

If you can’t seem to figure out why else your baby may be crying instead of sleeping, look to comfort. If you aren’t already, try swaddling your baby to help her fall asleep and stay asleep. Frustrating, especially if you’ve worked to get your baby drowsy enough to fall asleep in the first place! Fortunately, there’s an age-old remedy for newborns who startle themselves awake: swaddling. You’ve probably observed this in your newborn before: your baby starts to fall asleep and then suddenly “startles” herself awake. Your newborn’s moro (or “startle”) reflex is making it impossible to fall asleep. If your newborn is looking away from people and beginning to fuss, try to get your baby to a quiet area and start working towards falling asleep.Ĥ. However, too much stimulation can stress your newborn out! Newborns don’t always cope well with bright lights, loud voices, and lots of “in your face” activity. The “cure” for overtiredness is simply to watch your newborn’s sleep cues closely as soon as your newborn starts showing signs of tiredness (by rubbing her eyes, yawning, looking away from your face, etc.), get her down for sleep quickly.Ī little stimulation is good for your newborn during his wake time, it’s a great idea to engage him in a story, or a few simple play activities. But it’s true newborns can simply become too tired to fall asleep easily. If hunger is the reason many parents jump to first when their newborns won’t sleep, overtiredness may be the last. In your baby’s bottle, be sure to talk to your doctor, first! Newborns have small tummies and therefore need to eat frequently what’s more, during a growth spurt, your newborn may feed what seems like every hour! So if your newborn seems distressed and won’t fall asleep, try offering a feeding.

This is the reason many of us jump to first when a newborn won’t sleep – and it may very well be the most common cause for a newborn not sleeping. These are, in our experience, the top 6 reasons why newborns who are tired sometimes struggle to fall asleep:

To do that, you’ll need to pinpoint the cause of your newborn’s distress and offer help as best you can. So you can expect your newborn to wake often, but if your newborn seems tired and can’t fall asleep, and is instead becoming more and more upset, you no doubt want to help your newborn sleep any way you can. This sample newborn sleep and feeding schedule (for breastfeeding babies) illustrates this cyclical sleep pattern well:Ħ:30 AM – Feed and Right back to sleep Newborn Not Sleeping? These 6 Reasons May Explain Why. It’s helpful to think of newborn sleep as happening in cycles: your newborn wakes, eats, perhaps has a bit of wake time, and then goes back to sleep for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2-3 hours. Indeed, your newborn’s sleeping patterns are nothing like yours. Keep in mind that, again, newborns are supposed to wake frequently to feed. Newborn Not Sleeping? It Might Just Be Normal Newborn Sleeping Patterns. We can help! If your newborn is not sleeping, keep reading for our top 6 tips. What do you do if your newborn seems tired, but is crying and not sleeping? But sometimes, newborn sleeplessness can seem excessive. Newborns aren’t supposed to sleep 8 hours straight at night their little bodies simply aren’t designed to work that way at first. Newborns are so cute, but newborn sleep can sometimes seem downright ugly! Ask any parent of a newborn, and he or she will likely tell you that long, deep, peaceful sleep is NOT on the list of things their family is enjoying.Īnd that’s usually normal.
