4 week old won't sleep late evening and swaddle issue

[high.rise]

Hi new to BW, but have been trying EASY for about a week with my almost 4 week old DD, first child. She was born at 37weeks and had birth weight of 5lbs 14.

Current EASY is as follows (loosely!)

E- 6am
S - 7am

E-8-8.30am
S-9-9.30am

E-11am
S-12pm

E-2pm
S-2.30pm

E-4.30pm
S-5.15pm

E - 7.15pm
A - bath
S - 8.30pm

E - 10.30pm
now here's the problem (for us), she now satys awake and really grumbly as she gets over tired until her next feed, she just will not settle no matter how much ssh/pat we do, we have tried various methods that have worked in the past for sleep but none work at this time of day. We also feel that if we were to let her stay awake and grizzly for an hour, she would take another feed. She went through a big growth spurt last week where she just wanted to feed for hours from around 7pm.
Through the night, she will sleep for around 3 hours at a time, but on occassion, this has extended to max 5.5 hours. Still quite variable at the moment.

We do think she has a bit of colic as she is generally quite agitated when awake (knees up etc) and we are also trying to help her with this. At the moment seems to be either touchy or spirited. Also not much activity as at this stage she just wants to feed and sleep, recently maybe one awake time in the day she will be more receptive to activity.

generally with regard to sleep, we swaddle her, which she usually (not always) accepts for about half an hour of her sleep, she then gets very upset (grunting, groaning, squirming) and expends a lot of energy trying to wriggle out, if her arms do get free, she just gets more agitated as she wakes herself up, which leads to crying and then we go back to ssh/pat.

Sorry for the ramble, just trying to find our way!...any advice would be appreciated.

[gaelly]

Hi congrats on baby number one im new to this as well cant offer any advice on the sleep stuff but i can offer advice on a swaddle solution...i had a spirited little man who hated to be swaddled after several weeks of going in and retucking him and trying to make him as secure as possible he would always wriggle out...broke sleep was a killer until my friend told me about the mirav=cle blanket which is great to keep baby securely wrapped till you want them out...heres the link have a look
     
http://miracleblanket.com.au/ 

and good luck hopefully someone will be able to help you soon with sleep issues though you sound like you are doing a great job!!!

[ryates71]

Hi,

I remember those evenings! LOL!  For my DS (and DD 4 years before) fixing the day time routine seemed to be the cure but you look to have a pretty good day time routine.  I'm not an expert so hopefully someone else can offer advice on that.  But both my LO's went through it for a few weeks so it should be fairly short lived.

Discovered swaddling with DS.  The general rule being the tighter the better. We also use miracle blanket (can be brought from Mothercare online - if you are in the UK).  Still swaddling at 11 weeks.

Good luck with it all!

Rachel

[sharanb]

Hi there,
My 5 week old girl is the same but the hot summer we are having at the moment she is mainly sleeping in just her nappy.  Would swaddling her not overheat her    I always worry about her getting too hot in this temperature. 

[gaelly]

I would use a very light muslin wrap for swaddling then my little one was swaddled still in 40 degree heat in Oz with no air con....