you just get used to it.

Thanks everyone. She actually pushed back her her 11pm-1am feed last night and woke up at 2am so I'm guessing that answers it for now... But as some of you have said that'll all change when she has another growth spurt or her next set of jabs.

i know what you mean hun my 9 week old lil girl used to have real trouble sleeping through at night especially when i was breast feeding. now shes been bottle fed for 4 weeks and she will sleep from 9 at night till 9 in the morning. dont worry it will get better and you will get some sleep soon :) x