At two weeks, we need to respond to each night wake
at the moment, with a feed.
And it's certainly still very reasonable
to be feeding your baby quite a few times
at night time at this age.
It's important though, to make sure
that she doesn't have her day and nights mixed up,
and around the wrong way.
Certainly, some babies do love sleeping during the day
and then are wide awake at night.
I had one myself, who, my first, would just sleep
all day, beautifully, through the day.
And then she was just wide awake at night time,
at three o'clock in the morning most times
for a good few hours,
just because she actually needed to be awake
in her 24 hour period.
The other things that we should look at are,
to make sure that she's swaddled at night time,
that she may need a little bit of white noise
to help her sleep at nighttime better,
and increasing her daytime awake time,
ever so slightly, by a few minutes every day
to help her sleep better at night,
rather than sleeping all her sleep during the day.
With newborn babies it can be really difficult
to feel like you're sort of progressing into having
a bit more structure to your day.
And that's because it's quite normal for newborn babies
to want to feed and sleep and feed and sleep.
And what can happen though, as they get a bit older,
and as the weeks go by, we kinda get stuck in this pattern
of sort of, not realizing that their needs
have developed and matured bit by bit.
And, you know, you might,
and I certainly did with my eldest,
you sort of find yourself, like, stuck on the couch all day
feeding your baby and then they fall asleep on you,
and then you sort of, either, just hold them,
or, if you put them down, they wake up,
and then you kind of start the process all over again.
And I mean, I'm not saying, don't feed and cuddle your baby
all day long, of course, of course do that.
But, if you are at the point where you just need
to get a little bit of breathing space,
and if you just need, you know,
to have a bit more predictability,
so you can go have a shower,
or, make a sandwich, or spend some time
with your older child.
You know, if you've got a toddler or an older child as well,
then there's some really easy things that you can do
to give a bit more structure to your day,
even though you do have a newborn baby.
So, I would be looking at, yes definitely feeding your baby
when they wake from a nap, and letting them have
a bit of awake time, like, you know,
let them sort of kick their legs around for a while,
give them some nappy off time.
Let them, you know, lie under a sort of a play gym,
and give them something interesting to look at,
they need a bit of stimulation, and increasing stimulation
as they get older, so that they are then tired enough
to have a nice, decent nap, and they're not relying on you
feeding to keep them asleep or rocking to keep them asleep.
And then I would tightly swaddle my baby,
I would take her to a nice dark, calming room,
put on some white noise, pop her in her bed,
and I would be settling her completely to sleep,
and at a newborn age, that's absolutely fine.
I would be, you know, maybe side settling her,
or even rocking her, putting her down
when she's already asleep,
and silently creeping out of the room
and that gives you, you know,
a little bit of a break, as well.
I'm not saying you have to do this
for every single sleep that your baby has,
but for, you know, one or two sleeps a day,
if you aim for your baby to have a sleep
in their own sleeping space,
at least it gives you a chance to have a shower,
grab something to eat,
spend some time with your older child.
And then, slowly, you'll be able to move that
into a bit more of a structured pattern to your day,
with sort of more regular awake and nap times.
And you know, your baby's probably going
to be more settled as well,
and love knowing what's happening next in their day.
So, our Newborn Program, has all of that information in it,
and it gives you the ideal awake times,
so that you know when exactly your baby
needs to go to sleep at each age,
and that's pretty much a week by week scale,
under three months.
So catnapping in an eight week old,
is probably due to either overtired, undertired,
or, your baby not being awake for long enough between naps,
or, being awake for too long between naps,
or, otherwise it could be that your baby
is being slept in a bright environment,
and after eight weeks old, it's very important that,
especially during the day, that their room is dark.
The reason that the, after eight weeks old,
it becomes an issue is because if their room isn't dark,
then what happens is, there's no release of melatonin.
Up until eight weeks they have the maternal melatonin
that they've got from their mother, and after eight weeks,
the maternal melatonin has completely worn off.
So, they need to start creating their own melatonin,
and the only way to do that, is to be in the dark.
Melatonins only produced in the dark.
And, if you're sleeping your baby in the bright light,
what happens is they don't get enough melatonin
to then push them into that next sleep cycle.
So, they'll catnap and they'll do short 35 to 45 minute
sleep cycles, and then they don't have that melatonin,
so, when they rouse and they become
into their lighter part of the sleep,
after they've been in the deep sleep,
they're in a bright room, their brains starting
to switch on as soon as they sort of open their eyes,
they're getting stimulated, and then of course,
they wake up completely, and that is causing them
to then not move into that next sleep cycle and catnap.
So, that's probably the main reason
why an eight week old would start catnapping.
There are a few other reasons.
Maybe, they have trapped wind,
maybe, they are genuinely hungry,
or, they're fed too far away from their nap
to then have a decent nap
and they're waking and they're hungry.
Or, they have something else going on
that might be starting to be uncovered,
for my own child, it was around that time
where we started figuring out that she
had severe silent reflux.
But, of course, with our Sleep Programs,
we can start figuring out, start easily ruling out
that they aren't over or undertired.
Changing the room environment, making sure that they
are in the dark, or, and that they have swaddles,
and that they have a little bit of white noise
to help them move into that sleep cycle.
It's easy little things that you can do
to tweak and help rule out that they aren't
the reasons why your baby is catnapping.
And also, it can help uncover,
if there are anything else going on that would be able to,
sort of highlight, I suppose,
by ruling out everything else first.
Yep, undertired.
So, you might not of heard of this word,
or if you have, you may be a bit confused as to
why we're saying undertired and not overtired.
It's the same principle, it's just the other way around.
So, undertired, means your baby or toddler,
is not ready for sleep, quite simply, they are undertired.
So, we would talk about undertiredness
in the context of, particularly, younger babies.
If they haven't been awake long enough between naps,
and you're trying to put them down for a nap,
and they're resisting you or they're crying,
or they're just not going to sleep,
in some cases, they might well be undertired.
So, they're just not ready to go to sleep,
and they're refusing to go to sleep because of that.
So, undertiredness means, you would look at extending out
their awake windows, between naps,
to be more age appropriate.
And awake windows are something that are going
to be stretching out constantly, anyways.
So, staying on top of that,
is your best defense against undertiredness.
Your five week old baby,
should definitely not be actively self settling.
They can certainly be going to sleep by themselves,
or, in their bed, when they're ready to sleep,
if you are rocking them to sleep, or feeding them to sleep,
I mean, absolutely, do that.
There's no harm in treating their sleep as a priority,
and knowing that they need to go to sleep,
over their ability to actively, sort of, self settle.
The self settling only really becomes an issue,
over sort of, that three to four month sleep progression.
Where their brain actively changes and they need
to be able to independently go to sleep,
if that is causing them to then wake
every two hours or so over nighttime.
But, with your five week old, newborn, absolutely.
If you need to rock them to sleep
every now and again then that's fine.
Or, we would recommend is making sure that they actually
are tired and need to go to sleep in the first place,
because newborn babies do change dramatically
in those first three months, what worked at two weeks old,
might not necessarily be working at five weeks old.
So, our Sleep Programs will go through the optimal times
of having your baby awake during the day,
so that they'll do their decent chunk
of sleep over nighttime for you.
And they'll also get their increasing calories
throughout the day, so hopefully, they won't need
to feed as often overnight.
Some newborns will sleep a lot during the day,
and then they'll need the calories overnight.
So, they'll wake every couple of hours, to get the calories,
and have their feeds over nighttime.
So, our Programs would make sure that their day and night
are sort of around the right way.
But, we're not recommending that you have
your baby self settling, if they're going to sleep
when they're ready, that is absolutely perfect.
With my own children, I always made sure that they
had their good sleep associations,
all set up when they were a newborn.
So, if they were going to sleep in their bed,
that they had their swaddle
to help them sleep for longer periods.
I had the baby sleep shush going,
so that that helps them tune out and that they knew that
every time that it was played, that it was at sleep time,
that the room was dark, so that it helped build melatonin,
that's especially important over eight weeks old,
and that helped them sleep
for longer periods during the day.
And then once the sleep regression comes
at around four months old, I would only have to change
a few little things, and so that they had all
the other associations, built in already.
So, between the ages of zero and three months,
it takes a while for your babies circadian rhythm
to kick in, and to really become established.
And this means, that they can suffer,
what is commonly called, day or night confusion.
And, what this looks like, is your newborn baby,
napping really well during the day,
so, napping for maybe three or four hours even, in a go,
and then, waking up, having a feed,
staying awake for quite a short time,
and then going back to sleep for another long stretch.
Then, they might be really, really wakeful overnight,
sleeping in one to two hour chunks, and feeding a lot.
Now, arguably, if your baby is capable
of three and four hour stretches in the day, then,
there's no reason why they can't
do those stretches at night.
So, what we wanna do, is reverse the pattern.
And have more feeds and shorter sleeps
happening during the day, and save those nice long stretches
of sleep for overnight, when sleep is going
to be more restorative for your baby,
and also, obviously for you.
So, babies do need a hand getting their circadian rhythm,
kick starting their circadian rhythm.
And getting their body clock, sort of, functioning properly.
And the best way to do this, is to help them regulate
their daytime sleep hours, and we would recommend doing that
by waking your baby from their naps,
if they are at risk of napping for too long in one go.
And not only does this mean,
that they're also going to then potentially,
stay awake more overnight, but it means,
that they've also probably missed
a feed opportunity during the day.
And then, of course, they're going to need to make up
for those feeds, overnight.
And again, we want to reverse that,
so they're feeding lots during the day,
and not quite so much overnight.
So, in our Newborn Sleep Program,
which is all about setting up really good, sustainable,
healthy sleep habits for your newborn baby.
We recommend, nap lengths that are going
to give your baby good, restful sleep during the day,
but, not so much sleep during the day,
that it's going to interfere with the consolidation
of their nighttime sleep.
Because, we definitely don't want it that your baby
is napping all day long, and awake all night.
So, our Sleep Program can definitely help you
to reverse that pattern.
Another thing that can really help your baby understand
the difference between day and night,
is, when they are awake, and in their awake windows
in the day, making sure they're in a lot of sunlight,
or natural light, making their awake times bright,
and interactive, so that they really understand
that this is daytime, it's with being awake for interacting.
And then, when you're tending to them in the night,
between their sleep stints, keep the room very dark,
keep the white noise going, keep stimulation to a minimum,
so they really start to understand that the night
is for sleep, and staying calm and settled,
and the daytime is for shorter stints of sleep,
or your daytime naps, and for a lot more awake, alert time.
If you need some more help getting naps happening,
or even getting the awake times right for your baby
at this age, please take a look at our website,
we've got lots of sleep information on there.
And of course, our Newborn Sleep Program,
which has all of the information that you need.
And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel,
for lots more baby sleep videos.