Night Waking at 2 weeks

[Fenella]

Hi

I'm new to these boards.  Have ds who is now 2 weeks old.  Straight onto EASY after first few days as had worked so well for #1from 6 weeks so not really sure what to expect in first few weeks.

Bottle fed.  He is a breeze during the day but sometimes really hard to get to sleep in early evening.  Settles himself well during the day.   When we finally get him to sleep at night we are finding he takes ages to go back to sleep last night awake from 3am till 6.30 am.

Are giving df. 

typical daytime routine:

awake 7ish awake 1.5hrs sleeps for 2hrs after next feed he can only stay awake for nappy change then falls asleep for 2-3 hrs.  Do you think he needs more activity time after the feed. if so very sleepy any ideas how to encourage him to stay awake.

Before i end this post i would just like to say to all you first time mums stick with EASY it works out great in end #1 now 2 1/2 and is a great sleeper.

Andrea

[Ennypen]

Hi there Andrea - congratulations on your fairly new arrival!

At 2 weeks of age all LOs can really do is eat and stay awake long enough to have their nappy done and then its off back to sleep.. so don't try to keep your LO awake if he wants to sleep. He will soon be able to stay awake for longer periods of time and you can work more to extending his A time in the day and helping him to realise that night time is night time and he is supposed to be doing more sleeping then.

Excuse the silly questions.. but when you feed your LO in the night do you do it in the dark.. do you talk to the him etc.. just wondered as I had to work very hard on the night time feeds to make sure my son could feel the difference to the daytime ones. After the daytime ones, done in the light downstairs mainly, I'd chat to him and gently show him things no matter how short a time he was awake so he knew that it was day...  eventually he knew the difference wand wanted to try to stay awake more in the day and sleep at night...

It certainly took some doing though as until Will was about 8 weeks old I had to feed him every 45 mins to an hour... lol... but he eventually went into a 2 hour EASY and things got easier from there!

Keep on smiling your gorgeous LO will soon get the hang of things!

H xx

[Fenella]

Hi

Thanks for response.  It is low lighting but take him downstairs to get the bottle with me so his crying wont wake his brother. The first week his night sleeps were longer than this week and activity time in the night is now our main problem is it normal to take 2 hours to settle after night waking?   Can i speed it up at all.

Andrea

[Ennypen]

Hi there Andrea

I sat and wrote you a nice long reply last night and when I pressed send the site went down! Typical - I try to sound intelligent and the site cannot cope with it.
Anyway I saved my response for you and when I get home after work I will paste it back onto the site so you can see my thoughts - didn't want you to think I had forgotten about you in the meantime - I certainly havent.

Talk with you soon!

Helen xxx

[Ennypen]

Here is that reply I wrote!

This is only my opinion but I don't think that there is a "normal" at 2 weeks of age. Your LO is getting used to so much at the moment that you are bound to find some changes in how things happen.

More silly Helen questions and thoughts...

When your LO wakes in the night and you are worried about his brother being woken (which is totally understandable) do you feel slightly tense about it, could your LO be feeling that you are tense about the night feed and therefore becomes unsettled. My DH used to offer to feed Will in the night but he was so unable to cope with his own tiredness etc that he always became tense during night feeds and ended up with William being unsettled, resisting his bottles and crying all sorts.. when I did the feeds I coped really well with the night wakings and stayed calm and William always remained calmer with me and settled more quickly.. just a thought...

Could you have the bottles upstairs.. to keep the feeds different? We had a day and night system which had a little cool box and a bottle warmer so we could have the bottles in the babies room and feed him quickly without having to go downstairs or taking him too far away from the bedroom so he knew he had to stay in there to sleep...

Erm erm... can you tell that I am no expert here.. in fact I am just speaking from my experiences as a first time mommy to see if it will help you....

I truly think that if you keep day and night as different as possible and persevere and try to stay relaxed your little one will get used to things and will fall into a pattern when he is ready. He's still only a tiny one.. bear with him and take him as he comes. I bet hes gorgeous!
Makes me all broody again just thinking about it!

Helen xx

[Fenella]

Thank you.  We are now sleeping downstairs and we seem to be back to some kind of normality.  Night time now looks like this

E 7pm awake till around 8.30
DF 11pm
wakes up at 2.15 feeds doesn't cry but takes around 1 hour until soundly asleep
sleeps 3.30 till 5.30 then seems to be awake for the day

It is great that he is sleeping for around 8 hours at night but worried about 5.30 waking don't want him to be early riser.  always fed my first one and put back to sleep and he never wakes before 7.   I haven't been feeding him until 6am so we can start a routine day.  should i feed when he wakes and try as a night feed any ideas how to get a couple more hours? Or am i expecting too much too soon?

Andrea

[Ennypen]

Hi again xxx

It looks as though your lovely little one is beginning to get into the swing of being in our funny old world of night and day... congrats!

You certainly could try feeding your little one when he wakes at 5.30am and treat it as a night feed.. thats what I used to do and it worked for William. He used to have a bottle and went back to sleep until about 8am..

A lot of mommies will tell you that their LOs wake at this sort of time for the day.. William used to wake at 5.30am every morning until fairly recently in fact.. but when he was littler he had his bottle and went back to sleep and after he stopped having the night bottles he used to lie and chat to himself for about 20 mins then go back to sleep..

Take it easy xxx remember how tiny and young your LO is.. he will get there and all you can do is guide him and be patient.. hard I know when you are sleep deprived and awake in the middle of the night.

Keep in touch..

Hugs xxxx

[Fenella]

Thanks again

Fed him at 5am last 2 mornings and straight back to sleep until 7 or 8am.  so pleased.  Now considering dropping DF as will only take 2oz and doesn't seem to help him stretch his longest stretch is usually the first of the night so may stop DF until he is a bit bigger.  Started DS around 6 weeks and it worked well.

Andrea

[Ennypen]

Yey he is getting the hang of it!!!

William never did take a dream feed but at your LOs age he couldn't stretch more than 2 hours without a feed so every 2 hours or so he was awake and feeding but since I made it obvious which were night feeds and which were day feeds by the methods we have discussed he usually went back down.

Think carefully about dropping the dream feed .. even 2 oz can make a difference at your LOs age. Again try it and look carefully at the effect removing it has.. then you can tell whether your LO needs it or not. Its all about trying and seeing and reaching whats best for your LO really.

You sounds as though you are doing great - well done you!!

Helen xxx