Getting 6 Week Old to Sleep Through the Night

B.,

I hate to tell you this, but there is almost no way to get a 6 week old to get on any sort of longer sleep schedule. His little body is just not ready for it yet, but have faith that by the time that he is about 4 months old he will be more able to get on a better sleep schedule. For now, just know that this won't last forever and that first night that he does sleep longer will be one of the best nights sleep you will ever get! Good luck!

I agree with many others....it's unfortunately too much to expect from a 6 week old. I certainly don't blame you for asking or trying different things though. I just felt like I tried everything under the sun (I breastfed as well) and nothing really worked for me. My son just started sleeping through some nights at 16 months. I think he's an extreme though. Just keep trying and don't get down if you're back to work and not rested enough. It will come with time.

A 6 week baby shouldn't be expected to sleep through the night. Doing something like adding rice cereal to bottled breast milk isn't advised. Doing so can cause harm to your child. You honestly shouldn't expect your son to sleep through the night until about 6 months or longer. There is a reason why you see so many bleary eyed moms. Don't expect to get sleep until they are 18 and/or moved out.

I would not plan on much of a change anytime soon. For a six weeks old, a three hour stretch for a feeding is great. Your baby sounds like it is exactly where it should be in routine and on a good 'baby' schedule.

My poor husband did not see much of me during the nursing days -- as I usually co-slept most of the night with my nursing children. We all peacefully got some rest that way. I went back to work with all three children. One at 6 weeks and two at 4 weeks and nursed full time. Life is short, baby days are even shorter and these sleepless nights won't last for long. Baby need to be a baby.

Your baby is only 6 weeks old! That is extremely too young to expect him to sleep all night! I went back to work when my daughter was 6 weeks old; it was very hard because I was exhausted. I just had to deal with it and realize that it wouldn't last forever...she finally started sleeping through the night at around 1 year of age. I'm still catching up on my sleep!

There really aren't too many suggestions to help your baby sleep longer when you're breastfeeding. My son is almost 4 months old and will maybe do a 4 hour stretch at first, then every 2-3 hours the rest of the night. I never had this with my daughter so I've been trying to figure this out myself! The only thing I've done is wake my son up when I'm ready for bed (around 10 when he usually goes to sleep around 7:30) so he can eat and we can both go down for the night at the same time. Then I've perfected feeding him in bed while laying down. This way I don't feel like I'm wide awake in the middle of the night and still get some rest while he eats. He sleeps in a bassinet beside the bed so this is pretty easy to do for me. Hopefully you find a system that works for the two of you! Good luck!

I've only known one baby that young who slept thru the night, and the mother used the Ferber method. Personally, that's not something I would do to such a young baby. My son is developmentally delayed, and all of the paperwork says that 3mos and under is not the time to try sleep methods for any baby (delayed or not).

Also, all of the breastfed babies I know, eat more often than formula fed, and get up even once/night at 10mos old to eat.

I'm not sure that you'll find any solutions this early. And I would try to not put a lot of pressure on yourself to find one. Good luck!

You've probably gathered by now that a 6 (or even 12) week old baby isn't going to sleep through the night. :-) So, how to manage? What we did was that I would nurse about nine at night and then go immediately to bed in my babies nursery (we set up a bed in there). My husband would feed a bottle of formula or pumped milk at 12 (or whenever) and then put the baby to sleep in the nursery and go to bed in our room. When the baby woke up at 3 or 4 , I'd nurse and then put him back down and get a couple more hours of sleep. That way I had 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and then could get 1-3 more after the nursing. My husband slept from midnight until 7 or 8 in the morning (he has a very short commute). That way everyone got a decent amount of sleep. It is much too early to sleep train, but I would recommend getting and reading Ferber's Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems so you know how to not set up bad sleep habits.

Sleep is important, and it can be done with breastfeeding. If you need to add a bottle of formula in there to keep you breastfeeding (if you can't pump enough), it is better than giving up and quitting all together. You are at least half-way through the worst of the sleep problems-- between 8-12 weeks, the baby will probably be sleeping 6-8 hours straight at night. You won't know what to do with yourself!

I don't have any tips on how to get him to sleep through the night, but as a mother of 3 I just wanted to offer reassurances that it WILL eventually happen. Just please don't take to heart when people tell you "Oh, mine was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, 4 weeks, since birth!" Every baby is different. If you get any advice to put cereal in a bottle, check with your ped first. My first woke up every 2 hours for months, my 2nd started sleeping 3 hrs at a time since birth and slept through the night at 4 months, my 3rd slept through the night at 5 months. All were breastfed. It'll happen when he's ready, and hopefully that'll be soon.

I think no matter what you try, you are simply going to have to alter your expectations . . . babies, and breastfed babies in particular, tend to get up at night. It's the way it is.

I wasn't able to get a good pattern going before going back to work, but I discovered that changing MY schedule by having to go to work meant that my baby adapted. In the end, I would pick her up, bring her home and she would nurse almost constantly all evening. I think mostly it was to be "with mom", and I didn't really mind, cuz I wanted to be with her. She'd then go to bed and sleep for 4 hours, I'd nurse her on one side and pump the other so she'd have milk when I wasn't around, she'd fall back asleep nursing, I'd put the milk in the freezer, and go back to sleep for 2 or so. Wake up, nurse the baby, leave her with dad, shower and go to work. It meant I got about 6 hours of sleep every night, and not much more, but as they get older and esp after 6 months, they are on solid food and they sleep a whole lot better.

It sounds like a ton of your life right now, and it's frustrating. But when your child is 20, you will be amazed that he once kept you up so much during the nights. REALLY. And those 6 months will sound like a couple of days in retrospect.

There are no tips to get your baby to sleep through the night. 6 weeks is early for a baby to sleep through the night. Your baby will start sleeping through the night when his body doesn't need those extra feedings at night. Could be as early as 3 months, on average it seems to be around 6 months, but some will go even later. You're not going to want to try to cereal in a bottle before bed time for quite a while yet.

K. B
mom to 5 including triplets

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B.,
Breast fed babies eat every two hours.he is only six weeks so he will not be sleeping through the night. Your a mom now so sleep is pretty much on the back burner. The best advice is to sleep when the baby is sleep. Congratulations on the new baby and Welcome to an entirely different world.
Shant'e- I also had my son when I was twenty eight, he was also breastfed and is now 17 months and still does not sleep through the night and I also work full time and working on my masters. IO'm just telling you this so you wont feel alone and realize that you can do it. Hopefully your little one will be sleeping throught the night much sooner. =:)

Sleep as you know it will not be the same for a long time. Not to alarm you but I breastfed both of my girls and neither one slept through the night until they weaned. As time goes on he will sleep for longer stretches but that would be too much to ask at 6 weeks.

B.,
I think he's still too young to be sleeping much more than he is. All you can do is try to line up all the planets (so to speak) so his sleep is not interrupted. Use white noise or soft music to mask any household noises and buy room-darkening shades so the light isn't waking him up any sooner than he would be waking on his own. Make sure his little belly is full when he goes to sleep. I believe that's about all you can do at this age.
When you go back to work, can your husband take over a feeding each night? Or can you two alternate night feedings (pump for a bottle I mean!) so at least you know you'll get to sleep every OTHER night?
At 6 weeks, you really can't or shouldn't expect too much this soon....hang in there. Enjoy that baby! :-)

I am glad your are breastfeeding. Breastfed babies have lower risk of SIDS and have fewer cold and infections. I agree with everyone so far that 6 weeks is too early to expect them to sleep through the night. At his age 4-5 is the longest stretch he can have in 24hrs.
One thing that may help you to understand is the studies show colic peaks at 6 weeks and decreases and usually disappears by 3 months.
With my son I was amazed at how the Happiest Baby on the Block techniques helped completely eliminate colic and help him go from 2-3 hours a night to 4-5 hours a night. You can get the DVD and watch it or the book from the library, but when my son was 6 weeks old I didn't have much time to read. If you can't get the DVD from the library you could find it at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, etc. You may have heard of the 5 S's that Dr. Karp teaches. They really work!
Let us know if you try it. I teach Happiest Baby Classes in Harrisburg, maybe there is a class in your area.
Good luck, S.

I don't think i have ever heard of a 6 week old sleeping through the night. You should be able to get 4-5 hrs i would say...

Almost no 6-week-old will sleep through the night. Their tummies are so small they need to eat during the night. This is part of being a mom and you need to find ways to work around it instead of trying to force your child into something he is not physically ready to do. Work it out with your husband so maybe he can take some night duty if you pump first, but reasonably, you shouldn't expect a baby that young to sleep 8 hours at a time.

If your son is going straight back to sleep after he wakes for a feed, that is absolutely terrific, and gradually he might not wake up so often! Keep up the good work, and accept this is just going to carry on for a little while.

Mine had bad colic and would wake up for hours at a time all night. He didn't start sleeping through the night until recently and he's two years old this month! I know others who have had it even worse. I went back to work when he was a year old, and it was really hard on broken sleep - really, really hard. But, that said, its full-on work with a young baby and sometimes difficult to nap on their schedules anyway - so its hard even staying at home if you don't have help.

I would suggest trying to see if you can delay going back to work as long as possible, or work part-time for a bit. If not, you'll find you'll have to go to bed each night around 8pm in order to cope. You may need to do that anyway... (took me ages to do that, as I used to love my late nights!)

I know some lucky people who's babies start sleeping through as early as 3 months, but that's seems the earliest it can be expected... My friends who have managed that have had really calm lives, not much traveling, have had strict routines with their babies, and stayed home a lot in order to cater for the routines etc.

The thing about pumping and asking your husband to have a go is tough, because you've got to keep up your milk supply and will need to pump when he would normally have his feed... you could try pumping like crazy in the morning when supply is usually greatest, but it might be a bit tough to expect to produce enough for him all night and enough for him right then too... if you do manage to do anything in particular that seems to work, let us know!!

Good luck and have fun - the cuddly baby days fly by so fast!

There's very little chance a 6 week old is ready to sleep thru the night. All 3 of my kids started sleeping thru the night right around 3 months. That said, if your child takes longer, I wouldn't let him cry it out until around 6 months. This is the age where they start to get the concept of object permanence. Up to 6 months old they're really crying out of need and your response builds their trust in you. If you don't respond to their cries, that trust could be compromised.

try this:

www.momsoncall.com

good luck!

I hate to say this, but at 6 weeks, any baby, but especially breastfed babies, can't sleep through the night. Their tiny tummies need to eat every few hours around the clock. My 6 month old is breastfed and just started on cereal and she still wakes up 1-2 times each night to eat. My best advice to you is try to get to bed as early as possible (I know for me it's easier said than done!) and nap if you can during the day when baby naps (at least while you are still on maternity leave). I still grumble about having to get up in the middle of the night, but I always remind myself how quickly these baby years go and I know I will miss the quiet cuddle time. Hang in there and enjoy that new baby!

I don't know if this helps give you any solace - but my little girl woke up about every 2/3 hours for the first 4-5 months of her life. She now gets up about every 5 hours. My baby was bottle fed (although I wanted to breast feed and it didn't work out) I am not sure how breast/bottle fed babies differ but thought I could offer my support to you. It seems to get better as time goes on. It also seems that all babies are different with sleep patterns. Good luck.

Afriend of mine recently joined the ranks of motherhood and figured out a nifty trick with her infant (same age as yours). What she did was get herself all set up for bed, crawl under the covers, take baby with her and lay them alongside her, then hook up in that sidelying position and have a pleasant sleep. It's great for her because the baby gets to nurse as they feel the need for it and she still gets a sound sleep. Just make sure you leave plenty of margin on the bed for the baby if you decide to try this, especially if you share your bed with a partner (don't want them smushing baby after all).
ADDED: Also, make sure that the covers don't cover the baby's head, you may need to have another blanket for covering just yourself so that you stay warm and baby stays breathing. :P