2 week old waking every 2hrs at night

[beckygatt]

DD2 is 2 weeks old. She has recently been going 3hrs between feeds, sometimes she'd sleep even more if I allowed her. But then at night she'll sometimes wake for a feed after only 2hrs or even less! I tried to make sure she fed every 3 hrs during the day yesterday but she spent most of the afternoon asleep, and went straight back to sleep after the feeds. How can I encourage her to stretch the night feeds a bit more?

[Vicku]

Hi and congratulations on your new baby! She's beautiful!

It sounds like a classic case of having days and nights a bit mixed up, and it can take a few weeks for them to adjust. 2hrly feeding in general isn't uncommon and actually quite normal at this age as their tummies are still sooooo tiny I hear you on her being sleepy and hard to wake and feed in the day, but if you can, then try to feed her every 2hrs during the day for a few days and see if you can get enough calories into her so that she' won't wake as often in the night. Another thing to do that can help is to keep her in day light as much as possible during the day, and you can also keep her with the family among sounds and people to help her body adjust to day and night time. So at night you'd keep lights off or as low as you can, and be quiet but during the day try for the opposite. Save the quiet naps in a darkened room for later Don't worry though, as their biological clock matures and they get used to being in the world, this will right itself and by helping a little it will happen even faster

Here are some more tips on keeping baby awake for feeds http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=63428.0

HTH

Vick

[beckygatt]

Thanks Vicki! I do keep her near us in the light during the day (and there's plenty of noise from my 2 year old ). I'll be putting her in our room in the dark for the evenings and nights as soon as we get our monitor next week.

I think part of it is that I'm just terrified of having another terrible sleeper, like DD1 was! But I know its still early to tell and I can't change things anyway!