Sleep

Klamey327 · October 2014

My sweet LO sleeps 3-4 hours on a good night. She is almost 5 weeks. What are some tips to help sleep through the night? We already swaddle and use the Sleep Sheep. I want to start getting more in a routine at night to help as well. When she wakes at night she's only been feeding for around 5 minutes lately. I'm hoping that's a good sign of sleeping longer at night?!

kleigh926 · October 2014

Do you mean she sleeps 3-4 hours total or 3-4 hours at a time? Babies this young usually do not sleep through the night and that is totally normal. You can encourage being up during the day by keeping things bright and noisy, and encourage sleeping at night by keeping it dark and quiet. But expecting a baby this young to start STTN is pretty unrealistic.

HorseLover11 · October 2014

If she's and gaining weight I would let her cry and fuss up to 5-8 min (not super hard crying though) and then go in and soothe with a paci or rubbing her stomach and do this up to 3 times. After the third time it's probably time to eat. It's not for everyone but it sure has worked for us as she sleeps from 9-4am now pretty consistently. You also need to make sure you put the baby to bed while they are pleasantly awake so they learn to fall asleep on their own.

kleigh926 · October 2014

Also, only eating for 5 minutes at a time may actually be contributing to her waking more frequently. She might not be eating long enough to get a full feeding, which means she'll be hungry sooner. You might want to try encouraging her to eat a little longer at each feeding.

Klamey327 · October 2014

Yes, 3-4 hours at a time. And she just started feeding for five minutes at time the past couple of days. I know it is still early but her pediatrician at her 2 week check up said she should start sleeping better at night around 6-8 weeks. I was just wondering if there was anything else I could do to help with it!

hizah05 · October 2014

3-4 hours at a time is really good for a 5 week old. You have to remember that all babies are different. My son didn't sleep through the night without waking for 13 months. I think the longest he ever slept was 6 hours up until that age. The other pp's are right that if she's only eating for 5 minutes she might wake more because she's less full. Or the other reason could be that she's not actually hungry and the 5 minute feed is just putting her back to sleep. It could be a comfort thing for her. That's what my son would do. My pedi always recommended skipping that feed so they don't get used to waking up for the comfort. I couldn't do it as it was just easier to feed him and let him fall back asleep. It was 10 minutes of my time versus and hour of screaming. But like I said, they are all different so you never know!

kleigh926 · October 2014

Like the PP said, 3-4 hours at a time is good. That's all my LO was doing at your DD's age (he's almost 6 weeks now). Within the past few days he started doing 5-6 hours at a time. However, some babies are better sleepers than others. Your pedi saying that she should start sleeping better around 6-8 weeks is kind of giving you false hope, IMO. That's still really young and lots of babies don't sleep through the night or even have longer stretches of sleep till they are much older. Don't force longer stretches of sleep too early. At this point I would let your LO keep doing what she's doing and see if she naturally lengthens her sleep in a few weeks.

jht14 · October 2014

That's a little young to be STTN. My DD (7weeks today) just put herself on a schedule of sorts. She goes down around 9 or 10pm and is asleep until 2 or 3am. She then gets a bottle and sleeps another 4ish hours. We swaddle at night most of the time. We don't normally use white noise unless she's having a hard time going down.

I agree that if your LO may not be eating enough to sleep longer stretches.

Your LO will get there. Until then just sleep when you can and drink coffee when you can't.

redtoes13 · October 2014

I wish we had four hour stretches. We are eight weeks in and having only three hour stretches when we are lucky.

lbonga1 · October 2014

I'm with redtoes. LO slept from 11-5:30 the other night, and I was amazed. Then last night she was up almost every hour. Babies usually develop better sleeping patterns around 4 months (after they go through the 4 month wakeful). Until then it's usually kind of a crapshoot.

LoveOBX917 · October 2014

My LO is 6 weeks. I'm EPing and giving breast milk all day then just formula at night. For the past couple weeks she's slept from 8:30p - about 4a, feeds, then sleeps 2 more stretches of 2-3hrs each. We start bedtime at about 7p every night where I bathe her then feed and rock her to sleep in a very dimly lit nursery, then place her in the crib. I've noticed when we put her to bed later she sleeps less so I suppose the "sleeps begets sleeps" theory is true for her. Doing the formula at night also helps her sleep longer because it's digested slower than breast milk.

RedBaramid · October 2014

I was under the impression that at this point sleep training was sort of a silly notion and to go ahead and let baby govern their sleep patterns. This is what I've been doing all along and for the last 2 weeks we go down between 9 and 10, get up around 2-3, and then stay down until 6-7. Then we usually cat nap/cluster feed until 9am. She self imposed this pattern and it actually took me a full week to realize she was doing it.

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