Baby only meant to be awake for an hour?!

Jayne

Hi - my bub is 2 weeks old. Like most new parents I’m struggling to get him to sleep and settle to any kind of “schedule” and I understand we won’t have a “routine” for some weeks yet.

What’s doing my head in, is the idea which is printed in lots of books and online articles (so it appears to be the most commonly accepted theory) - is that newborns shouldn’t really be awake for longer than 45-60 minutes each awake session. If they’re awake longer than that you risk baby becoming overtired. I’m really struggling with this as sometimes baby will actively feed on each nipple for at least 20 minutes (and most times he’d rather stay suckling on the nipple for much longer than that, hard to know sometimes if he’s feeding or comfort sucking). So if I feed one nipple 20 minutes, then give a pat on the back burp, then change etc (try to get that all done in under 20 minutes) then maybe feed for another 20 minutes we’re already at 60 minutes! Let alone if he actually wants to be on each nipple for 30 minutes!

Any thoughts of advice from other mums? I’m worried a part of my sleeping issue is that he’s becoming overtired as we’re going so far over the 60 minute recommendation.