Our little girl was born 9 weeks early, we stayed in nicu for 4 weeks and have been home for 2 weeks now.

Until this week, we were still following the nicu feeding routine, feeding every 3 hours, through a tube.

This week we introduced the bottle (I'm unable to breast feed). She loves it and took to it straight away. We have a nicu nurse who comes out to us twice each week and told us to try the bottle, trying 'flex-time' for the first 12 hours of the day, when baby can eat as much as she wants, whenever she wants. The last 12 hours (overnight) we should stick to the old routine, unless she's awake. If she's awake then we should give her a bottle.

Since we started this, she eats well during the day and has a few good meals and naps in between.

The evening shift, from 11pm, is a mess though! She barely sleeps, and wants fed more frequently and either eats a lot, or else makes all the signs of wanting to eat, but can't manage it and gets upset. It feels like this urge to eat is stopping her from sleeping and it's only a problem at night.

I had been trying to keep her awake during the day, to help her sleep at night, but now I'm afraid she's over tired.

We are extremely sleep deprived and not sure if we just need to accept that she's a night owl for now!

Our nurse said it's too early to start any sleep training and the only thing to do is keep things calm at night. We play a little white noise and have the hall light on with the door open and she sleeps in a cradle right next to our bed.

Any thoughts?