Time spent awake at 7 weeks old

My DD is 7 weeks old and it seems like lately she has a real long stretch of being awake in the morning, from like 9ish to 1pmish.

Then yesterday she was up for that stretch and then napped from 1ish to 430ish. Then she was literally awake from 430ish until 11pmish. I feel like she was awake way too much for a baby her age, but I couldn't get her back down for a nap no matter what I did.

Now today she was up from about 1030am to 1245pm, and then she slept from 1245pm to 345pm. I woke her up at 345, she had a bottle and she fell right back to sleep. She was up for an hour between 515 and 615 and now is back to sleep. I feel like she's all over the place.

Should I be trying to force her into a schedule at this age? Should I wake her up from naps or should I just let her sleep? I'm worried that now she's going to be up all night tonight!

Time spent awake at 7 weeks old

DD2 was still all over at that point. Personally (and opinions vary widely on this) she is on a three hour feeding schedule typically so if she was sleeping I wouldn't let her go over 4 hours if she was sleeping. That's only during the day though. At night I let her go as long as she wants.

ETA: during the day I am not quiet when she's sleeping. I go along with whatever i am doing and don't make ds be quiet either. At night I kept the lights off or dim and wouldn't talk to her or make eye contact. I would feed her change Her and put her back down right away.

Message edited 5/16/2013 7:18:22 PM.

Re: Time spent awake at 7 weeks old

My DS is 8 wks. Some days he sleeps a ton throughout the day, some days not so much. I never wake him for a bottle, ever. I just follow his lead and let him sleep as much as he needs and if there is a day he doesn't sleep a lot, I don't force anything.........that would be impossible anyway. At this age I just go with the flow.

I did the same with my DD and she eventually fell into a great routine on her own, just takes a little time. At this young age, I don't sweat anything.

Time spent awake at 7 weeks old

Dd is 3 months...when she was around 6 weeks she went two days with almost no napping and waking every 3 hours during the night to eat and not wanting to go to sleep after the feedings. Day three she spent the entire day whining-she was so Overtired she couldn't get herself to sleep. It was a terrible day. We spend day 4 and 5 where I would literally rock her to sleep after each feeding. She then got onto a schedule of napping about 1 hour between each feeding.
So based on my experience I would say to try to get some type of schedule - although I wouldn't wake for feedings if be sure to make them nap

Re: Time spent awake at 7 weeks old

It is definitely so hard to set a schedule at that point…try to wait till 3 months to do a schedule.

When DD was that little she was very alert and would be a wake for a few hours and then she would crash and nap 3-4 hours. She did have like 1 day a week where she would not nap at all…it was crazy! I was like how is this baby not tired! (Plus I needed a break lol). But it was all just a phase and it passes and they do get onto routines eventually.

We did try to do eat, play, sleep - so she would eat and be awake for a little while. Sometimes she was awake 20 min and sometimes 2 hours.

Oh and DD never went to bed before 12/midnight for a long time. She would not settle in for sleep - it took awhile…again about 3 months. Around 3 months she would go to sleep by 10pm and I think right before 4 months we got her down at 8pm.

HTH!