An overtired 8 week old baby - how do I break the cycle?

[FabFiona]

Hi all,

The sleeping patterns of my eight week old baby continue to deteriorate. At about 5 weeks he seemed to wake up and has always been very alert. Since then his day sleeps have been pretty poor. He would generally do a 40 minute nap, take ages to resettle then another 40 minute nap and only in my sling.

However in the last few days his night sleeping has also gone to crap. He used to take one hour of crying, us calming then repeat to settle at night. He would then sleep until his feed around 10 pm, go back down without a peep and wake again around 2 am. He would generally not settle well after that 2 am feed, but that was ok.

Now he is is waking around every 40 minutes over night, sometimes 1.5 hours. A tiny noise or disturbance will wake him when before he would sleep through anything.

Mitchell is formula fed and generally on 4 hour feed times.

I'm pretty sure all of this is due to being chronically overtired. My gut says have to break the cycle. I have a few ideas of how to do this, but wanted some other suggestions.

1. All day sleeps will be in my sling - I have a close baby carrier which he will always sleep very well in. If I do his day sleeps in the next few days in this hopefully he will catch up.

2. Get a hammock - I've read the rocking motion can help them sleep at night. Rocking will always calm Mitchell so I'm hoping this will do the same.

3. Put him down to sleep earlier. He is generally never awake longer than one hour and I always look for his tired signs. However by the time he does his tired signs, it can take him 30 - 45 minutes after this to go to sleep. That means he is awake for 1.5 to 1 3/4 hours - much too long. So if I put him in the sling after 30 minutes, hopefully he will be asleep by the 1 hour mark.

4. Make his night time bed time earlier - depending on his feeds he will generally go down to sleep around 7 pm. I might move his feeds around a bit so that is a bit earlier.

Here are just a few of my ideas. Does anyone else have any other experience with this or helpful suggestions?

Cheers,
Fiona

[Olive]

have you tried to feed him 3 hourly instead of 4 hourly??

its hard to work them out sometimes

[~Trish~]

I'd try feed him a bit sooner too? At his age, he will most likely only be able to handle about 40 - 45 minutes of wake time before he gets tired (this wake time includes the time it takes to have a bottle). If kept awake longer you will have big battles getting him to sleep. It seems like you barely see them when they have short wake times, but it definitely helps

Do you know his tired signs? They could be yawning, grizzling, jerky movements, etc. As soon as you notice a tired sign go and wrap him up take him to bed (I always rocked my babies off to sleep at that age).

You will hopefully find that he settles and sleeps better when he's not over-tired.

Hammocks are an absolute God-send, I love ours! Slings are great during the day too. I used to put DD down for a nap and if she woke to soon I'd put her in the sling to get her to go back to sleep, it worked well for us

But the main thing is making sure he isn't kept awake for too long, I reckon you'll see a good improvement within the next day or two if you shorten his wake time

Good luck

[FabFiona]

Yep, I know all the tired signs and am very conscious not to keep him up too long. We did a day stay program recently and that was very good for reinforcing my instincts (don't know why I questioned them in the first place!)

I'm a bit nervous about shifting his feed times to be more frequently... He was in this very bad habit of napping / snacking every 2 hours. 4 hours seems to be when he gets hungry I think I will stick with this.

However I'm willing to try anything so I might keep this in the mix.

[Jennifer13]

He was in this very bad habit of napping / snacking every 2 hours. 4 hours seems to be when he gets hungry I think I will stick with this.

Hun, you're his Mum and you know him best, but 2 hrly feeding is common for babies this young. Even on formula his tummy is still really small and he may be digesting his milk that quickly. 'Snacking' is not really likely when he's so small.

Maybe try shortening the time between his feeds during the day and see if this makes a difference for him?

[Neptune]

I'm not very experienced, as my bub is only 16 weeks old, but I was formula feeding him every 1.5 to 2 hours on demand (was driving me insane) and all of a sudden he snapped himself out of this habit and started feeding 3 - 4 hourly at 12 weeks, so as a last resort you could try more frequent feeds (if he seems hungry) during the day. But I know that you know your baby best, and trust your instincs.

Also, are you using any bed-time routines/cues? Might help with the night sleeping. EG, we have a sea-horse toy whose tummy is a soft night-light when pressed and it plays classical music softly for 5 minutes. Or anything else that you can think of.

If nothing else works, know that this too shall pass!

You are doing a great job

[alipetrina]

Hi,

Have you tried the cycle of sleep, feed, play? I started this with my little one at about 8 weeks and it made life a lot easier and I like that it didn't require much effort or any changes that distressed my baby or me! Basically when he wakes you feed him, then spend time playing etc. As soon as you see his sleep signals it's sleep/nap time. Obviously there is no play time during the night, just feed and sleep! My baby has found his own regulated cycle of feed, play for about and hour and a half and then settles very quickly for a sleep of usually an hour and a half during the day and three hours at night. You can set a clock by him some days! He sometimes wakes after 45 minutes during the day (one sleep cycle) but can be generally resettled for another 45 mins at least.

Although it is a routine there is a lot of flexibility with the amount of sleep and play time because it's up to him and how much he needs. The best part is that I now know what's coming rather than trying to figure out what he needs all the time - is he tired, does he need feeding etc.

I hope this helps and that you and your little one get the sleep you need soon.