Help with a routine

[poppykat]

Chloe is now 6 weeks old and I am desperate to get her into some sort of routine at night as the sleep deprivation is becoming unbearable.

I am currently feeding her on demand and there is no sort of routine at all. She drinks 3,4 or 5oz (always offer 5oz) every 3 to 4 hours. She sleeps well during the day time but at night she is a madam! She guzzles a 5 oz bottle between 6-8pm but after that when she wakes up (still only 3-4hours later) She will not take more than 2 or 3 oz and then wakes up 2 hours later for the rest of the bottle. She is also really noisy from about 3am onwards making lots of grunting and moaning noises which keeps me awake. She then settles after her 5-7am feed and sleeps until about 9-10am.

Is there anything I can do to make the nights a little easier and get her to sleep longer? I am not expecting a solid nights sleep but at the moment I am only getting 3-4 hours, it reallly is torture!

 

[KarrierBag]

No idea what to say really hun, didnt want to read and run though. The only thing I can say is that she 'should' grow out of it.. Ava was the same around the same age as your LO but she was having a growth spurt so maybe your LO is the same?! I do think that you should follow baby's lead at the moment though, IMO she's too young for a proper routine but she will get herself into one soon enough. You could try the 'bath, bottle, bed' thing and see how that goes? Ava didn't know her nights from her days untill she was about 8 weeks but once I started bathing her at roughly the same time every night she realised that it was night time.

Sorry hun, it's prob just a phase though!

x

 

[suzib76]

my advice would be just to ride it out hun, trying to impose any sort of routine this early will do nothing other than stress you out to the max thinkng, planning and trying to implement it. follow babies lead and i know right now yoiu feel it will never end but it does, just see what a difference the next couplke of weeks make x

 

[Mrs Dot]

i echo the above posts, I remember H having a massive growth spurt around that time and we put him in his own room at 6 weeks. by 7 weeks he'd dropped his 2 am feed and then pushed his 5 am feed further forward until he slept through at 8 weeks. keep smiling hun and just go with her. perhaps she'll start dropping her early morning feed? have you put her in her own room/cot yet? we found that really worked for getting him into a routine as he knew that when he was sleeping in there it was nighttime. Now he only sleeps in his cot at night too so he knows the difference.

also we give him an extra ounce at bed 8 instead of 7. perhaps this might be worth a try and see if she'll take it?

 

[blahblahblah]

We just started a bedtime routine with one of the evening bottles, and from then til the morning we keep it dark and quiet etc. He very quickly started to go for longer stretched at night.

Even if you do nothing differently she will gradually learn, but something like that might hurry things along a bit.

 

[Mynx]

I agree with blahblahblah. Babies have no concept of day and night and it's something they learn over time. You can help out by keeping evening and night time quiet and dark (turns light down, keep TV volume low, keep voices low etc) and the day time bright and noisy.
We had the same problem with Evie, I remember starting a thread very similar to this myself because she just seemed to sleep for most of the day, only waking for feeds and would be awake and alert during the night lol. It took a couple of weeks but it worked and she actually started sleeping at night, waking for a feed at about 4am, then after a week she dropped her night feed and she was sleeping thru the night (midnight-7am) by 9 weeks old
Having said that, she never had a routine per se, we've always followed her lead - demand feed, sleep when she's tired etc - and it's only been in the last month or so that we've started implementing a more structured bedtime (bath, bottle, book, bed) She now goes to bed around 8pm and gets up at 6.30ish. She's brought her bedtime earlier by herself and it seems that following her lead has really worked for us.

 

[WW1]

I agree with blahblahblah. Babies have no concept of day and night and it's something they learn over time. You can help out by keeping evening and night time quiet and dark (turns light down, keep TV volume low, keep voices low etc) and the day time bright and noisy.
We had the same problem with Evie, I remember starting a thread very similar to this myself because she just seemed to sleep for most of the day, only waking for feeds and would be awake and alert during the night lol. It took a couple of weeks but it worked and she actually started sleeping at night, waking for a feed at about 4am, then after a week she dropped her night feed and she was sleeping thru the night (midnight-7am) by 9 weeks old
Having said that, she never had a routine per se, we've always followed her lead - demand feed, sleep when she's tired etc - and it's only been in the last month or so that we've started implementing a more structured bedtime (bath, bottle, book, bed) She now goes to bed around 8pm and gets up at 6.30ish. She's brought her bedtime earlier by herself and it seems that following her lead has really worked for us.

I echo this. Rebecca has also set her own routine and will now sleep through from about 10pm - 7-8am. At first she was awake all night - it is hard but they do grow out of it.

6 weeks is still very early and it's likely your LO will need a bit longer to get herself into a comfortable routine. Bear with it - it will come!

Big in the meantime - sleep deprivation is no fun!

 

[lanaross]

this has been working for us most of the time - I just don't talk to her during night, I don't talk at all, avoid eye contact, don't change diapers (I use 12 hours ones) unless she pooped, keep the room dark, I just feed her/burp her/put her down - she has no choice but to go to sleep, it's just plain boring to stay up. Most of the time she's dead asleep by the time I start burping her, sometimes though she will be up and will just babble herself back to sleep. Unless something is bothering her, it worked. We started doing it since about 4 weeks and she's got a hold of nighttime maybe at 8 weeks or so. But we do suffer during growth spurts, it's not a problem for her to go back down, it's constant newborn-like feeds - today it was at 11, 3, 4, 6:30, it was a nightmare but at least I didn't have to rock her back to sleep, that helps.

 

[poppykat]

Thank you all for your replies, really helpful advice.

We started the bath, bottle, bed routine on Tuesday and so far its going well, still not much improvment in the amount of time she sleeps but will just stick with it for a few more weeks and fingers crossed she will start to realise night time is for sleeping!!

x