Topsy turvy routine!

[blob2be]

My 6.5 week old son is not much of a sleeper - probably sleeps 8 hours in a 24 hour period. HV says that this prob means he's very bright but I'm so sleep deprived that right now I would happily settle for a simpleton who slept right through! The thing is, on the rare occasions that he does sleep for a good stretch (4 hours), it's always in the day. how can I turn this around so that it happens at night? It's normally after being out in the car when he's all snug and warm. It took 2 hours to get him to go down last night after a feed, meaning I only got 1 hour before he was hungry again. he wakes up so often in the night and the only thing which will stop him crying is for me to get up and paly with him or to feed him. I'm usually so kanckered that I opt for a feed in bed, meaning his feeding routine is all over the place. Help!

[digdog]

Hello, I sympathise with you - the first few weeks are sooooo exhausting - sleep deprivation is a horrible thing! My son didn't sleep very much either day or night. You need to get him to gradually try to understand the difference between night and day - what I did was when he woke at night keep the lights low, don't speak to him very much, don't put his mobile on, don't change nappy unless you really have to and keep things really calm and relaxed (if thats possible with a crying baby!). I used to swaddle him and use white noise to calm him down rather than picking him up and playing. And when it gets to morning I put all the lights on, start chatting and playing with him, put the radio on so there's noise and things going on, etc.

It takes a bit of time - 6 weeks is still very young so he's bound to wake at night quite often - but my baby is now 15 weeks and sleeps much more, mostly during the night and has a couple of short naps during the day. So it does get better!