Baby won't nap

[PuddlePuppy]

Little B is now 4 weeks old and just won't sleep/nap during the day - we are trying to get her into some sort of routine, roughly based around what she does anyway but she just won't nap during the day. At the moment she roughly does -

7am - feed due to colic/reflux 30 min of upright burping and snooze (after all feeds) - back to bed for light sleep until around 10

10am - feed, awake, looking around not really settled until

12/1 ish - feed,

3pm ish - feed and maybe if luckly a 45min to 2 hour nap - if we are luckly!!!

5 or 6pm demands more food then completely awake until bedtime at 1030. During this time she will just demand more food and more food constantly breast feeding til around 10 (she will fall alseep on breast, take her off she will wake about 10 minutes later crying only thing that will placate her is more booby!) until 10pm when we give her a top up bottle of formula at bed time.

She sometimes wakes at 12, not normally much now and then at 4ish and back to 7am.

We do bath and bed routine at 7, but she will just not go down for a nap at any time, we tried basket in own quiet room, own room with music the living room etc at various times during the day.

I am worried she is uber feeding in the evening, not just for cluster feeding but as she is tried and cranky..

All the books I have looked at suggest insigating a routine and 'setting' the baby - but they don't say how!!!!!

HELP!!!

 

[MoonMuffin]

Until they are 3 months you can't spoil them, they can't form habits; this said, let them form their own schedule, which they will (sounds like you've got one already), it does change around for the first few months though. So you don't need to "set" a baby, just pay attention to when your baby is doing every day (maybe write down times of naps and such), and go with the flow a bit. My lil girl went through weeks of taking great naps, and then a couple weeks of taking two 10-20 min naps. Also My LO still doesn't eat at the same time every day, but it's fine, and I expect that that will change once she's eating just solids (I've tried getting her to eat at cretin times, but it she's not hungry she won't eat). When they are that young a routine really isn't all that important yet. What is good is that you've set up a bedtime routine, even if your LO doesn't follow it yet, giving them a bath, feed, story, then bed (for example) every day at the same time is great cause they will learn that after those things its sleep. As long as you try, they will catch on eventually. And remember every baby is different! So some babies follow a routine from day one and others just don't. Also if you said your baby is has colic; have you tried swaddling? It helped my Lo sleep longer, most babies really love it. I also recommend reading Happiest Baby on The Block, it's really great for learning ways to calm fussy/colicky babies and explaining colic well, what ti really is/why babies may get it. Sorry, this post was a bit long.

 

[clb1982]

Hi there

I started introducing routine from day one in relation to bath time, pj time and when i got holly dressed in the mornings. Its hard at first as newborns dont seem to have much of a pattern with feeds, sleep, naps etc.

I would suggest you go with whatever your LO wants at this stage, she will start to form more of a pattern about 2-3 months.

My Holly had colic real bad ifrom 4-12 weeks in the evenings and would not sleep well between 7pm and 11pm as every time she fell asleep she would wake up 20 mins later, screaming her head off. It soon passed though and before you know it you LO will settle down.

Some good advice I was given by my midwife was "dont expect too much too soon, its still very early days".

just take each day at a time and do what ever you need to do to get by as you cannot spoil a newborn.

 

[PuddlePuppy]

thanks for the advice - i dont think the reflux helps her as she gets uncomfortable on her bback nor did the comments from grndparents i get the idea they sometimes forget what it was like!!

she has changed her mind again and is now on a feeding frenzy!!!