Ask Me Help Desk - Sleepless nights

I am going through the sleepless nights with my newborn, baby girl who is 3weeks old. She sleeps more during the day 3hrs maximum and awake at night. She wakes up mostly after every two hours and sometimes goes back to sleep straight away but most of the time she stays wake for about 45 minutes...

Is there anything I can do to make her sleep a bit longer atlist 4hrs or more?
Any advice please cause I feel maybe there is something I'm not doing it right.

Thanks

I don't have any experience with newborns yet so I don't know how much help I can be. However, from reading my pregnancy books it seems normal to me that a newborn wakes up every 2 hours. I know that many times, if you are breastfeeding, you are feeding them every 2 hours.
Hopefully someone can give you better advice. I just thought I would answer so that your question would go to the top of the page.

I'm a guy, lol... But I remember every night I had with my little girl when she was a new born and OH GOD, you are so lucky to have a needy newborn. You are doing nothing wrong at all, I remember calling health links all the time wondering the same thing and they said it's normal for the first while. I mounted a T.V on her wall in the nursery and played soft music on my DVD/CD player until she fell asleep and I just sat there and dreamed awake about what she will be like and how we will dance, sing, build forts, it goes on and on. You will be fine. You hit a soft spot with me because I wish I had known about this site in 2005 to have people talk to me about this same thing. Eventually you will play the music and your little one will feel the comfort of you being there without you even being there... You will miss the times you were not sleeping, but love all the cute new things that will happen everyday, things that you couldn't have dreamed were so special. Mine is so smart now and we sing like no one hears us, dance like no one is watching and laugh like billionaire's! Just the other day I played an old CD that she used to fall asleep listening to. It has the word mommy in it and she heard the song and started to just cry... Really cry hard. I have never even heard of a two and a half year old cry out of such direct logical emotion before. I hugged her and was really sad too. I told Kayla about when she was a baby and how I used to play this song all the time and hold her. And she just held me and kept crying, Cough! LOL, anyway... I appreciated every moment I had then, but it wasn't enough. Congrats on your baby and I'm heading off to bed. I probably never helped at all here but I feel better. :-)One other thing I did do was, I used to wake up before she did at many hours of the night and I would change her and feed her and I remember that she changed her routine and slept for longer periods knowing that it was being done automatically.

Thanks Greg your message has given strength knowing that every day of my girl's life is a day to remember and a wonderful memory even though at the moment it seems like a hard work..
As I can see your your hard work has turn to beautiful memories.. ur sound like a wonderful father and you daughter sounds like a sweet little princess.. and smart too as you mentioned.

Thanks for the advice... I will try the CD and see how that goes..

Quote:

Originally Posted by nayame79

i am going through the sleepless nights with my newborn, baby girl who is 3weeks old. she sleeps more during the day 3hrs maximum and awake at night. she wakes up mostly after every two hours and sometimes goes back to sleep straight away but most of the time she stays wake for about 45 minutes...

is there anything i can do to make her sleep a bit longer atlist 4hrs or more?
any advice please cause i feel maybe there is something i'm not doing it right.

thanks

Hi, My son just turned 9 weeks and we used a book called 12 Hours of Sleep by 12 Weeks Old. It's a great book and although they say you shouldn't start until about 6 weeks, we started our baby on this program at 4 weeks. The first thing we did was to get him to eat only every 4 hours, obviously increasing the amount you feed the baby each time. Our son took to this well and is so much easier!