Sleep schedule for 4.5 week old

kyks17Wed237779

My LO is 4.5 weeks old, and we have no kind of schedule whatsoever. I'm off work through the beginning of March, and my husband has been off work this whole time but goes back on 12/31, so we need to start figuring out some kind of schedule.

We work around what LO feels like doing, which right now has led us to going to bed anywhere from 5am to 10am (yes - *going to* bed at those times). He is EBF except for the times when he is extremely fussy and I seem to not have any more milk to give, then he gets a bottle of pumped milk after nursing. Last night he took 4 oz in pumped milk after 1.5 hours of major fussing (chomping and tugging at my nipples). Since he was so upset, the bottle feedings took a really long time as well, which led to me getting in bed at 8am (post-nursing attempts) and not actually getting to sleep until 11am when he was finally calm. Once he's asleep "for the night" (whatever time "night" starts here), he can sleep for at least 4 hours in 1 stretch, and occasionally 5-6 hours, so I'm not concerned in that regard.

During the day he will usually eat about every 1 hour 30 mins to 2 hours, fed on demand. He will sometimes nurse every 45 minutes, but there isn't consistency as to what time of day he will do this.

In reading this board, it seems like most of you, even with LOs younger than mine, already have them on a schedule. Not meaning that you require them to eat at certain times, but rather that they have a "before bed" feeding, a "MOTN" feeding, and a "first feeding of the day". With mine there is no such thing - there is just feeding and me going with the flow for whatever timeframe that means.

How did you get it such that you have these more proper hours for an EBF baby fed on demand? Note that I do not think this is day/night inversion, as the time that he goes to sleep "for the night" has been all over the place, and it just happens to be that right now his hours look more like day/night inversion. I don't really mind the erratic schedule right now since I have nothing else going on, but it will be a problem when my husband goes back to work. TIA!

linzeek44

How is he napping at other times of the day?

For us, we do a routine of eat-activity-sleep. Right now, I'm nursing. Then I'll change him and we will play, and then he will start showing sleepy cues, so I'll put him down for a nap. Getting into this pattern helped because after playing, around 8:30 pm, we would put him down for a nap which stretched into his overnight sleep. 

sensoregurl

4.5 weeks old is way too tiny for any sort of schedule. You need to nurse on demand, whatever demand is for your LO.

 I would stop the bottle of pumped milk after nursing. Babies cluster feed and need to up your supply. You are not running out of milk, you are always making more milk, and it's supply and demand. I get that sometimes you need a break, I did that too, but try not to make it a habit.

That being said sounds like he's got his days and nights mixed up a bit, even if not consistently. There are definitely things you can do for that. Swaddling, keeping lights low and no talking at night, no swaddling during the day, lots of noise and activity and light during the day. You need that baby to switch his 5-6 hours to be at night all the time. This may take time, but being consistent about daytime and nighttime is important. You can start a bedtime routine - it can be really simple. Bath, swaddle, rocking, nursing, lights out. He may not go to sleep but keep the swaddle on and lights and voices low. It will start to be a key to this is sleepy time.

 Eating every 45 minutes to 2 hours apart during the day is incredibly normal. Also, if he's doing a 5-6 hour stretch at 4.5 weeks you're incredibly lucky.

4.5 week olds are erratic, they usually aren't on any schedule. I would say 6 weeks at the earliest is when you can start with a schedule, and even then it changes all the time. They're not going to nurse every 3-4 hours every day for the entire first year, there are growth spurts, teething, comfort, etc.

Good luck

TJ1979

We didn't have a schedule at that age.  We barely got a schedule when I went back to work at 12 weeks.  But like PP, we did eat-activity-sleep.  We did this rotation for all 24 hours of the day, the only difference being that duing day time hours we did this rotation with the lights on, and at night time we did this rotation with lights off.  Light cycle is what teaches newborns about day and night.  In the beginning, eat-activity-sleep was an every 1.5-2 hour process, but it gradually lengthened to a 3 hour process.  GL.  I hope you can get your schedule more "normal," I know this has to be hard on you.

tokenhoser

Your subject made me LOL. No, people with babies younger than yours don't have them on a schedule. You can't get a baby on a schedule - well, I'd say ever, but even those people with more malleable babies would say give it 2-3 months.

All you can really do is roll with it. Try to get out and expose you both to some direct daylight in the morning. Try to keep things dark and quiet at night. Feed often in the day - even more often than the baby demands if the baby is awake. 

You said it will be a problem when your DH goes back to work... I just moved into another room with the baby. My job was the baby, DH's job was to get enough sleep to function at work. He still helped, but not at 3 am. 

pb_bride

My LO is 5w old today.  We don't have a "schedule" per se, but we stick with a routine.  Since DH had gone back to work for a few weeks now, we *need* our sleep at night for both of us to function.

Basically, LO wakes up anywhere btw 8-10am in the morning, nurses, then we play for 30-45 mins at the activity gym, then try to get him to nap.  He gets really fussy during the day and often takes me an hour or more to get him to nap.  This repeats throughout the day.  If time allows, we go out for a walk.  He sometimes nurses every hour during the day if he's awake/fussy; but if he naps, he can go for 2+ hours.

In the evening, we bring him upstairs to our bedroom around 9-9:30pm; lights dimmed in bedroom.  Some nights he is already asleep by then so we just put him in his crib (in our room).  Some nights he's awake so I'll nurse/diaper change/swaddle etc and he gets sleepy and will be "in bed" by 10pm.  Some nights he's extremely fussy so we nurse/rock/sing and repeat until he finally falls asleep... can take 3hrs.  But we still stick with this bedtime routine hoping that he will get used to it.  

He sleeps longer stretches at night, perhaps because it's dark or perhaps because he's tightly swaddled.  Most nights he'll sleep for 3-4 hours but some nights he'll wake every 2hours.  So our MOTN feeds can be 12MN or 2am or 3am, whenever he wakes up hungry.  We keep the MOTN feeds/diaper change very low key - very dim lights and no talking.  He usually remains sleepy and we can pretty much put him back in his crib asleep after burping. 

telyn

Eat-play sleep during the day, as PP suggested helps a lot!

Also, if you are worried about day/night reversal make time in the day to go outside, see the sun go for walks and then at night keep the lights dim and don't play as much.

We still don't have a bedtime, we still feed on demand but we had a bedtime routine from about 1 month old. That can help them trigger sleep cues and longer stretches of sleep. Because we have had a faithful routine of bath-lights out-book/boob-prayer-bed as soon as she hears the bath being drawn, she starts to relax. By the time we are in pj's and reading a book, she has heavy eyes. So if you don't yet, start a routine of your own that tells LO "this is night-night time". It won't help today or tomorrow but a month or so down the road, it will help. I even repeat the story/boob/prayer portion during our MOTN feed to help her go down quicker. It really helps!

GL! 

lh80

sensoregurl:

4.5 weeks old is way too tiny for any sort of schedule. You need to nurse on demand, whatever demand is for your LO.

 I would stop the bottle of pumped milk after nursing. Babies cluster feed and need to up your supply. You are not running out of milk, you are always making more milk, and it's supply and demand. I get that sometimes you need a break, I did that too, but try not to make it a habit.

That being said sounds like he's got his days and nights mixed up a bit, even if not consistently. There are definitely things you can do for that. Swaddling, keeping lights low and no talking at night, no swaddling during the day, lots of noise and activity and light during the day. You need that baby to switch his 5-6 hours to be at night all the time. This may take time, but being consistent about daytime and nighttime is important. You can start a bedtime routine - it can be really simple. Bath, swaddle, rocking, nursing, lights out. He may not go to sleep but keep the swaddle on and lights and voices low. It will start to be a key to this is sleepy time.

 Eating every 45 minutes to 2 hours apart during the day is incredibly normal. Also, if he's doing a 5-6 hour stretch at 4.5 weeks you're incredibly lucky.

4.5 week olds are erratic, they usually aren't on any schedule. I would say 6 weeks at the earliest is when you can start with a schedule, and even then it changes all the time. They're not going to nurse every 3-4 hours every day for the entire first year, there are growth spurts, teething, comfort, etc.

Good luck

 

this! I also believe that how successful you will be with a routine depends on the baby. 

kyks17Wed237779

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I think some of you misunderstood me - I'm not expecting him to nurse less or less often, and I'm not expecting him to stick to a schedule the way adults do with a clock. I just need some quantity of sleep and I need it to take place overnight.

Last "night" he went down for what I thought would be his long nap at 4am, but he was awake again at 5am. Cluster fed, chomped and tugged on my nipples, no more milk again so he kept getting madder and madder, 2 oz of pumped milk, and finally at 11am he dropped off for 3 hours. I understand it's supply and demand, but when he's that upset and not getting milk out of me, how can I not offer the supplement? That was already 7 hours of trying to get him to sleep, if I didn't give him the supplement I don't know when/if he would have slept.

During the day he doesn't really nap at all, there isn't much time for him to get a nap because his feedings take a really long time and there is rarely more than 15-30 minutes between 1 ending and the next beginning (I'm not complaining about that fact, just saying that's why he doesn't have time to nap during the day). Since he's awake all day, I would hope he would be sleepy at least by the time I'm sleepy after having been up 20 hours, but that's not proving to be the case.

I'll try to do the eat/play/sleep routine and see how it works out, though I'm guessing the play/sleep part of it will be very short or not at all considering how much time between feedings there is. A bedtime routine is probably a good idea as well, I will start trying to establish one.