I need to know how to get my baby to go back to sleep after he wakes to nurse at 2am! He’s done this now off and on since he was a cou­ple weeks old. He’ll go to bed, sleep a few hours, and wake up to eat. I keep the light off, take him to the nurs­ing chair, nurse him with­out look­ing or talk­ing to him, don’t change his dia­per unless he’s dirty, and swad­dle him. Then, when he’s done nurs­ing he’s either happy as a clam and want­ing to hang out for a cou­ple hours, or he’s fussy and fight­ing sleep for a cou­ple hours (like last night).

He’s 3 1/2 months old, so I know he needs to wake and nurse, but I can’t fig­ure out what to do dif­fer­ently to show him that it’s night and he should be going back to sleep after he eats! It’s not every night, and as far as I can tell there are no indi­ca­tors ahead of time to tell me if he’ll go back down right away or not. He also don’t sleep well dur­ing the day. He takes 4ish 30–45 minute naps through­out the day. I don’t think that’s too much. There are some­times when I will lay down with him and he’ll sleep for 1 1/2 or 2 hours, but that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily help or hurt his night sleep­ing either.

Last night, I fed him, burped him, rocked him, swad­dled him, walked, bounced, and cried (yes, I cried, too). Finally after being up close to 2 hours, I got him to sleep, or so I though. I laid him down and he woke up imme­di­ately and started cry­ing. Jason got up with him and walked, cud­dled, rocked, shushed, and held him for about another 40 min­utes before he finally crashed. Poor baby.

Com­ments are open to any­one with any ideas!

Sleep­less in North Dakota.