How to keep a newborn awake during the day?

I have three kids and currently with a newborn.....at this young it’s not possible to keep them awake when they are tired. At 2.5mths my daughter is finally awake most of the day and sleeping thru the night with the exception of one feeding during the night 🤷‍♀️ it’s rough but they are so exhausted and I find babies sleep better with noise haha night time is too quiet

Congratulations to baby! 😊 It’s no point trying to keep them awake in the day. Newborns can sleep like 18h a day and have very small awake windows (like an hour). I think it always feel like they are awake more at night as we want to sleep then. Best advice I have is try to nap when you can in the day, housework can wait. At night, have your partner do a nappy change and hold baby for 30-40mins so you can get a power nap. Mine started turning about 4-5 weeks and could actually then sleep 5h+ sometimes. It gets better 😊 x

Congratulations! She is so cute. Mine is currently 5 weeks old. He wakes up every three hours around the clock! Hungry little dude. I've managed to "schedule" his nighttime wakeups by sticking to a 10PM 'Bath, Feed, Cuddle' routune. This usually makes his next awake hours 2AM and 6AM. It's not perfect, but I don't think we can avoid nighttime feedings while they are so little. Oh, super important... I keep the lights as dim as possible for the 2AM feeding so that he only kind of wakes up, and goes back down easy.

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Not always a full bath. Some nights just a wipe down, lol. But the routine is the same.

She’s gorgeous x

I tickle/kiss my baby to keep him awake or I take him to sit on the porch and look around outside

My little girl used to sleep all day and wake all night, in the end I stopped feeding on demand and would feed her every 3/4 hours through the day give her a bath abs a bedtime bottle and make sure the room was dark at night no night lights or anything, in the day make sure it’s nice and light put her on a play mat and bouncer etc it took some time but a little routine helped x

We used to bath ours at 8pm every night & then have a bit of awake time, maybe a story & then bottle... bed for 10/11. Need to try & move that awake window forward, but not to mention overtire them as that will have a knock on effect too

Hi congratulations- gorgeous photo. However you can’t keep a newborn awake during the day unfortunately, they need to sleep when they want to sleep, it’s important for their development. Couple of things you can try doing, going up into a dark room with a very ‘light’ lamp on, as in keeping the room dark so that baby starts to understand that dark is sleep time and then day time is very light. We bought the gro egg which helped our little one. Another thing you could do is maybe begin bathing before going into the dark room to understand that bath then bed, we also did this and worked for us. Obviously different work for different people but worth a try. Baby will begin to understand as they grow but at the moment baby needs to sleep to grow so it’s impossible to wake a sleeping baby or keep them awake. Hope that helps a bit...it definitely gets better :) x

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I 2nd what @Holly says about babies needing to sleep. It’s very important for development and growth. Look into the 4th trimester(I wish I had know about it) and I recommend reading The Wonder Weeks to learn more about developmental leaps and sleep regressions. It was sooo helpful for my lo. She was a preemie so she didn’t follow the timeline exactly(she was born at 35 weeks so I had to adjust), but she was pretty close to what it said to expect and that was super helpful. They also have an app to accompany the book. I also got leap alarm emails to let me know when the next one was approaching, which was super helpful.

Baby girl hates boopy to sleep so I put here there to keep her up. Swing works too. She isn’t a fan. I also burp less so she doesn’t fall asleep on me I’m deep sleep which will knock her out

You shouldn’t really wake up newborns as they are supposed to sleep a lot as that’s how they develop and it’ll be expected for them to wake in then middle of the night for feeds or nappy change my daughter done the same and as she she slowly got out of the newborn stage she started to stay awake a little more each time xxxx

Just keep the house really dark when she wakes at night. I used to change nappies with only a night light on and feed in the dark. They’re super sensitive to light so will be woken thinking it’s daytime when it night. You’ll become a pro nappy changer in the dark! 🤣

She won’t have a circadian rhythm until about 3 months old, so day and night are fairly meaningless to her at the moment. Red light is the part of the spectrum that wakes you up the least from sleep, so try and use red lighting for night feeds ☺️ we have red fairy lights and they really help! She will figure out daytime and nighttime eventually 🌝 in the meantime, try and nap whilst she sleeps in the day so you don’t get overtired! Good luck 💚

She is still small and sleeping all day is normal

For me a bedtime routine really helped baby sleep during the night, obviously she woke for feeds but then went straight back off to sleep. Also teaching her the difference between night and day, so during the day curtains open and normal voices. During the night minimal lights and no interaction with baby x

Hi congratulations. Unfortunately you can't keep a Newborn awake they don't know the difference between day and night and sleep when they want to. It's normal newborn behaviour. It's exhausting I know I've been there but it does get better the older they get when you can implement a routine that they can understand x

Newborns are meant to sleep all the time. They are growing so fast they need that time out. Trust me in a few months you'll be preying for bub to sleep during the day just so you can get stuff done lol xx

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I’m at this point with my daughter lmao I just need her to take like an hour nap😩😂

Let her sleeeeeep

Newborns only have 45-60min wake windows. Trying to keep them awake longer than that at a time can actually be counterproductive and lead to an overtired baby

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Thank you 😊 bloody internet just contradicts everything, this is why I ask you guys on here you know your stuff x

How old is your baby?

My baby does the exact same thing! 😂😂😂😂

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I’m glad it’s not just me the internet just contradicts its self 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yeah tonight I decided to just have an allnighter with him in the living room and have Netflix on while I'm feeding him and just try and stop him from crying when he's about to 😂😂😂 and play with him as much as I can even though he gets restless at night and I get soooo tired! But I'm not gonna keep attempting to put him to sleep like I usually do. I'll wait till he's fallen into a deep sleep before putting him into the moses basket. 👍🏾

Are you breast feeding? It could be she is at her most hungrier stage at that time but you could see if she can stay awake a couple hours before bed? Or have you tried a dummy to help soothee back to sleep xx

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How old is she? Xx

I’m bottle feeding unfortunately and yes i have her a dummy, to be honest my day has been a lot smoother as I’ve not stretch to 4 hours and just done 3 and she’s more awake after her feed so I’m getting a good hour awake time, this is why I love this app you women just know your stuff, thank you 😊

The reason I asked how old the baby was is because my son was the same way and had a hard time at night time but it turned out he had horrible acid reflux and after he started his medicine he did way better and corrected himself and then now he 2m3w old and sleeps 11-12 hours through the night. Gets all of his feedings in during the day and also STILL takes naps. It took me 3 dr visits before they figured it out for me

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She’s only a week old but I read all sorts and get different answers she just seem so distress from 11 - 4 I don’t want her get stress or us xxx

My son was up at night vs the day and the dr kept saying he will correct his schedule it took them up until he was a month old to realize he had acid reflux so when we laid him down at night for bed it would trigger. But ever since he has been on medicine he has been golden

I took the ‘Taking Cara Babies’ course (online!) and it changed my life. I took it at 8 weeks postpartum and was crying everyday. I wish I had taken it when I was 9 months pregnant to avoid some of the sleep deprivation. My baby sleeps through the night and I actually like being a mom now.

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Atm I’m fighting with 5 hours of crying I’ll have a look at this, thank you xx

@Sarah do you have the little plastic tubes to put in their butt olfor gassl release?

Let her sleep as much as possible, no matter the time of day or night

You can start trying to sleep train with "day" or "night" lightings and emphasize sleep time with swaddling bags while allowing daytime naps to occur more naturally.

Its gonna be a challenge for you just try to adjust to her sleep pattern its really hard I went through being sleep deprived for about 4 months then it calmed down a bit

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I just need to suck it up really. New baby = new life xx

Newborns need to sleep. Just keep it dark & quiet in the house at night & during the day keep it bright.

My newborn was difficult to wake during the day too! It really depends on your baby and your situation, hence all the contradictory info...long story short i let my baby sleep and he missed too many feeds and didnt gain weight as expected.. so it was on my midwifes advice to wake him...sounds harsh but cold baby wipes on his bottom woke him...he is now a chunky baby and im so happy

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Thanks :-)...its important that they are still producing wet nappies too

Ahh and you got to love a chunky baby 😍😍 thanks for the advice

I think at this age you just have to go with their pattern until they figure out what night and day is?

When my son was born I would keep things quieter and darker at night, then during the day I would have him nap in the bassinet in the living room with me. During the day I'd keep things louder (TV at normal volume, talking normal, etc) and keep the curtains open to provide natural light. Newborna get their nights and days mixed up, so doing this helped my lo get it sorted. He started sleeping better at night at around 3 weeks.

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Oh and during the day I wouldn't let him nap longer than 2-3 hours at a time. Long sleeps are for night 🌙

I think I’m getting there with her now, all this advice is brilliant 😊

I have to wake my baby boy in the day time, or he doesn’t sleep well at night. I usually have to take some clothes off to get him to wake up properly, then I try and play with him a bit to keep him awake before his bottle. It really helped me with night times to reduce the day naps. He sleeps 11pm until 4am now has another bottle and naps until about 6.30am and he’s 9 weeks old xx

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We are slowly getting there I think but something will change as that’s what babies do 😅

Hi, at this stage I would follow her lead. They do eventually fall into thier own natural pattern. We did our own bedtime routine around a few months old but that was around him and when he would generally sleep for x amount of hours. His was 5.30pm which meant his general wake up was 4am but that changed in time. If they want to sleep its hard to keep them awake. Its tough we had to wake up him to take feeds. He lost weight between week 2-4 because he was asleep for too long! So we made sure he was feed every 3-4 hours but he was was so dozy he would take ages to feed! X

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Forgot to say once your ready set a bedtime routine and do the same thing everyday and they eventually get the idea! If we were feeding him during the nighttime we do nappy change and feed in darkened room and limited talking so he could start to learn the difference between night and day. And for nighttime he would sleep in his cot with music. Daytime naps were with me usually xx

Way too early to start sleep training! We just made sure the house was lit up during the day and as it got dark outside we shut lights off. Around 8 I take my little guy in my room with the lights off, noise machine on and feed. He normally cluster feeds from 7-8:30 and goes straight to sleep, he’s slept through the night since 3 weeks. Every baby is unique but this worked for us. You got this Momma! 🥰

My husband wants to keep bby awake, isn’t bby supposed to be awake during feeding and then if they start faing back to sleep let them be? He keeps trying to keep bby awake after feeding when he’s trying to fall asleep and so he starts falling asleep and wake up and fall sleep and wake up and so on so I don’t even know what time to what time was that nap.. he wants to keep him in bed with him (during the day, husband awake) but I think habing bby sleep in the same place (we have the Snoo) is ideal.. specially if we make him sleep with a swaddle.. wouldn’t he stop getting used to it and having more issues sleeping at night? Hubby says he just wants to be with him and keep him awake….

I have this exact problem, and I have twins…. I am so drained I don’t really know what to do

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Oh man I’m so sorry I’m looking into this too