6 week old fussy at night between 8pm to 1am

I hope things have improved for you. My baby is 6 weeks old and he is my first child, so in no way am I a pro at things but can share some ideas with you....

During his first 3 weeks, between 6 - 9pm he was extremely difficult to settle. We gave him 5ml of gripe water which calmed his stomach (even though we didn't know if this was the problem). We fed it to him with a syringe and he really liked the taste of it!
Another thing that I have found to be a good sleep time routine is swaddling. Once he has a bottle and it is time to sleep (whether it is day or night), he is wrapped tight. Both arms in if I want him to sleep longer, or one arm out because I know he likes it that way.
One more idea is music. During one particularly bad evening my husband played the music that is on his iphone, our son instantly stopped and listened and eventally went to sleep. I know books and professionals say that classical music is best, but this was modern pop type music with lots of different beats/sounds/pitches etc.

Whether or not this helps you I'm not sure but I do wish you the best of luck. Hang in there, apparently the 'hard stage' is over before you know it!
 
I really feel for you. My now 4 month old was exactly like that at that age. When the clock hits 11pm, he started screaming. Nothing would settle him until he run out of steam and felt asleep. He is fully breastfeed.


Our peadi did prescribed infancol and asked us to give it during the day so that the wind would go down by the night. It didn't really help. But we tried it anyway.

There isn't much I can share to help but it will come to pass. Mine grew out of it around 10 to 12 weeks.

There some infomation here about newborn's sleep which you might find it useful.

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a525805/how_to_maximize_a_babys_sleep_0-4mths
 
Thank you everyone!!! He is our second and well, all I can say is that one forgets what it's like to look after a newborn :) our first was an angel baby, or perhaps we were just more patient as first time parents haha.

Since my posts, he has been sleeping better. Not exactly sure what it was but my best guess is he got his days and nights confused. Now he is more calm at night and fussed a lot more during the day.

Our next challenge is to get him to sleep longer, cos we can successfully get him to sleep after the bedtime routine but he will wake every 10 minutes or so and need to be soothed again ...... Sigh ....
 
Oh, I forgot to tell you that another thing we found was successful was making his bed softer. He too was waking after short intervals, but sleeping longer if he was left to sleep on the pillows on the couch (not a habit I wanted to encourage). So, we put his sheepskin rug under the sheet in his bed. The first nights sleep on it he woke once, sleeping from 10pm - 3am, then again through until 6.30. It was bliss!
 
Hi Obiwan,

Three hours is quite a long time to go between feeds for a 6 week old baby. Your little one is possibly getting very hungry after the three hours, then getting very full after the feed and feeling uncomfortable (one possible cause of colic). There is nothing wrong with small, frequent feedings if you are happy to do that. Pediatricians often advocate schedule feedings as they are more used to formula feeding, which is usually done via schedule. Breastfeeding is a little different and there is no need to schedule if you don't want to, and studies have shown it is very unlikely a breastfed baby can become overweight, as they are very good at regulating their appetites when fed on demand.

He may just want the snuggles too hehe..

Good luck I hope you're getting some more rest!

Lali :)
 
Thanks Lali! I am bottle feeding him with EBM at the moment. Hubby does the feeding and the soothing during the night. The last 2 nights have been comparatively ok, he couldn't sleep from 6pm/7pm for long stretches, but manages from 10+pm (after a feed) to 3+am, 1 waking a night, so we are thankful :)

Hopefully by the time he is 10-12 weeks he will be more settled and less fussy. That seems to be the time most babies start getting over the initial fussiness, fingers crossed!
 
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