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Just wanting to know what other people do in this situation,i let my 6 week old stay awake after her feed for some play time do i wait till she gets tired before i put her down to sleep or should i just leave her for a certain amount of time and then try and put her to sleep when she is still wide awake?
I go by my baby, I always found at that stage she got whingy when she was tired so put her down, awake time varied alot, sometimes just 30mins othertimes longer.
I don't think I kept her up for longer than an hour tho cause I found it was harder to get her to sleep then.
DD went thru a stage where a night bottle consisted of bottle / cuddles, then a good 1hr or so of play at that age. She grew out of it rather quickly though...
Be guided by your DD I agree.
yes I agree. Watch your baby for tired signs.... generally at that age they'll be tired if they've been awake for about an hour or hour and a half... any longer and they may get overtired but again this is only a 'rough' guide.... let your baby guide you.
Bella will sleep evey 2 hrs just about on the dot - Ill look for her start to ruib her eyes and il put her in her cot and she may play for a while but sure enough she will go to sleep.
Just go by your bub - sometimes Bella will have more sleeps and then like Monday she had one sleep for the whole day. Take bubs ques.
HTH
Kate
It's so hard to know what to do re sleeping. I'm not a big believer in tired signs as I don't think my two had any tired signs apart from getting grizzly when they were that young. i've found that whenever I tried to put my DD down before she was tired it was a struggle to get her to sleep. Someone gave me some good advice, if you're not having success with getting them to sleep after 20minutes, then get them up and try again in a bit. I've tried this and it seems to have worked. Sometimes they just don't want to sleep and will only sleep while you cuddle them. This isn't the end of the world as long as it's not every time they want to sleep. Skye is now 12 weeks old and she still only stays awake for about 1.5 hours. She doesn't stay awake for more than 2 hours before getting grizzly (which is the only recognisable tired sign still!). Go by your instincts and what you think she is trying to tell you. You do know best ;-)
At 6 weeks I don't even remember thinking about tired signs. I just fed DD whenever she cried and if she was sleepy then she'd fall asleep lol. I did't really notice true tired signs until about 10-12 weeks...
In answer to your question though, definitely go by bub. I found her awake time always varied, but seemed to get longer as the day progressed...so that she needs a sleep after about 45mins in the morning, but could stay awake for 2 hours or so by the evening.
Your baby can't read the time, so I always found the clock more of a hindrance than a help!
Thanks for that my little one shows sign of being tired she starts yawning so I guess going by that is always good. I just have the problem of thinking I know what she is doing and then she goes and changes it on me and I have no idea so I guess I just need to wait till she is a bit older to get her in a routine then.
It's heaps easier to get them into a routine once they're a little older. I didn't get Skye into a routine until about 9 weeks old and even then it changes a little every day. But having a basic routine like eat, play, sleep is good, even if it's for your own sanity when sleep deprived. Skye yawns when she's tired too so that's definitely a good indicator! Hahaha. They are confusing little things. You're not alone with that! I agree with Anna, in that they stay awake for a lot longer as the day wears on although they don't stay awake for huge amounts of happy time I found until they are about five months old.....maybe that's just my experience but if you find that, don't worry, sleep never hurt anyone ;-)
DD at 6 weeks was only staying up for about an hour in total, including the feed, change, etc.
Whenever we saw her yawn (her first obvious tired sign), we'd put her down straight away. This worked heaps better than earlier, when we were more confused about it, and kept letting her get overtired.
So our daytime routine was always:
wake
feed
change/bath (if needed)
play until first yawn (most playing involved making faces at each other, and talking to each other, stuff like that).
bed
In the night, I just fed her, changed her, and put her down again. Not that she always went straight to sleep, not by a long way. But I didn't want to encourage her to play at night, so tried to be as boring as possible.