7 week old suddenly awake all night??

[MEPride]

My DD is 7 weeks old today. Since week 2 she has done well with sleeping at night. As well as can be expected. Easy to put down,sleeping for appropriate stretches of time. But this week... I don't know what's going on! She was wide awake until midnight. It took DH and I HOURS to put her to sleep and then she was awake again at 2 am. I couldn't get her back to bed until 4am when usually we nurse for 20-30 min and put her back to bed immediately and without fuss. And now it's 6am and we are at it all over again!

What is going on?! This is the second night in a row!

 

[jessmke]

Yup this happens. Their development isn't linear, there are constant ups and downs, they'll sleep perfectly for a while then be up all night, be happy little angels for a while then turn into grumbly monsters. Not much you can do but accept it for what it is and do your best to cope.

My son was doing 6-7 hr stretches of sleep at night from about 4-8 weeks old, now I'm lucky if he goes 3 hrs. Twice this week he was up from 4:30-6:30 am and when I finally got him back to sleep my toddler woke up for the day. Coffee is your friend on days like this!

 

[Zephram]

They don’t have a circadian rhythm until they are 3-4 months old, which means they just decide they will be awake when they damn well please, whether that’s the middle of the night or not!

Night sleep is notorious for biting you in the butt as soon as you think you have it figured out. Babies have these ups and downs and at 7 weeks old there is really no way to predict what she’ll do, the best thing to do is roll with it. It sucks to be sleep deprived, but lower your expectations and don’t think if she has a good night that she’s going to keep doing it.