MISSING THE SLEEP WINDOW

OK, so we all know that the only things a newborn baby does is sleep and feed. Well the latter is certainly true. In fact I think I've been over-feeding Charlotte - adding to any painful wind problems she may be having.

However, she doesn't seem to be getting nearly enough sleep, especially in the day.

The biggest problem, we have now decided, is that I've been mis-reading her tired cues as hunger cues, so not only is she feeding too much, she's not sleeping enough - leading to that vicious circle I spoke about in my last post.

So my OH and I have decided now's the time - at three and a half weeks - to start setting down a routine. I'm starting with her feeding. Having been weighed at 8lb (3.64 kg) yesterday by the health visitor, we're good to let her go up to 4 hours without a feed - more at night if she manages to sleep that bit longer - as she's feeding well when she does. So that's stage one - making sure I don't feed her anymore frequently, except maybe before bedtime so she's definitely full up and may sleep longer. That will be tested in a couple of weeks in her next growth spurt.

We're also going to start doing a proper bedtime routine - winding down from 6pm - something we've pretty much been doing anyway, and she's been asleep by 9.30 every night since Thursday. We're just going to have to try to make that a bit earlier each night.

The other step is making sure she gets enough sleep in the day, which in the last five days or so we know she hasn't been. Initially, while we will keep trying and trying to put her down in her Moses basket, if it's not worked after an hour, she can sleep where she likes so we don't get her overtired - which it escalates into if we miss that tiny window where she supposedly lets us know she's tired (yawning, rubbing her eyes, turning away from us, heavy eyes). Earlier I took her for a 2 hour walk where she slept, now she's asleep on my lap - all bad habits we know we have to break, but one step at a time.

One of the problems in getting Charlotte to sleep appears to be she's just so alert and aware of things for her age already. Our health visitor told us she sees six week old's who aren't as alert with things like focusing and playing with her hands. So while we reading up on what a 3 week old "should" be doing, it appears Charlotte may well be ahead of the curve. While that sounds great, it means she's fighting her sleep more because she wants to know what's going on around her - it's almost as if she doesn't want to miss out on what's going on by dropping off to sleep.Another tactic we're going to try once again is swaddling - even though she manages to fight her way out easier than Houdini.

Such challenging times. There are plenty of times when I really can't see how we'll get past this, but everyone tells us we will, it will get easier, and this first six-eight weeks is the toughest. After that there'll be new problems and issues, but "those too will pass..."