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Unfortunately newborns are very very tricky. It could be a growth spurt (my newbie is going through this right now at 2 weeks old and it may kill me. Eating every hour, nurses to almost asleep and then popping awake). It could be a wonder week, it could be normal newborn.

Or it could be a food intolerance as it was for my son. He screamed for 13-15 hours a day. So he didn't get any sleep.

We had some great success with the 5 s's (swaddle, shhs, side, swing, suck).

Good luck!

Have you tried baby wearing? My wee guy is four weeks old and doesn't really nap in the morning but will usually sleep in the wrap. Or will she sleep on you? There's no shame with spending the day on the couch just feeding and napping with your new baby!

My daughter slept twelve hours a day at that age. She was very, very awake. It's not uncommon.

This was me EXACTLY in my sons first month. I was calling the pediatrician swearing something was wrong. It felt like he cried and cried and never slept. She finally had me come in and explained that he was overtired and that was perpetuating the problem. She explained that I should ensure that he was spending no more than 1.5-2 hours awake at a time (and that early on it was more like 1.25-1.5 hours). She wanted me to start winding things down at 1.25 hours, stop playing, go to dark/dim room, sound machine, change, swaddle, etc and place him in his crib, etc. She gave me a list of cues to indicate he was tired and to put him down the second I saw any of them. Her exact words were "I don't care what you're doing, when you see him giving you cues, you drop what you're doing and start a nap routine/wind down".
I'm telling you, I was ANNOYED that she was telling me this, I felt like there must be a REASON why he wasn't sleeping, surely it wasn't my fault, aren't newborns just supposed to sleep wherever, whenever? Yeah, I was wrong and she was right! I started a nap routine around 3 weeks and was super hard core about making sure he went down every 1.25-1.5 hours and it made a world of difference! By I'd say 8 weeks he had a pretty solid nap schedule down and even now at almost 8 months I still get 3 naps a day totalling 4-5 hours out of him! And he started sleeping through the night around 12 weeks - we all hear the "sleep begets sleep" mantra and I believe it helped!

Wall me if you have any more questions. I swear your post is exactly what happened to us and how I felt. I've spent the last 7 months of his life being obsessed with his sleep But it has paid off in spades!

My two week old fights sleep like nobodies business. She totally gets over stimulated and can't sleep. During the day I wear her, talk re for a walk or drive to make her drowsy. At night I just try and everything in the dark. Some nights it works others she's just awake! Her sleep varies from 13-16hrs a night. When she has a bad night she usually makes up for it the next day. Newborns are fickle beasts!

@mrswin: @BeachMama: I'll have to see if I still have the list from my ped when I get home but they were something like:
-glassy eyes/glazed over look
-sudden quieting
-Looking away from me
And she said that the following are signs that we missed the first ones (sort of the next step before overtired and wired), but to be honest I thought the first few were hard to catch! So usually when I saw one of the following I put him down immediately:
-fussing (especially when clearly not hungry or wet/dirty)
-rubbing eyes
-yawning
-grabbing ears
-gnawing/sucking hands

I also found this online about what happens when you miss/mistake the tired signs, and this is almost exactly what my doc said:

"When tired signs are overlooked:
A baby's temperament will influence how quickly and to what degree his behavior will escalate if early signs of tiredness are overlooked. 'Easy-going' babies will often fall asleep without too much fuss. 'Slow-to-warm up' babies tend to slowly become increasingly more upset. 'Spirited' babies have a low frustration tolerance and quickly escalate to the point of distress if their needs are not quickly met.
If a baby remains awake, or is kept awake, longer than he should, he could reach the point of overtiredness. Once distressed due to overtiredness, he might find it difficult to fall asleep and appear like he's ‘fighting’ going to sleep or that something is preventing him from sleeping. [See Overtired Baby for reasons.] The distress displayed by an overtired baby is commonly mistaken as pain.
Newborns are vulnerable to overstimulation owing to immaturity of their nervous systems; more so when they become overtired. Overtiredness can make a baby intolerant of sensory stimulation that occurs as a result of normal handling (e.g. diaper change, being bounced, rocked, bathed or even spoken to). Additional stimulation that occurs when parents use strategies aimed at relieving a distressed, overtired baby’s ‘pain’ (e.g. burping, tummy massage etc.) can tip him over edge. The combination of overtiredness and overstimulation can cause a newborn baby to scream for hours despite parents' best efforts to soothe him. After what can feel like an eternity, he will eventually fall asleep from exhaustion."

http://m.raisingchildren.net.au/articles/is_my_child_tired.html

@BeachMama: He always slept in his crib. Sometimes I would nap him next to me in the boppy lounger but he always seemed to like his crib best. Now to be fair, I was terrified of him becoming dependent on sleeping in my arms, so I almost NEVER let him sleep there. My ped pounded "put him down drowsy but awake" in my head over and over so I only let him sleep in my arms when he was really distraught. We did go through a couple of periods where I did have to hold him a lot more (wonder weeks maybe?) but overall I didn't let him sleep on me much. The best decision I made by far! Now when it's nap or bedtime I seriously just plop him in his crib fully awake and he just zonks out. It's very rare (I'm talking less than once a month) that he cries or fusses when I put him to bed.
I promise, even though I didn't let him sleep on me and I let him cry/fuss when I put him down at first, he's still very attached to me when he's awake He still loves to cuddle and sit on my lap and be held. I think a lot of people are afraid to not let them sleep on them for bonding reasons, but we are very bonded

@mrswin: Its totally acceptable for your 3 week old to only be awake long enough to eat, burp, get a diaper change, and go back to sleep at that age. We thought we had a low sleep needs baby, but it turns out we just have a baby that needs to be FORCED to sleep. He does not do the whole laid back sleep wherever, whenever thing. He screamed ALL THE TIME and we were losing it. By 6 weeks we were a wreck. (In full disclosure, he also had colic and reflux, but even on medication, a lot of the problem was his overtiredness).

We did all the 5 S's, trying to wear him all the time, bouncing him on a ball, swaddling, and sleeping in a RNP and all that. Surprise, our son hated all of that. He gets hot and sweaty so he hated swaddling and babywearing, he likes being sprawled out in his crib in a dark, quiet room, and he needs a strict nap schedule. So we switched from the whole breastfeed on demand thing to eat, play, sleep. "Play" at that age is really just "not sleeping."

Once we got him on a schedule, we'd start our day at 730am and it would take him 30-40 minutes to eat (SLOW eater with the reflux), we'd bounce/burp him for 10, and then he'd be burrowing his face against our shoulders 5 minutes later (his cue that he's tired). He'd be back asleep for another 2 hours. He might be up for a little longer later in the day, but that first wake up was literally eat and go back to bed. Our 8-hour a day in 20-minute increments angry all the time baby went to sleeping 15-16 hours a day by 12 weeks old.

People thought we were nuts because they would see him for all of 20 minutes (after feeding and diapers) and then be like "oops, time for nap!" Now at 8 months, he still sleeps 16 hours day (2 naps about 1.5-2 hours long and 12 hours at night) and we're still rigid about his nap schedule. We preserve and respect his sleep schedule no matter what. Why? Because this psycho newborn turned into the happiest, best behaved baby because he's well rested.

@mrswin: Great glad it might help! Agree with @gingerbebe that it's totally ok at this point for the baby to eat and almost right away go back to sleep. You may need to spend a lot of time nursing in her room and putting right back in the crib and that's OK! I felt compelled even at 2-3 weeks to be engaging my baby and making sure he had stimulation and it turns out I was basically torturing him! He just wanted to sleep.

Also, I mentioned wonder weeks in my precious post. It would be worthwhile to download that app. In the beginning especially I did find that fussier and clingier times did coincide with wonder weeks and if nothing else it at least gave me a reason for fussiness and clinginess so I knew it wasn't me or just my baby.