8 week old sleep

Does anyone have a rough 'schedule' for days and nights with their 8 week old? He used to sleep 3-4 hour stretches but the last 10 days / 2 weeks he has had terrible sleep, mostly from 2/3am onwards with wake ups every hour. I'm worried he's sleeping too much during the day and then not tired enough at night but also conflicted as I believe he's too young to sleep train or stick to a rigid schedule. Any advice on how to get back to better sleep stretches at night? He tends to be quite sleepy and in the evening around 7pm ish and can sleep for a good couple of hours, could it be that this is just his natural bed time even though it seems earlier than others suggest online? He's breastfed and above average weight and size for his age so no issues there, would just like a bit more uninterrupted sleep at night and unsure what we are doing wrong!

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Hi, they are too young to worry about sleeping too much or not. Their circadian rhythm will mature at 4 months. At the moment he sleeps when he is tired and doesnt know what day and night.

You are not doing anything wrong. Thats quite normal to wake up. Just follow the sleepy clues ☺️☺️☺️

At 8 weeks I was trying to get as much of his milk volume in, in the day and then he started to sleep through at 9 weeks!

I did bedtime around 7-8pm and then a dream feed around 10/10.30pm when I went to bed, at that age he used to get up about 4/5am for a feed but that gradually got a bit longer.

It's a good habit to start tracking wake windows. Huckleberry app is really good for naps! But does require a lot of data entry which can be tricky when they are so young...at least I found it hard 😅 x

The final catnap before bed was key for us, working on say bedtime at 7.30 let him have sleep no longer than 45mins up latest by 1.5hrs before his bedtime so in this case up by 6pm/6.15pm.

At that age wake windows are 1-1.5hrs so if you can get some good naps in during the day then with the dream feed I don't wake or burp I just pop in out the cot, feed him and pop him back in, in very low light still with his sound machine on white noise.

If they have their little growth spurts etc...they may well wake for more milk.

It's the every changing goal posts haha but the free version of the app will tell you when his sweet spot is for the next nap based on his age and when he last woke up :)

Hope something in there helps!

The nap, eat then play is a good rule as they tend to eat more when sleepy especially when they start to get more aware!

I didn’t do this but I hear from bottle-feeding mom friends that a strict feeding schedule really helps with creating a schedule and also sleeping through the night - but that’s if you want to bottle feed!

And then every time they wake at night you give them a bit less and a bit less and that’s how they get used to sleeping through the night - I can’t vouch for it but works wonders for some of my friends !

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