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She might be going through a growth spurt. Is this a new thing? I know when my daughter's going through a growth spurt, it seems like she is constantly eating and doesn't want to sleep AT ALL. After a few days or a week, she flip flops and won't eat much but will sleep constantly for a few days before going back to normal.
Another idea, sometimes babies have a hard time transitioning between sleep cycles. Babies' sleep cycles last 30 - 45 minutes a piece, so if you notice she is only sleeping that amount of time for each nap, that might be the problem. If you can, it's a good idea to help her go back to sleep immediately, as soon as she wakes up from the first cycle. I used to do this by waiting outside her room at the 30 - 40 minute mark. As soon as my daughter would start stirring/making noise, I'd pick her up and rock her until she fell asleep again. After that, she'd normally sleep 2 or more cycles in a row, making it a nap lasting over an hour. A week or so of doing this at every nap, and she'd usually get into the routine of taking longer naps and transitioning cycles without my help (at least, until she started the next growth spurt or something, lol).
Not all newborns sleep all day! Most babies should have wakeful periods of no more than 2 hours, less for a true newborn - is she up for very long stretches? Also how often is she eating? every 2-3 hours is pretty normal. if it is much more than that you might want to see how much she is eating in a single session by using a specialized baby scale and weighing before and after a feed (you can measure # of ounces that way). Also how many hours does she get at night? maybe she has already consolidated her night sleep? i think the average amount of time books state babies should sleep is much higher than the reality of most moms i know!
Sounds like a cluster feeding/growth spurt. I promise, it will end! As far as sleeping, I've got my own issues since we are transitioning him to his own bed (co-slept in our bed for the first 5 weeks) so I don't have too much advice on that front yet.
ETA: As far as schedules, all the books pretty much say to do on demand feeding/sleeping until around 3 or 4 months before you try putting them on a schedule. At least as far as I've seen.
I totally feel your pain on the napping front!! I think the frequent feeds are probably a growth spurt (I think everything I've read says they happen around 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 mo, and 6 mo). My almost 12 week old daughter (2.5 months) will only nap for 30-45 minutes as well. She gets tired cranky about 1-1.5 hours after waking usually so I try to put her down and she sleeps for an average of 35 minutes probably.
I hadn't thought about what Mrs.Spring said. Maybe I will try that! I don't know though because I've tried to calm her back to sleep but maybe I'm not catching her at the right point?
If she is feeding often during the day, but otherwise content and happy, I'm not seeing a problem. If she needed more sleep, she would sleep more.At least she is getting longer periods of sleep at night- which means you are also.
Breastmilk is much more easily digested so BF babies need to be fed more often.
You should get a book called Save Our Sleep. Even if you aren't into using routines it is really informative on how much your baby should be sleeping for their age, how much they should eat, etc.
It sounds like bub is catnapping. Sleep cycles are 40 minutes long, so say you put bub down at 9am then bub wakes at about 9:40am she has only had one sleep cycle. Bub needs to learn how to resettle without a settling aid (ie you, rocking, dummy...). If she is on breastmilk then it is normal for her to want to feed alot more than say a formula fed baby (I think at one month my breast fed son was feeding every 2.5hr - 3hrs during the day), he also went through a stage of catnapping (only having 40min naps at a time) but once we got the book and knew what he was doing and changed some habits then he slept for 3 hours at a time.
Reasons behind catnapping can be hunger (make sure she is full before you put her down), putting her down when she isn't tired enough or putting her down when she is overtired (make sure your on the look out for the tired signals!). If bub wakes up after the one sleep cycle get her up and praise her for sleeping then put her in her pram and go for a walk to encourage another sleep cycle.
She will not resettle her selk after one sleep cycle unless she knows how to self settle (ie get the the stage where she can go to sleep unaided). Feel free to pm me if you need advice!
She's sleeping! This is the first nap she's taken during the day that has lasted more than a half hour or so in a week! Thank you for all the feedback. I had been telling myself it was a growth spurt and just to ride it out, but it lasted so long and my patience was escaping. Hopefully we are through this growth spurt and I can remind myself next time around to really, really just wait it out. Horay!
Yay! Growth spurts are SO hard, especially when they last so long. Good job waiting it out!
@dchokiebride3: I've read a couple different methods about putting them back to sleep after only one cycle. One method says to wait outside their room at the 30 minute mark and, literally, at the very first noise, go in and soothe them back to sleep. This is what I did, but sometimes it would take a really long time (like 30 minutes) to get Addie back down. Another method says to wake the baby up 5 minutes before they would normally wake up (so if they're only sleeping 40 minutes, you'd wake them up at 35 minutes), and then put them back to sleep. I haven't tried the second one. Oh, it sounds like @Miss Pinup: has another method with the same goal in mind: to get baby to sleep more than one sleep cycle in a row. You might just have to try them out to see which one works for you. :)
YEP, those growth spurts are for real!! I had one around 9 weeks also and was freaking out because it was not mentioned in most articles. I found women commiserating on a board somewhere though and I proved I was not imagining one. :)
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My daughter is only going down for cat naps during the day that last maybe a half hour or so. The rest of the time she is up and eating or being fairly content. The frequency of her eating is overwhelming and I really think it's unhealhty for her not to be sleeping more. At night she sleeps better, gets me up to eat and then goes back to bed. Any advice would be great. She's not on a schedule and she is EBF.