3 week old won't go to sleep during the day!

[sophiems]

I have a 3 1/2 week old baby and a 2 1/2 yr old.  With our first we made lots of mistakes and did more on demand.  Now with our new baby I was trying the EASY solution.  I thought I was off to a good start.  He would go to sleep fine on his own in his bed with minimal soothing...maybe the pacifier or rubbing his head for a few minutes and he'd be relaxed enough to go to sleep after we left the room.  Now, it seems even though he is extremely tired he won't fall asleep.  I'll do all the same things, we even made the room darker and he just lays there and looks around.  He'll stay awake until the next feeding!  At times we've been away or in the car or something and he falls asleep fine in the front carrier or in the car seat, but I haven't made a habit of any of this at home.  Now I find myself doing it just to get him to sleep so I can spend time with my toddler.  The other thing that will happen is that I'll nurse him and he'll fall asleep and most of the time stay asleep after I put him in his crib.

The other problem is that at times when I do finally get him to sleep, he'll wake up very shortly after...happy and not crying, but very awake and won't go back to sleep. 

HELP!!!

[GG]

So he stays awake in his crib without crying, for an hour and a half?  Then you say it's feeding time. What happens after you feed him?  Does he start falling asleep during the feed?  If so, try keeping him awake during the feed (sit him up for a sec) and then for 10 min after the feed (just change his diaper) and try putting him back down to sleep.

Try that and see what happens.

If he wakes up happy, there's no need to force him to sleep again.  Maybe he just doesn't need that much sleep.  How much sleep is he getting in total?

[charliered99]

I have a 5 week old that has a similar problem - but cries - she hates to sleep during the day and just wants to be carried.  occasionally she will fall to sleep if i spend 1/2 hour in her room - although at night time ie the 3am feed - i can put her in her cot and she will go straight back to sleep - probably due to exhaustion!

I struggle to get anything done during the day, swaddling doesn't help cos she fights it and eventually gets out of it.  she regualarly falls asleep on the bottle and i do everything in my power to keep her awake (ie change nappy, burp, lay on floor etc) but as soon as she goes in her cot she swill stay asleep for about 10 mins and then wake up crying.  talking of which i have to go and see to her she's just woken up (not due for her next feed for 1.5 hours!)

[GG]

charliered99, do you bf?  If so, do you drink caffeine?  Just trying to figure out why your lo doesn't want to sleep.

Can you think of anything that happened in the first few weeks?  Has he always been like this or did it happen at some point in the last few weeks?  Do you wake her for activities or to eat?

[charliered99]

GG

No she wouldn't settle on my breast milk so we resorted to Formula and she is on Hungrier Baby food  She has never really settled well during the day, I have her on a 3 hour E.A.S.Y routine but we don't really have the "S"!
She is good at night time, usually after 8pm she will sleep - i just can't get her to have a DF (another posting already active!). We had a traumatic lengthy labour and ended up having an emergency C-Section as she got stuck.  I'm taking her to see a cranial Osteopath next Thursday to see if he can help so here's hoping....!
The main problem I have is that if i try to keep putting her down, it takes that long that it's time for her next feeding! So I have ended up resorting to holding her for atleast 2-3 hours of the day so she will get some sleep otherwise she just dozes on the bottle!