8 Week Old Sleep Habits

This is totally normal behavior for an 8 week old. They need to eat, sleep, and be cuddled by mommy.

Try co-sleeping and you both will get longer periods of uninterrupted sleep. Or, if you're not a fan of co-sleeping, then try the swing at night. Both worked for my son.

Considering you have one child already, you know that sleep goes out the window when you have kids. Good luck with everything. I would also get a second opinion on the Pepcid. Babies are gassy and reflux normally at this age...it seems very young to me to have an 8 week old already on meds.

http://www.thewritersnotion.com

One of the most incredible techniques that i have ever seen is the 5 S's by Dr Karp (http://www.happiestbaby.com/) a great video to demonstrate the techniques is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6KnVPUdEgQ

it is truely amazing and WORKS! :)

good luck!

ok...this is gonna sound off the wall..probably get booted off here for this..but..here goes. Rice cereal..I know you are breast feeding..but take a tsp of rice cereal (gerber)and a bit of your breast milk or formula and make a paste a soupy paste (very soupy)..feed it to him..he's hungry and his tummy is telling him so..it has nothing to work on. feed it to him with a spoon make it really soupy..or put it in a bottle ( if you put it in a bottle you'll have to cut the nipple or it won't get thru..)..but it will satisfy him...my youngest started that at 3 days. and she started sleeping thru the night. RICE ONLY! Their tummys can't handle anything else.

Actually, at 8 weeks old whether a baby is breastfed or formula fed it's normal for a baby to wake to feed at night. For a breastfed baby it's especially normal to wake every 2 hours to feed during the night and yes, he is HUNGRY. Breastmilk is digested very easily and quickly and your baby needs the fat and calories in breastmilk to grow. Babies eat, sleep, and poop at this age. Your baby is doing everything he should be doing and is prefectly normal. There'es nothing wrong with him and he sounds like a very well adjusted baby with excellent sleep patterns. Lengthening his sleep time will cut out the times he needs to eat, which will cut out the calories and fat and fluids and other nutrients and contact with you that he needs to grow.

Unfortunately, sleep for you at this point is a luxury, not a right or a privilege so if you want or need sleep then you might want to consider pumping if you're able to pump and let your husband take over a feed or two during the night. Ask a friend, neighbor, or relative to help you out during the day a couple of times a week so that you can shower and take a nap.

Have you considered baby wearing? Trying a properly fitted sling? It might help your daytime schedule if you can hold him close while you're taking care of your older child and handling household chores and other errands.

You also need to remember that you're not Super Mom and no one expects you to be. You're only 8 weeks postpartum. If you'd had a c-section you would still be in recovery time. Slow down and re-evaluate your expectations. If you're comparing him to how your eldest was when he was a baby, stop doing that. They're different children with different patterns and different needs. Use this new baby's patterns to create a new schedule. Keep a journal to see what his natural patterns are and see if you notice something emerging that you can work around, something that is predictable. By this age if you write down when he eats and naps and wakes you should be able to notice a predictable pattern rather than try to force him to accommodate your pattern.

Edited to add: I would strongly urge AGAINST adding cereal to your breastmilk or formula. At 8 weeks old your baby's digestive system is too immature to digest anything other than milk, so it will sit in your baby's stomach like a literal rock. A lump. That's why he would "feel full" and sleep longer. It won't get digested, but it will cause digestive problems and it will keep your baby from absorbing necessary nutrition from your breastmilk and it would be detrimental to his health.

You descibed my son as an infant. Except he also cried alot all day long. It's still early at 8 weeks he could be cluster feeding to up your milk supply. I found every few weeks would be worse in the begining. He also never naped well about 45 min twice a day that was it. I wish I could tell you there was a magic trick but there wasn't. Honesty not everyone will agree but we co slept which helped everyone get some extra sleep. He started out on his own every night, but settled back down easier with us, still waking to feed though. I kept my sanity because I was often back to sleep before he finished nursing. Hey it doesn't last forever. I wish you luck.

I have a friend whose infant's stomach issues were resolved when she changed to a liquid nutritional supplement (patented, totally safe) - the digestive product she took got to him through the breast milk, and he is much more comfortable. It also helped her with energy. I can give you more info on that. Also, my son was soothed by something we called the "heartbeat bear" - not sure of it's real name. It was a hand-me-down teddy bear with a battery inside, and it made the sound of the mother's heartbeat. It had a volume adjust knob - the rhythm seemed to help our son more than the pure steady white noise. Your son may be too long "out of the womb" at 8 weeks for this to help, but it's an option and you sound pretty desperate! Some babies just have so much trouble self-soothing. I wouldn't introduce a pacifier - if it falls out, the child is unable to put it back in, and you'll still be up every hour. Good luck.

Hi there I have to agree with moat of the posts that this sounds entirely typical for a breastfed baby of that age. I would absolutely agree it's way too early to introduce cereal and would disregard that advice. Also would consider skipping the pepcid if you aren't really convinced it does anything - babies grow so fast even if he seemed to need it two weeks ago he might not now. Worth at least checking in with your pedi to understand why you should medicate him.

Also agree with the post about the Happiest baby on the block (karp) and the baby whisperer (tracy hogg) - good advice there.

At 8 weeks they are still just all over the place with sleeping and eating. I would recommend the "tanking up" that tracy hogg suggests before bed and the "dreamfeed" where you go in and give one last feed before you go to bed without waking him. Amazingly, you can just latch him on after you get the hang of it and he'll nurse while sleeping.

Anyway, congrats, enjoy and good luck!

I don't have any personal experience with acid reflux babies but I've had great luck getting both my kids to sleep by following the Baby Whisperer (by Tracy Hogg) strategy. Take a look at the sleeping chapter to see if it is something you may be interested in trying.

We were feeding our 2 month old twice a night and started giving her a pacifier the first time she woke up...after a week or so she began just waking up once closer to a normal wake up time (5 am). She is just over 3 months and gets feed (at night) at 9:30/10 pm then about 5 am. She is formula fed though...this may be the difference.

I think that's pretty typical for an 8week old. Do you know anyone who has a co-sleeper or bassinet you could borrow? Maybe if the baby is in the room right next to your bed you could just breastfeed him without having to get up & out of bed. I found that to be helpful.
Also, how confident are you about the acid reflux diagnosis? If you have any doubts about whether he should be on Pepcid I would STOP the drug, as it can cause agitation. We don't really know all the possible side effects in infants b/c they can't report to us what they're feeling. Not to beat this point to death but keep in mind that not all cases of reflux are related to acid. There is such a thing as non-acid reflux. He might just have muscle spasms causing regurgitation, and suppressing acid does nothing to prevent or treat that. Pepcid also increases a person's risk for developing pneumonia, and since we are still in flu/rsv season, that would concern me. I'm not anti-drug, just a cautious and skeptical mom (and nurse). Moving on...
If the angled wedge doesn't work I'd get rid of it if I were you. the fewer things in an infant's crib the better. Unfortunately I think he's too young at this point for sleep training. It's so hard but it will get better.

Its perfectly normal for a breastfed baby to wake every 1-2 hours to nurse with one longer stretch. If he has reflux try putting him in his carseat, swing, or bouncey seat for sleeping. My youngest had reflux and slept in his swing or my arms or an ergo (during the day) for months.

looks like you've got some good responses here, but i will reiterate that this is normal behavior for an 8 week old. It's important that you are breastfeeding on demand since infants go through cycles of growth spurts and no two are on the same schedule for that. You don't want to add breastfeeding problems or supply issues to the challenges of mothering a toddler and a newborn, so just surrender this time to your infant and establish consistency. Sleep deprivation is the worst, but it's part of the process. Ensuring your milk supply and the babies needs now will only set you up for a stronger start when the baby is old enough to have a true routine.
Good luck and congratulations!
Keep up the god work!!

I have an 8 week old too. Oh, to get some sleep!

I babywear, so my little guy usually naps from 9-12 when I'm out and about in the morning with his sister, and then he naps in his crib for 1.5 hours in the afternoon, eats, and usually goes back to sleep for another block. It sometimes takes me two or three times to get him to sleep in his crib, but I just keep putting him down. They are unable to self-sooth at this point, and we can't really teach them to put themselves to sleep until the 12 week developmental milestone, so until then, we just have to hang in there. If you really want to get him to sleep, get a sling. My guy goes right to sleep and will continue sleeping until I wake him!

And yes, they do one long stretch and then it's every 1-2 hours at night. Totally developmentally appropriate. So much fun!

Also, their systems cannot handle rice cereal, and there is no scientific evidence that 'solids' help them sleep longer. It's a myth that can be dangerous.

What I'm doing to combat the lack of sleep: keeping myself and 2 year old busy. We are out every morning, and then, in the afternoon, while she rests, I sit down with a cup of tea and try to rejuvenate myself. I'm also trying to cherish every minute of my baby, since this will be my last. It's exhausting, but soon we will get sleep, and next thing we know, they will be off to college!

I always had the 3 month mark in my head when my kids were newborns. It always seemed to me that for the first few months, sleeping habits were not established yet, especially at night. My kids were breastfed during those months too, and during the night, they were still getting up every 3-5 hours. 5 hours was extremely appreciated by me, since normally it tended to be closer to 3. I hear you about the tiredness. When my second was born, I had a 15 month old at home. Those couple of years were a blur. When my oldest hit 20 months I remember thinking how much easier the last 4 months would've been had she been 20 months when my second was born. Don't be afraid to have your 2 year old help out. When my oldest hit that 20 month mark, she was suddenly understanding more and was getting me diapers and other things I needed, and really enjoyed doing the helping. Before then, she was just too young to even understand the concept of helping mommy.

I also have to agree with the posts who say this is completely normal. That 3-4 hour stretch is a good amount of time. My 8 week old would only go 2-3 hours. She didn't give me 4 hours until she was nearly 4 months old.
He would definitely sleep for longer stretches of sleep if he was not in a separate room. Your sleep sounds, breathing etc. will settle him and allow him to go for longer than 1-2 hours. I can't imagine why you are willing to keep getting up every 1-2 hours all night!!
My 6 month old sleeps in an arms-reach co-sleeper. She now sleeps for 6 hours from 8 pm to 2 am. Then I take her in bed with me and nurse her back to sleep. Sometimes I keep her with me and sometimes I put her back in her bed. Either way- she'll sleep until 8:30 or 9:00 am.
I used this same strategy with my 5 and 7 year olds when they were infants. They were both moved to their cribs at the other side of our bedroom around 9 months old, then into their own rooms at about a year.
We never had any of the problems I see others having. They slept without incident, went to sleep without complaining. We never tried "crying it out" as we never needed to. I think they learned good sleep habits from sleeping in the room with their parents and then were able to construct healthy sleep associations for themselves. With your 8 week old in another room- he has no idea how to function apart from you. He needs an example to learn from.
Just remember- infants don't have needs and wants. They only have needs. When a need is filled- it will eventually go away. If he needs to be near you, keep him close by. Soon that need will go away and he'll be sleeping well on his own.
Good luck.
-S.

Have you tried putting him in bed with you holding him closely, or putting him in one of those small bed that goes into your bed if your not comfortable sleep with him next to you. I have a 2 year old and she would do this at night and I was miserable until i tried this and it worked I beleive she felt safe when I was near, It was either this or no sleep Im a mother of 5. So much for qualitty time, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Hope that this may help

Have you tried or are you swaddling your baby? That bought significantly more sleep for us with all three of our kids, and we swaddled them until 5 or 6 months. Once they got strong enough to break out of a traditional swaddle (check out www.eieiobabygear.com for good blankets that are large enough to do the job), we used a regular blanket first and then a Loving Baby swaddle blanket on top (www.onestepahead.com). The latter unfortunately doesn't contain the baby on its own but works great combined with a regular blanket underneath.

I also reccommend using a sling (some others have mentioned this) to get your baby to sleep longer during the day.

I have a 3-month-old who sleeps 3-4 hours and then wakes up every couple of hours afterward, though, so what you describe is probably pretty normal. My second child was the same way (or worse), but my first son slept 7 hr stretches almost immediately! Apparently we were extremely lucky. Just remember that it does get better eventually!

I co-sleep and I would never suggest it for anyone else that already has the baby in the crib ... but it works for me and it may work for you, especially if you need your sleep. My baby sleeps beside me about a foot away. I co-slept with my son who is two and half and now my 3 month old daughter. You may want to try it for a few months so that you can feed your baby, cuddle, soothe etc without getting out of bed. Don't worry about creating a habit now, habits can be broken. When her little digestive system is better and she is better, move her to a crib. You all need your sleep. Try it and if it doesn't seem to help put him back in the crib. My son slept in my bed until I stopped breast feeding and I'll probably have my daughter sleep with me for 6 months or so. It goes by so fast. Putting the baby back in the crib may take a few days to a week but may be so worth it. Best wishes to you. Also, have you tried Mylacon (gas-ex) drops?

This is completely normal behavior for an eight week old! Contrary to what some may believe, breastfed babies NEED to eat during the night. Breastmilk digests quicker then formula. Your baby is hungry when he wakes, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There is nothing wrong with him or you. My remedy for bight feeding is co sleeping. You could also bring the crib into your room or next to your bed. I have never had an issue with this because of cosleeping(and I have an extremely high needs baby who had colic). I have helped countless women on this topic. Nighttime is also crucial to nurse. Because it keeps up your milk supply( this us what a reputable lactation consultant or le leche leauge leader will tell you, my mom was both) Do some ressearch at askdrsears.com and le leche leauge and mothering.com they all have well documented resaerch on the subject.