how does your newborn sleep at night?

Question

Our son is 2 weeks old and eats at midnight and sleeps til 4-5am. Is this a good schedule? He stays awake from about 9pm-12 midnight, i give him a bath at about 10pm and bottle after the bath and he sleeps til 4-5 am. How does your new baby sleep? and how much during the day are they awake?

Answer 1

Sounds pretty good! My 2 week old is never awake. He only wakes up to eat and have a change every 3 hrs. But he has his last bottle at 9 pm, then wakes up to eat at 1 and 5am. It's not bad since my husband gets up to go to work at 5 and he can feed him.

Answer 2

My baby is two and a half weeks old and we have the same routine. I usually go to bed around midnight and he wakes around 4 and then around 8. I nurse him so at night I dont even turn on the lights that way he wont be enouraged to wake up. I want him to know that nightime is for sleeping. He usually sleeps most of the day and is awake from 10-12. Congratulations on your little one.

Answer 3

My baby is 7 months old now, but at 2 weeks she was never awake for more than about an hour at a time including feeding time. Bedtime in our house for the kids is 8pm, so bedtime routine starts about 7:30. Our cycles were about 3 hours each, starting with a feeding, then wake time, followed by nap. From 8pm until morning the only thing that changed was that I would feed her then put her right back down without any wake time. Total wake time each day back then totaled about 8 hours per day.

Here's a link to a chart with how many hours of sleep (broken down into night time and naps) that your baby should have each day depending on age. As long as your baby's total is hitting what he needs, I wouldn't get too caught up on exact times of the day, do what fits into your family's routine. http://www.babycenter.com/general/7645.html

Answer 4

You sound lucky. He'll start eating more at a single feeding and sleeping more. When and infant my daughter woke every 3 hours at night for a feeding and every 2-3 hours during the day. That went on for about 2 months and then 4-5 hours at night and 3-4 hours during the day.

Congratulations on your new baby.

Answer 5

Wow! You are getting 6 hours of sleep in a row from a 2 week old, I envy you! I have friends whose kids did that, but mine sure didn't. Three hours at a time was all I could hope for, first three months.
Newborns actually sleep most of the time, but they don't keep "regular hours!" To tell from my various parent friends, your son's schedule isn't too unusual. There's a wide variety of patterns out there.
If you want to get him into the habit of associating hours of darkness with sleeping time, you try to gently keep him awake more in the daytime by playing with him, etc.-- but do be aware that overdoing it (overstimulation) actually makes kids conk out, they fall asleep to get away. Then at night, get him to sleep by a simple bedtime routine (bath, bottle, lulaby, etc.) then interact in a very calm and quiet manner--low lights-- when he needs a bottle or new diaper in the night. The idea is daytime is playtime, night time is sleep time.
However early you start such a routine, it isn't likely he will sleep dusk to dawn anytime soon. Their little tummies empty too fast, for one thing! My eldest didn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time until he was 3.... But I have a friend with 2 kids, both of them slept for 10 hours straight by the time they were 9 months. Sigh. Ask your parents if you can, what your sleep patterns were like, it might be telling... (my husband was evidently a restless baby. Which his kids inherited. unfair to me, but hey...) Congrats!