At the moment my 2 month old is feeding 4 hourly at night time (from about 6pm - 6am) and is pretty easy to get to sleep. But during the day seems to want to feed 2 hourly. The problem is that after a feed, play time, and settling, he then only sleeps for about 30-40mins and after wakes up. He has only gone through one sleep cycle and wakes up crying, close to 2 hours since his last feed...so i've been told to try to extend his sleep as he is not getting enough sleep, that is he exhausted...sometimes this is very difficult to do, and by the time i've tried this i figure he must be very hungry...i've had family members recommend trying to extend his feeds to every 3 hours during the day so that he has a good feed and might sleep longer...trying to do this as well can be difficult, sometimes after he wakes i can keep him occupied a bit without him crying. This is my first baby and have been getting all different advise, but i'm willing try different things. What should i try? is 30-40mins really not enough at this age during the day?
I could have written that post...! At around 6 weeks my little man decided only to sleep for exactly 40 mins at a time during the day. You could set your watch by him. This one is also my first and I had no idea what to do.
I'm not sure if you are breastfeeding or formula feeding. I am formula feeding so I'm not sure if my advice is relevant. However here is how I approached it and probably at the same age too.
Firstly, we worked out that he wanted to comfort suck and not necessarily feed. As such we gave him a dummy and that worked in stretching out his feeds. We moved him to every 4 hours and his feed volumes did increase.
However this didn't make him sleep longer than 40 minutes. He just couldn't resettle himself between his sleep cycles. What occasionally worked for me was going into his room at around 35 minutes and using rhythmic patting (like drums) to semi-wake him and then put him into another sleep cycle. We use rhythmic patting as our settling tool, but probably whatever you do would work as well. If he only slept for 40 minutes I would make sure he had 2 x 40 mins naps between feeds.
He is only now at 6 months sleeping longer than 40 minutes first thing in the morning and only in bed with me. Only sleeping for 40 mins gets a bit tricker as they get older and they stay up for longer between naps. I just go with the flow.
The one piece of advice I would give is that if your little one is only to sleep for 40 minutes then so be it. I spent a lot of time stressing that my baby didn't fit the 'routine' and used to get quite upset that he would only sleep for 40 mins at a time. Then one day I woke up and realised that it was ok. That was just him and rather than stressing about his sleeping I should be enjoying my time with him. My little man is happy, healthy and now I just go with the flow.
I know you've probably been told this but it does get easier. Stop listening to the advice and do what you want to do. You learn to go with the rhythm that your baby sets and life is much easier.
Hey hon, just wanted to pop in quickly and say that by the sounds of things you're doing a great job. If your LO is breastfed then it is completely normal for them to feed every two hours during the day, the more they feed during the day, the less they feed at night (which IMO is a good thing). My DS was much the same from that age and even now only sleeps more than 30 minutes about half the time. By the sounds of things your LO is getting a good amount of sleep overnight. I'm sure if you kept a record for a couple of days of sleeping and waking time you'd be suprised just how much sleep he is getting. At about that age my DS was getting an average of 13 hours in a 24 hour period, it is a bit less than the 'recoommended' but it worked for him, just like us all babies are different and need different sleep iykwim? Family and friends mean well and like to give advice, but at this stage I think the best thing you can do is follow his cues and let him set the routine.
late reply, but thanks for your help, it's nice to know that others have babies which have done the same and that really, babies have their own individual needs. last week i decided to move my baby's bassinet into the walk n robe in our bedroom cos it's much darker in their (are blinds are useless!) and consistently put his dummy in and put my hands on his shoulders to make him feel extra secure and rock him...it really worked for the first few days, on some occasions it only took a couple of mins to resettle him...it's probably not something i want to keep doing, i'm hoping that he will need the rocking less once he knows that this is sleep time and can self settle! so i have been able to extend his sleep which has meant i have been able to extend his feeds to every 3 hours during the day
Feeding and Day sleep for a 2 month old
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