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Baby not sleeping until 3am every night

My two month old baby is not falling asleep until 3am every night. I've tried everything now to change his habit but he is really stubborn. Its beginning to impact on my relationship as my partner now spends most nights in the spare room as he has to get up early for work. Im at a loss over what to do, has anyone got any suggestions? Id be grateful for anything! 

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  • Sky I feel your pain. My daughter was a 'good sleeper' from birth - by which I mean she slept a good 7 hours but never actually went down until 2am. 

    I think it's quite difficult to sleep train a 2 month old but we found routine was definitely the key. We started a proper rigid routine when she was around 10 weeks and it took a lot of perseverance (not picking her up and talking to her, not turning on any lights etc) but she was going down by about 9:30/10 by 13 weeks and now at 5 months sleeps from 8pm until 8:30am. We also never let her nap after 4:30pm so she's really tired when it hits 7 and we start the bath/bottle/story (never too young for a book - we love 'Oh baby the places you will go' by Dr Seuss as its got a really nice rythym even when she can't understand me). Failing that I found the '5 S' technique online which works wonders if she's really upset or overtired. It's Swaddle, Stomach (or side), Shush, Swing and Suck. Basically I swaddle her arms, lie down in the bed with her stomach against mine, give her her dummy, rock side to side and shush her. In about 30 seconds she's out - 5 minutes I can put her down still swaddled and she stays down all night - she does unwrap the swaddle though as she can roll so I never do it too tightly.

    Really if comes down to the baby and when they are ready to pick up on cues for bedtime etc but it really will get better if you just keep it up! Good luck and keep up what you're already doing x

  • This is a good solution. Thanks for posting.
  • Oh it’s so tough and it will start affecting your relationship but I promise you can get baby in to a routine. At first it’s a basic routine. So we did bath or baby massage/book/feed every evening at 7-7:30. (And also never let them nap after 4pm, that’s the danger time!) We’d also make sure they nap during the day as sleep breeds sleep, so if they haven’t napped well then their brains can become over wired where basically they’re suffering from sleep deprivation and then it’s a vicious cycle of not sleeping at night too. We used to wake up the baby during the day to make sure he was having 5 or 6 feeds from 7am to 7pm but at night would never do a ‘dream feed’ or wake him up just to feed cus then they start getting used to it. By 8-12 weeks babies can start sleeping through the night 12 hours but need to make sure they’ve fed enough during the day to sustain them that long. Another thing that helped was making sure baby knew daytime was daytime, so we’d open up the curtains letting in lots of natural light in the morning, and make sure nighttime was always very dark with hushed voices so he knew the difference. I think this helped cus I’m pretty sure my boy was nocturnal when he was born!! Hope all goes well. 
  • My 4 month old daughter did this for a wee while and she just grew out of it naturally! She's been sleeping full nights for a while now. It is probably just a phase albeit a very hard going one! 
  • It was very difficult to get  baby to sleep .  used to have to rock, walk, swing, sing you name it.  just try to stick to a eat/play/sleep schedule, wake her up at the same time everday and started a bedtime routine. Babies are creatures of habit. you did not do a lot of running around in the car during the day just so that we could establish a good routine. Eventually they catch on and then you can start moving his bedtime back little by little. Every week you have to move her bedtime back 15 minutes.Patience and persistance and you will get there. Good luck.

  • edited Aug 2, 2019 2:44PM

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