🌙 Navigating the Witching Hour With an 8‑Week‑Old

Anyone else’s little one suddenly wide awake for what feels like forever in the late afternoon and early evening?

My little girl is 8 weeks old, and her wake windows from around 3pm can stretch to four or five hours! My health visitor has confirmed what I already knew (that’s far too long for her age) but she also said it’s incredibly common because it falls right into the witching‑hour window.

We’ve tried everything people usually recommend. Gone down google rabbit holes, advice from our HV, tips from other parents… and still no luck. She just powers through, sometimes grizzly and sometimes bright eyed but determined not to nap.

The last few days she’s been fairly consistent with settling somewhere between 8pm and 9pm, which is amazing but I’m stuck on how to help her nap before that. Ideally, I’d love her to get even a short nap between that 3pm mark and bedtime so she’s not overtired and wired.
Has anyone lived through the exact same phase and dealt with super long wake windows at this age, especially during the witching hour?
Did anything help your little one nap in that tricky late afternoon stretch?
I’ll take it all, routines, tricks, patterns, anything!

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Can’t offer any advice unfortunately but my boy is exactly the same (although at 6 weeks) - it feels impossible to get him to nap from 4-8pm - so i can definitely relate X

Ditto, we’re just over 5 weeks in and in the same boat, we don’t have any routine other than regular position changes which settles our boy for a few minutes, lying him flat is not great as that sets him off again whenever we try to put him down!
He eventually tires himself out but know it can go on for hours…

I’m going through the same thing😭, she’s 9 weeks and will not go to sleep after noon no matter what I try to do, luckily she sleeps through the night but it still makes my days a little rough

Will she contact nap?

Yup, same here at 7 weeks - she stayed up for 5h straight, refusing to go down, and I'm freaking out, thinking Im a terrible mum dooming her to low IQ and a life of petty crime😭😱 glad to hear shes not the only anti-napper and it may just be this phase 😬

in our community

Screaming baby🙃.

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My husband has mental health issues, so has left us and moved back with his mum and siblings. So the last two years I’ve been solely caring for our children who’s both under 5. He does chip in at times, but he’s always so depressed.

The mum made our life hell before. So my husband doesn’t speak to her. So she calls me now and then ( we still try to visit her and son stays over some weekends). But I think she is still under the impression that I need to visit her every week. ( my husband does not stay at home during the day, he prefers staying out) so I will just be with her and the kids and the siblings etc.

Would you voluntarily want to visit her?
I am worried if I don’t, then she will deny my husband staying there- which means more stress for us. But then that’s her son, and she should still try do something?

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