How much should 5 week old be sleeping during the day? (long sorry)

[littleduck]

I am wondering whether my DD needs to be awake more during the day - she can be difficult to settle in the evening and was wondering if this is because she sleeps quite a bit in the day and so doesn't particularly want to go to bed in the evening.

DD has settled into a little pattern after she needed to be woken to be fed following birth as she had jaundice and was very sleepy. The advice was to feed every 3 hours or more if she asked, to help to clear the jaundice. She never really did ask to be fed more often than that and I usually had to wake her to feed her and so she has fallen into more or less a 3/4 hourly feed rhythm. A day might be like this

Between 6 and 7.30 - feed taking 1 hr including nappy change

Sleep after feed until next feed say sometime between 9.30 and 10.30. Feed again takes around 1-1 1/4 hrs including change and perhaps some nursery rhymes or looking at a little soft black and white book.

Sleep again until waking for feed around 1.30-2pm. Feed/change again takes around 1-1 1/4 hours

We usually go out for a little walk with her in the pram in the afternoon, she is usually awake for most of the afternoon and she will want to feed again around 5.30-6, we do a top and tail most days at this time as she hates baths and she has a kick about on her changing mat whilst she listens to a little musical toy radio and then she goes to bed around 7 once she has had a good feed.

She often cries a bit around 10 mins after I put her in her moses basket, we wait a few minutes (I appreciate that I may get flamed for this but DP and I thought it could be good to give her the chance to start to learn to self-settle) to see if she settles herself and if she continues to cry after a couple of minutes we go to her. Sometimes she can be settled with extra food but sometimes cries even though she has just been fed, winded, isn't too hot or cold and is snugly tucked in to make her feel secure.

She seems very alert and interested in the world when she is awake and my mother thought she might need to be awake a bit more in the day in order to settle more easily in the evening.

Anyone any thoughts?

BTW she is fed again around 10/11 pm depending when she wakes and usually wakes again for a feed around 2/3 in the morning.

TBH her behaviour sounds very normal for a five-week-old! If anything, she might not be getting enough sleep in the daytime -- if she is awake all afternoon she might well be overtired by 7pm.

Also it is very, very soon to be expecting her to 'self settle' without any crying -- my DS1 didn't master this til he was over 9 months! I don't think there's any harm to let her grizzle for a couple of minutes (some babies do this before they fall asleep) but otherwise I would simply feed, cuddle or rock her to give her the comfort she needs.

ENjoy your baby

She sounds like she's doing great.

My four week old charge is basically doing the same but she sleeps more in the after noon. I don't think they can get TOO much sleep during the early weeks while they sleep they grow!

I always try to get my babies to self settle first and if after a few minutes will intervene and help them.

It sounds pretty normal really - the only thing I would say is that you mention she is awake for most of the afternoon which may mean that she is overtired when you try to put her down to sleep in the evening. At that age dd only managed to stay awake for around 10-15mins after every feed/change before falling asleep.

As long as they are not sleeping all day and awake all night then when she is not feeding during the day she should probably be sleeping!!

Meant to add that following her lead in this way, dd slept through from 10.30pm ish till 6.00am ish from about 8 weeks (smug emoction)

I agree with the possibly getting overtired comments.

This sounds very much like my dd, now 15 wks. At 6ish weeks I thought she was sleeping far too much as she would nap for 2 or 3 hours at a time. She would then wake for most of the afternoon, and as this is a time of great development - starting to smile, realising they've got hands etc - I was probably guilty of keeping her awake longer than she should have been. I noticed she would get increasingly grizzly as the day went on and became very difficult to settle at bedtime.

I found the the Baby Whisperer extremely useful for interpreting her cues, and realised that what I was thinking of as hungry cries were actually her trying to tell me she was knackered. Since then, dd is plonked back into bed for a nap at the first hint of a yawn.

I think we also started to introduce an 8 o'clock-ish bedtime routine around this time - into sleep suit, cuddle, feed to sleep then into her (pre-warmed) Moses basket. We also put a rolled up towel against her lengthways and a top I had worn, near her head. All this seemed to give her a feeling of security. I think it was this point that she started to manage 8ish to 4.30 without a feed, and not long afterwards ditched the 4.30 feed altogether and was enjoying longer lie ins than me

....Until the 4 month growth spurt that is!