Family Forum / Pregnancy / Pregnancy / July 2007

Really depends on the child again. Sorry.
At 2 months #1 slept 12 hours (straight)at night, and had about 2x 30 minute
naps. And yes, she was fussy by evening.
#2 slept perhaps 9 hours at night with about 3 wakings, than had 2-3x 90
minute naps during the day.
#3 (at 6 weeks) slept yesterday 10:30am-1:00pm. 1:30pm to 4:00, 4:30-6:30pm,
8:30pm to 3:30am, 4:00am to 8:15am. He slept considerably less today in
shorter bursts too.
Debbie

By evening, he's fussy as

I think most infants that age sleep more, but they vary quite a bit.
Each of our children has needed a different schedule.  We had good
luck with timing when the fussy periods would be.   We avoided the
fussy times by planning bedtime or quiet time in the sling for just
before a fussy time.  Infants seem to find it easier to fall asleep
before they are too tired.

--Betsy

Newborns usually need more sleep that 12 hours a day.  You might be keeping
him up past his first wave of tired, which then can make it harder for him
to go to sleep.  What time is his nap?  You might try putting him down for a
nap around 4 or 5 or even 6, and see if he sleeps for another hour or two
and then is either up again for a few hours (and back to bed around 9pn), or
down for the night.

You wife may not like to hear him cry, and may not like when you let him cry
for a few minutes on his own, but as has been said before, some babies just
need to cry before they can sleep -- it's a way of decompressing from the
day and letting out the extra energy.  I know that the life of a baby seems
pretty basic and simple to us adults, but the truth of the matter is that to
a baby, life while awake can be really stimulating, even if it's just
hanging out in the house and looking at a baby mobile for a few minutes.

But I'd say that it sounds like he needs more sleep.  One thing that I found
worked really well is that basically a newborn can "handle" about 2 hours of
awake time before they need to sleep again.  So if he wakes up at 8am, let
him play, eat, etc, and then put him down for a nap around 10:00-10:30ish.
When he wakes up from that, let him play, eat, etc, for another two to three
hours, then put him down again for another nap.  He might need a little
push/assistance to get into napping when his body needs to, but it could
really make him feel better, and you and your wife too!

My first daughter didn't nap for long periods of time at all -- she'd cat
nap for 20 minutes at a time, 6-8 times a day.  She slept okay at night, the
standard 3 hours at a time, then 4, etc, but during the day, nothing more
than 20 minutes for the first few months, then 30 minutes.  When she was
close to a year old, she started sleeping 40 minutes, then an hour at a
time.  By the time she was 2, she was taking 1 massive 2 hour nap.

My second daughter napped like a pro right away -- 1-2 hours several times a
day.  At 19 months, she was still taking 3 naps a day.  At 2.5, she still
takes one 2 hour nap a day.  Life was SOOOOOO much easier when Addie was
under a year old, than when Taylor was!

He needs more sleep than this.
<http://www.slumbersounds.com/baby-sleep-patterns-info.htm#2>

Jamie had some good suggestions for attempting to help him get more
sleep. I'm betting he is over-tired and over-stimulated, and that
makes it hard for baby to get sleep. Sometimes it can be difficult to
"break the cycle", but for his sake (and your own), I hope that you
can do that fairly easily.

Alexander had huge issues with night-time sleep (he finally slept more
than 4 hours at a time at age 3 years), but was a great napper, and
got the full allotted amount of sleep every day, just wasn't able to
sleep for long uninterrupted periods of time.

Sharalyn
mom to Alexander James