Too much sleep and other questions...

[MacyMom]

A few questions...

Firstly, my 8 week old daughter has been on the EASY schedule for about 4 weeks and has taken to it very well. She puts herself to sleep for naps and goes down easy for her night time sleep. (She has slept through the night for the past 5 nights - yea!)

My concern is that she may be sleeping too much. Her naps are 1-1 1/2 hours for every 3 hour feed. And, her night schedule ranges but is generally 9-10 hours of sleep OR she has woken up once for a 20 minute feed. Should I be concerned with her sleeping too much? We have activity time and her most active/longest awake time is in the evening. I am careful to not get her overstimulated but perhaps we aren't active enough??

Secondly, I would like to push her night sleep time from 9:00pm to 10:00pm and to do this, I may need to add cluster feedings. My question is, if I feed every 2 hours, should I keep her awake in between the feedings? I have found that if she is awake for too long in the evening, she gets overstimulated and fussy.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Macy's Mom
Houston, Texas

[branwen]

Great job! She sounds just perfect!  No, truly, LOTS OF SLEEP is good.  This is when they do their growing.  It is very important.  Especially if you see signs in her that she gets overstimulated easy go with the nap.  No need to keep a baby 8 weeks old awake if they are tired.  They are still really newborns IMO.

I had a VERY sleepy baby.  I STILL do.  I worried constantly in the beginning about when she would be more awake, etc. but as she has gotten older the feedback I get is that this is BETTER than the reverse, and to just go with their needs. 

Is the 9pm your last feed?  Why do you want to change to 10?

At this age I found clustering in 2 hr intervals starting at 3pm to get a 9 hr stretch from my dd.  So we did 3, 5, 7, 9 and then she would wake somewhere around 5-6 at this age.  We also had a nap after the 3pm feed, sometimes going into th 7pm feed but usually VERY ready to go back to bed in the 9 o'clock hr.  Make sense?

I have been told by countless docs re: my dd's sleep (because I usually bring it up every time I see a ped) that the only time I need to be concerned if she is listless and nonresponsive.

Hope this helps!

[colenliam]

Just on the sleep issue, Ds was a very sleepy baby as well and still is(8months old)  Like the above poster I wouldn't be concerned unless.....what her ped. has said.  I geuss it the same with adults some of us need more sleep than others.

[MacyMom]

Thank you Ladies, this helps alot!

My thought to changing her bedtime from 9pm to 10pm is to push her awake time from 6am to 7am which would help my schedule. But, I should be happy that she is sleeping through the night and not get too carried away.

Thank you again,