Help needed with 6 week old that will not nap in day

[RhysN]

I have a 6 week old that I am at the end of my tether with and need some advice where I am going wrong. We are using pat/shush at night which is fairly successful although it still takes a minimum of an hour to get him to sleep at night and about 40 minutes to get him back to sleep when he wakes in the night for a feed.
The problem is during the day no matter what we do we cannot get him to nap until he is at the point of exhaustion and then he will nap for about half an hour. I have tried pat/shush in the day but find this almost impossible to maintain as have a 2 and a half year old too. I have therefore broken all the rules of independant sleep and tried pushing in the pushchair, rocking, patting you name it but nothing makes him drop off into a deep sleep.

He is therefore overtired and crying all the time. We are concerned that there may be something wrong with him physically that is waking him up and thinking of trying cranial osteopathy? Has anyone tried this with any success.

Any help would be much appreciated...thanks

[malialeanne]

Hi there. Congratulations on your new baby and welcome to the boards!

Six weeks is a very tough, fussy age. I remember it well. Can you post your approximate routine? Was your baby born on time, early, or late?

When my dd was 5-6 weeks old and barely sleeping AT ALL I thought something might be wrong, but then I realized--there can't be anything wrong with her ability to sleep...she can sleep fine on my chest! It was being put down that she hated. So we had to work on that.  But there are medical conditions that could prevent a baby from being comfortable lying down. You might look on the health board for info or questions about cranial osteopathy.

[RhysN]

Hi,

Thanks for replying...it makes me feel better to know I am not the only one with problems at this age I don't remember having these problems with my first son he had sleep problems from 6 months.

His routine is all over the place at the moment due to the lack of sleep I have not managed to stick to EASY very well at all. He was born 8 days late.

Here is a vague routine.

5:45am rise
6:20am - bottle
6:35am - activity
7:15am - gets fussy so attempt to get to sleep
8:15am - usually manage a 20 minute nap
8:35am - fusses until give in to bottle
9:00am - bottle
9:15am - Usually getting very tired now so activity involves a lot of crying
9:25am - another attempt at a nap but not usually any success
10:30am - May drop off for about half an hour if we are lucky
11:00am - Cries again until next feed
12:00noon - Bottle
12:15pm - activity again but usually too tired

And so this goes on until about 4pm when he get so tired he will sometimes sleep for about an hour.

6:30pm - Bath
7:00pm - Bottle and begin putting down for night
8:00pm ususally asleep now
9:15am - starts to stir so attempt to dream feed
12:10am - Feed
4:10am - Feed
5:45am- Rise again

I hope this gives you enough info to help... Maybe I am just over reacting with the cranial osteopathy but I am clutching at straws....

Thanks again for your help!

[malialeanne]

Hi again. The first thing I notice is that he's getting very long A times for his age. 45 minutes is about average for six weeks old. We were able to increase 15 mins or so every 2 weeks, so at 8 weeks we did an hour, 10 weeks we did 1 hr 15, 12 weeks 1 hr 30.

Also, A times include everything from the time he wakes until he's back in bed, so feed, diaper change, wind down, everything.

A lot of our sleep probs at 5 weeks were from keeping her up WAY too long, shorter A times really helped.

We used shush/pat with success starting at 5 weeks, but it was very time consuming in the beginning and for the first couple of weeks I spent about 45 minutes per nap. I realize that's probably very tough with an older sibling. I would make sure his A times are the right length and pretty low key, his room is nice and dark, give a good wind down of at least 5-10 minutes (we used the 4-S wind down described here: https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64277.0), and give shush/pat your best go. Honestly if you do all of the other things you may not need to spend nearly as much time with the shush/pat.

HTH!

[RhysN]

Hi,

 Thanks for all your tips they have really helped. Sorry not replied have been caught up last few days. Have tried shortening A times and this seems to be working he is mush easier to get to sleep now..hardly shush patting at all getting him really relaxed before putting him in his crib and then just sitting with my hands firmly on him this seems to stop all the jumping. Only problem is now I cannot get him to stay down. He wakes up fully at 30 minutes and it is really difficult to get him back takes about an hour so spending all day trying to get him to nap. I went in today at 25 minutes and waited for him to stir to see if I could stop him this way and although he did look like going back for a while he still resurrected himself.

Any tips?

Thanks so much again for your help...

[malialeanne]

Hi, glad to hear things are improving. Some say that 30 min naps = overtired, so it might be worth reducing A times by another 5-10 mins to see if that helps. Also, the only way we were able to extend naps at that age was to pat her before she even really stirred--from experience we were able to sense when she was *about* to stir. Fortunately that stage didn't last long.

Good luck!

[MamGymraeg]

Hi

Reading your post sounded exactly what we are going through with our six week old son!  Would  be grateful for tips on how you've improved things,am going to try more wind down, less stimulation in activity times (too many dangly toys i think!) to try and get him to go to sleep a bit better at nap time, he just fights sleep too much and then try to get him to stay asleep for more than 30 mins. anyway any tips gratefully received!

[malialeanne]

Hi MamGyraeg and welcome to the boards!

Making sure A times are short (around 45 mins including feed and winddown is average), darking his room, and doing a good wind down should help. Also, six weeks is the peak age for fussiness in general. It gets better soon!

FWIW we didn't start with dangly toys until 8-10 weeks or so...A time was mostly staring out a window. The most stimulating thing she did was get her photo taken all the time.

[MamGymraeg]

Thanks for that.  The thing is because he sleeps so little in day, there is normally at least 45 minutes before the feed starts and there are a few yawns before the feed starts so I feel like we are on the back foot before we get started if you know what I mean... So by the time he has had his feed and a little little activity time, it seems he's already crying and overtired...

We have also taken away his dummy in last 5 days as it was ridiculous how many times we would have to go back and give it to him in nap time so maybe there's just too many things going on and i need to be patient...and get a chair for the side of the cot for the shhhhhss!

This is very difficult!  Naively I thought that if a baby wanted to sleep, it would sleep!! xx

[malialeanne]

Yes, when naps are very short it's hard to do EASY. As long as you have a little bit of A after the feed it's fine.

I DID have a chair by the crib for pat/shhh--it was a fixture in her room! As things got better the chair moved to the side of the room, and about a month ago we moved it out entirely--that was a very happy day.

[MamGymraeg]

Thanks so much.  He has been sleeping now for 2 hours! (with long shhh at start and 2 trips in after 45 mins). Since I changed formula he's on a 3 hour cycle but I don't think it will do him any harm sleeping extra half an hour into feed time given he's had weeks of overtiredness and few naps!

Thanks again for your advice, I will be back posting again soon with more questions!  Ruthx