Newborn awake all night, what to do?

Liquorice

Registered User
My two week old has somehow got into a situation where he sleeps pretty solidly all day but is awake for most of the night (typically from 2am to 6am). Does anyone have any advice on how to change/reverse this? Anyone had a similar problem?

I try to keep him awake during the day, obviously, but its pretty near impossible as he just sleeps so soundly / in any position / circumstance when he wants to...
 
It's normal for a 2 week old to get their days and nights mixed up. Your baby will grow out of it as they get older. Just do everything normal like try to keep them up during the day with noise and let your baby see the daylight. At night, keep things dark and quiet. Hopefully they will soon learn to differentiate day and night. In the meantime you just have to deal with it. It does get better...hang in there.
 
Another thing is not to let them go long stretches of sleep in the day, so wake them up for feeds every 3 hrs (esp if you're bf because it helps establish good supply) and try to keep them awake for an hour at those times.
 
Thanks.

It's just that he did sleep through the night at first but now he is awake for about 4 hours. I do try to keep him awake during the day but, short of doing things that make him uncomfortable (changing nappy, cold hands, washing his face etc.) it is pretty impossible, and I don't want to terrorise him, bless him. Anyway, I guess it is just one of those things and hopefully it will work itself out soon.
 
We had exactly the same issue with our newborn, and it's so hard because waking up a sleepy newborn and getting them to actually stay awake for more than two minutes is almost impossible! I would say within 3 weeks it will be better... In the meantime, make sure you are sleeping during the day too!
 
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