OK, this is probably a dumb question but: can you tell when you are not doing enough to stimulate a young baby?

DD is almost 6 weeks old. This morning I fed her at 6 and again at 8.45. After the 8.45 feed we spent several minutes having a little "chat" (about burping and other important baby things, you know how it is). Then she got jerky, so I took her and changed her nappy, talking to her as I did (the whole running account of my every move - you know how it is).

Then I took her back into the living room and I laid her down on her new playmat, which has a bunch of dangly toys and so on hanging from it. So far all she manages is to wave her arms about and sometimes to knock one of the danglies by mistake. That's fine. I reckon that she'll progress to really noticing them, and then to being able to play with them, in due course. After a minute on the playmat she started to get upset, so I figured I'd overdone it and I put her down in her bassinet to sleep.

Since then she's not slept. It's been about 45 minutes. She's not upset, not needing her dummy or anything. She's just awake, eyes open, muttering slightly to herself from time to time. She's been in a fairly boring part of the room, where she can't see too much. I've been moving around doing chores: endless washing, cleaning the kitchen, and so on.

It makes me wonder: why isn't she asleep? Given that she's not upset, presumably she isn't that tired after all. Does that mean that I should have played with her for longer, maybe doing things other than the playmat? Or have I done right to put her down at the second clear sign of tiredness?

Maybe she's listening to the music I have on. But there is mostly music on and she normally doesn't seem to notice it much.

What do you think?

I guess I'm worried that I might be leaving her "alone" in her bassinet too readily and letting her spend too much awake time "alone". (Not that I've been out of the room she's in for longer than a few seconds - she isn't really alone, but nobody is interacting with her). I don't know how to resolve that with the clear advice from everyone that I should put her down to sleep as soon as she starts acting tired and before she becomes overtired.

Oh the game of figuring the kid out is going to go on for years, I can tell...