6 week old sleep habits and schedule

Hello Momma C,  
As you know, babies sleep habits can change quite drastically over the first few months. However, they should be progressing into the right direction as time goes by. It is very hard to determine "normal" sleep habits for a 6 week old because their are so many variables such as bottle vs breast, quantity of feeds, etc.  However, the sleep and feed habits we try to aim for are eating every 2.5-3 hrs and sleeping right after for approximately 2 hrs. Then baby should be awake for about 1 hr which will include her feed time. Some babies can handle a longer wake period and some can not so you will have to see how hard it is for your baby to stay awake that hour and adjust accordingly. Feeds should usually take place at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm and 10pm with 1 feed overnight. As she gets older, that 1 feed overnight should push later and later into the morning until is disappears.   When she wakes in her nap time its important to understand that she is not waking because she is done sleeping. She is most likely waking out of a sleep cycle. You can shush, pat and jiggle her back to sleep. This will help her learn how to self soothe rather then her just being rocked or fed back to sleep. It may take some time at the beginning but she will learn how to self soothe quite quickly.   During our consultations, we take into consideration her feeds, sleep and wake intervals, breastfeeding issues, scheduling, self soothing tricks, room atmosphere and so much more. It is a very customized approach. However, the biggest tips I can offer without a consultation is the use of swaddling and a white noise machine for every nap and  overnight. Use these throughout the entire nap and overnight. This will help greatly.   Hope this helps for now.

Hi Debbie,
I was referred to you by a friend who has used your services and was pleased with the results.  My daughter is 5 1/2 weeks old and does not seem to want to sleep much during the day. This started about a week or so ago.  She used to sleep most of the day when we brought her home - pretty standard for newborns and now she will usually fall asleep after feeding (which is every 2.5 to 3 hrs) but rarely stays sleeping for very long.  She stirs after 10 or 20 minutes and I'll have to soothe her back to sleep a number of times (pat her, rock her, give her a pacifier, etc.).  This basically means she never really has a solid nap all day.  On the 'plus' side, when it comes to night time, she tends to be so tired after cat-napping all day that she will usually sleep for 4-5 hours.  Nice for mommy as I can get a few hours rest but I was hoping you could shed some light of what would be the norm for a month old daytime sleeping.  I know around 6 weeks, babies can go through a growth spurt which would change their feeding/sleeping pattern.  Not sure if this might be the reason for this change.  Any advice would be helpful.