5 weeks old - can we teach her to sleep long at a slightly different time of day?

DD is 5 and a half weeks old. She's started sleeping for at least one longish stretch, going for 5, 6 or even 7 hours between feeds (not all of that sleeping, unfortunately), in a day. I consider this to be a real improvement and we're very pleased about it, as it shows her circadian patterns are starting to kick in!

Now, her longish sleep starts sometime in the afternoon or evening, between 6 and 10pm. So she generally next needs a feed at sometime between about midnight and 4am. Currently DH is giving her that later feed sometime, with a bottle of EBM, so I can sleep. But, even though he is usually up late working, it's getting to be a bit much to ask him to stay up until 4.30am waiting to see when the baby will wake.

What we are wondering, is whether we can encourage DD to move towards the later end of that timeslot rather than the earlier end of it. Because right now, if she goes to sleep at 6pm, we don't know whether she's going to need feeding again at 9, or not until 2 (like last night). And it's too early for me to get to bed anyway.

But if she went to bed at 10pm and I went to bed with her, I'd get 5 or 6 hours straight sleep, and DH could go to bed at midnight and get a good sleep himself. Or better still, if we knew she was going to feed at 10pm, then I could go to bed at 8, DH could feed the baby at 10, I could get up again at 3 or 4 when she was needing feeding again, after a really really good sleep, and that would be marvellous.

Is there any way to help a young baby learn when to go to sleep for that longer sleep, or is it just a question of waiting to see what she does. We certainly don't want to do anything to mess up her sleeping or feeding, but of course it's occurred to us to wonder whether we might teach her to sleep longer through the night if we woke her in the late evening for another feed.

What do you think?

TBH at 5 weeks id be letter her get herself into her own routine! my DD goes to bed at 6.45pm most nights and wakes for a feed anywhere from 11.30pm-5am, has does this since 3 weeks.

You could try to introduce a dreamfeed when you go to bed which might help to shift her next wake up back a bit but that doesn't work for everyone. If you do a search for "dreamfeed" you should find some information about it around here somewhere or maybe somebody who knows a bit more about it will pop in and offer some more detailed advice!

At 5 weeks she is still very little and very new to the world so it can sometimes be better to just let them take the lead! It is hard but it won't last forever ;)

Tenar, TBH I wouldn't try and change the time. In my experience if you try to change their patterns, it often makes things worse rather than better. The fact that she is having a longer stretch is good, and you really don't want to "break" that. Over the next few weeks she will start to sleep better at night and get a true circadian rythm going - it's just a matter of waiting for it and letting her do it. Trying a dream feed is also another good idea and might help you get more rest - basically before you go to sleep, pick her up while asleep and feed her, then put her back down. She most likely won't wake and that should buy you a bit more rest time.

How are you going with your supply now she is having such a time between feeds? How often is she feeding the rest of the time?

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I read up on dream feeding, which I hadn't heard of before, and that's something we might try in a couple of weeks. I think we'll see how she goes between now and then, and decide on it later.

MantaRay my supply seems absolutely fine, as far as I can tell. I'm trying to make a point of either feeding her at the breast all day, or, if I express, expressing more each day than she actually needs. So I'm always producing at least as much as she needs, and often more. I figure this way I should keep my supply up. We're certainly not going to give her more than one EBM bottle a day, and hopefully we'll soon be in a regular pattern that suits all three of us (me, DD and DH), doing that.

Anyway, after 5 or 6 hours without feeding her, I need to either feed her or express for comfort, when I wake up myself.

DD is feeding every 2-4 hours during the day, varyingly. Today I have fed her at roughly 4am, 6am, 9am, midday, 3.30pm and 5.30pm. I reckon that it's fine for her to feed often during the day, since she is changing to feed less often at night. We'd be doing about 7 or 8 feeds daily, I think. Not that I'm really counting them, just going with the flow. Each day is different. Tonight, for example, she's been cranky for hours and not much fun for either of us, as I can only get her, so far, to settle to sleep for a few minutes at a time - hopefully she'll get into a deep, 5 hour sleep, any moment now...

Tenar, that sounds very normal. The late afternoon/early evening period is often referred to as the withcing hour or arsenic hour as babies and toddlers are often unsettled (and as I am discovering pre-schoolers too!). Often babies will cluster feed at this time, which means they are often constantly on and off the breast for an hour or two. No-one really knows why, but it is very common, and they seem to need it either for comfort or to stock up on milk for a longer sleep. If you go with the flow and feed her as often as she wants you are likely to get a happier baby sooner.

You are doing a really great job hun!

Well I'm doing my best, but she's still wide awake :(

At least I'm not actually very stressed that she's still awake. I'm just tired and frustrated that I haven't been able to get anything done this evening. That's an improvement on earlier times when she's done this and I was totally worried that she would never be able to sleep in the night. Given what she did last time, I know that she can be upset for hours and then still magically go off into deep sleep eventually. Hopefully soon...

Hang in there. It's great that you are quite calm about it now - you're obviously settling into motherhood well ;) Actually I think you are doing amazingly well to get anything done at this time of any night LOL. When I had a nb I got nothing done in the afternoon or evening LOL!