Keeping My 1 Month Old up During the Day?!!?!?!?

Hey, C.! Congrats on the new baby boy!

I am NOT a big fan of "sleep training" or scheduled feedings or anything of the like. Babies wants are their needs. If they want to sleep, they need to sleep. If they want to eat, they NEED to eat. He's only 1 month old & he's going through a lot. Some days he will be more tired or hungry than others.

Have you ever ready anything by Dr.Sears? If not, I highly suggest it! He is a great author! His "Baby Book" is great as is "Attachment Parenting". You can also find lots of info on www.AskDrSears.com

Good luck & congrats again!
A.

Unfortunately babies often have their days and nights mixed up. Babies need tons of sleep, regardless of the time of day/night. My advice for you is to sleep when the baby is sleeping if you can. Enjoy every moment...it goes fast! Good luck!

I used to take my babies in bed with me when they fussed in the night. I would let them nurse as long as they wanted and then put them back in their bed when they fell asleep. The worst thing about that is that I would sometimes wake up in the morning with a kink in my neck (from laying in one position too long). But, I got sleep and a happy baby.
-:)
N

We used Babywise (a book) & both of our kiddos are happy, well-adjusted and are on an excellent schedule =O}

Best wishes

It's a little too young to control his schedule yet, but it REALLY helps to use this pattern to get his eating and SLEEPING in order and predictable:
Feed him immediately whenever he wakes up. Then let him be awake a while and dose off without eating (unless he's really hungry of course). You can feed him right before night time sleeping. Repeat the Sleep, Eat, Wake pattern.
This way, you will always know what he needs and what's coming next for your own scheduling purposes-no more wondering if he's tired or hungry or what, and he won't learn to need food in order to sleep. The sleeping at night instead of day will happen. Probably in the next couple of weeks-this age is the hardest part! Hang in there!

Congratulations on yoru new baby! I agree with Bonnie, at this age (and until at least 6 weeks, maybe even 2-3 months) they are incapable of regulating their sleep. There are going to be good days and bad days. Sleep when the baby does, and alternate getting up with your husband. During the day try to expose him to as much daylight (blinds open, etc.) as possible. This stage will pass, but it is a ROUGH one, I know.

I'd get Ferber's book on sleep so you can start sound sleep habits with the baby when he gets older!

I highly, highly suggest the book "Good Night, Sleep Tight" by Kim West. The book is an excellent resource to a first time mother. It helped me sleep train my son (I didn't start however until six months) but her suggestions for getting your son into a schedule and routine are wonderful. She also does not make you feel guilty about making the choices you decide to make in your schedule and she is realistic- being a mother of 2 herself. The website for The Sleep Lady, as West is called, was also a valuable resource for me from mothers dealing with the same sleep issues at the same time. The newborn stage is tough, but although it seems right now that it won't end, it will get better. And do sleep when they sleep- the chores and laundry will always be there and can be done later once you start to feel more rested. Take care and enjoy this time with your child- it does go quickly! :)

this was the advise i got from a nurse when i had my son - feed him every 2hrs during the day. if hes asleep, wake him up! and when he is awake, be active with him.
i know u may b thinking "dont wake a sleeping baby," but this really worked for me and it switched his "clock" very quickly! good luck!

Try and see if you can establish a pattern. It doesn't have to be rigid but can give you a guide. My little one would nurse every two hours on average. He would sleep after each nursing and sometimes more. Try to help him have wakeful periods but at this age its okay if he sleeps a lot during the day. Find out what his sleep triggers are. Use those to get him to sleep. Burp frequently even between feedings to make sure there's no burp causing him to wake up. If hes whiny when he wakes up and hes only slept for a little bit, see if you can soothe him back to sleep.
It will also help if you can get him to nap in his own space rather than holding him while he's napping.
Make sure hes fed, changed and comfy before you put him down so that those things won't make him wake up frequently. It will take time to train him and establish a flexible routine but it will help him recognize night from day and feel secure enough. Also try swaddling him for naps. Then he won't jolt himself awake.

Your son is too young to have a sleep pattern yet. It'll be 2-3 hours of sleep at a time for a while. Sleep when he does! After a while - maybe another month or so, try to keep him up during the day more and more - lots of light, music, stimulation & tummy time, then he'll eventually get the night & day thing worked out. Right now it's just too soon. He's probably too hungry to sleep at any interval more than 3 hours anyway at this stage. Remember, before he was born, he was getting food constantly in the womb, and he could sleep whenever he wanted! Old habits die hard!
Good Luck! We've all been there!

Our first born was a month old this weekend, so I am right there with you! After surviving on two or three hours of sleep a day for the first couple of weeks, I found myself becoming exhausted. I've heard that new moms should "sleep when baby sleeps," but that's easier said than done. I don't sleep well during the day. Besides, my daughter would sleep for twenty minutes to an hour and be up again!

A friend sent us the book "On Becoming Babywise" as a gift just a week or so ago. She had used the methods for both of her sons and they are wonderful kids. I was desperate for information on "sleep training," so I read the whole book in an hour. The book says to start as early as the second week, and our daughter was over three weeks old. We started that day (last Saturday) with the plan. It's the feed/awake time/sleep plan that a couple people here have mentioned. We're not very strict with it because it's next to impossible to keep a newborn awake when she wants to sleep, but that very night she slept soundly for 4 and a half hours. She only woke up once for her feeding and then fell back asleep. I was - and am still - amazed.

The part that helped us the most for our newborn was the chapter of the book that encourages listening to your child's cry patterns. I am not a fan of "cry it out" (which shouldn't even be attempted until 6 months, so please don't confuse this w/ CIO) and had never listened to my baby cry because I was always intent on stopping the crying. The book points out that babies cry when they're tired, and I soon realized that by constantly interfering with her crying when she wasn't hungry or wet, I was overstimulating her when all she really need was a chance to sleep. As a result, she wasn't able to fall asleep!

Thanks to this book and the strategies in it, we now have a nightly routine where after she's been fed, burped, and changed, we put her to bed. We set a limit of 10 minutes of crying time(the book recommends no more than 15 minutes). If she's still crying after 10 minutes, we pick her up and give her soothing/awake time for another half hour and then put her down again when she's drowsy. We start this at 11pm right now because she's fully awake from 8 to 11 every evening. Using this method, we have found that she has been asleep by no later than 12:30 every night and she sleeps until 5:30 or so. At 5:30, she has a feeding and diaper change and she falls back asleep. She has NEVER cried when I've put her back to bed after her 5:30 feeding! Like I said, we're amazed at the results.

Best of luck to you! I hope you find something that works well for you!

Oh, I agree it is just too early. I LOVE the Ferber book on sleep too. You really can't start the strategies until about five months of age. There are great pointers though, (that maybe you could start some of them) like putting your baby down to sleep in the crib and always while a little sleepy but not totally asleep, etc. Hang in there, it gets better all the time!

Congrats on your bundle of joy! The newborn age is the roughest when it comes to your rest. It is a phase that will smooth itself out. In the meantime, the best recommendation I can offer is one you have heard a thousand times, "sleep when the baby sleeps". Outside of you eating and taking a shower and occassionally returning a phone call, everything else really has to wait. Sleep is SO important to babies, so purposely keeping them awake is not healthy. They need sleep like they need food. Especially if you are breastfeeding, you need that rest too. If not, you will become sleep deprived and become irritable, impatient and unable to focus, to name a few. So get your rest soon after he goes down, even if that means just laying down or putting your feet up. Your body is still recovering from child birth. Hope this helps!

Yes it is good to make sure that the rooms that they are in during the day have their blinds open to let as much light in. It is going to be hard due to the fact that the cold weather is setting in. But it dose get better. I had one child that would sleep all day n night and then the other was up during the day and didn't like to sleep. Then another one that found her own sleeping habit on her own. with help that we would lay her down during late afternoon time. Even if it was just for an hour or two. Just for her to have her down time and for me to have a min or to to go to the bathroom. LOL. Best of luck

sometimes it takes a while for the baby figure out their days and nights. the one thing you could do to get him to sleep better is to give him a warm bath when you want to go to bed. after the bath rub him with lotion before you get him dressed.if he has a baby swing put him in there that will help him go to sleep.if you do not have one buy a boppy vibrating seat they have different sounds like the heart beat. i used that a lot when my son was a small baby.you can let it sit on the bed for awhile,when he falls asleep put him in his crib for the night. give him a bottle or breast feed,whatever you do. do not let him sleep in the bed with you. that is a bad habit which will be hard to break later.

Since he is your first and there are no other little ones that need your attention during the day, you should sleep when he does. He is too little to try to shape his sleep patterrns just yet. As long he is waking up to eat often enough, let him sleep and you get some rest as well. I am sure you could use it.

Congrats Mommy. Your little one is only 1 month old. There is no such thing and schedules or day and night in his new, unfamiliar world. Babies need to sleep when they are tired and eat when they are hungry. Keeping a sleepy baby awake just to suit a "normal" sleep pattern is not nessesary or helpful. Most times you will just end up with a grumpy, fussy baby. Babies will work out day and night on their own. Usually this happens around 6-8 weeks of age. But, that doesnt mean that at 6 weeks he will sleep thru the night.
My suggestion is to just let him work it out on his own and catch naps when he is sleeping, no matter when that is. He wont have days and nights mixed up forever, that I can promise. It just may feel like forever to Mommy.
Good Luck and Thank God everyday for such a beautiful blessing. :-)

C.,
Someone once told me that when a baby has days & nights mixed up to let them sleep when they fall asleep but not to let them sleep more than 1 hour then at night--let him go for as long as he will sleep. Not sure of your son is too young to try this but thought I'd pass it along! Hang in there. It will work itself out.

Hiya,

I remember how tough it was....but most babies won't really develop night/day rhythms until about 3-4 mos.

AND the most important thing they are doing is growing their brains...which they do when they sleep...so if you keep your baby up, you are sacrificing brain development....

BTW--mine was up to nurse every 2 hrs for 11 mos--all night, every night--and as tough as it was on me, I truly believe that it was critical for him, and I am so happy I did it.