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@LCTBQE: firstly hang in there, it gets better soon.
Secondly I personally dont always follow pedi advice on nursing. Most nursing sites like Kellymom or LLL will advice that you nurse as often as baby wants. What i do to help my 3 week old sleep longer is i pump and bottle feed him at night and nurse during the day. With bottle feeding their can eat a bit more meaning they will be fuller for longer and hopefully sleep longer.
With my first LO she hated her crib so your LO may not like the crib much as this young stage. For baby # 2 we got a bassinet which is much better. The rock n play by fisherprice is great too.
Finally do you swaddle at all? because that helps with longer stretches of sleep

I never really figured it out...I intervened if I heard my son stirring, so I was able to extend his sleep, but I don't recommned that route unless you want to be a prisoner to the routine of it.

Are you by chance tracking sleep cues? One thing that was a big a-ha moment for me was reading that rubbing eyes and yawning are actually signs of being overtired and that you've possibly missed the window. Try tracking those for a few days to see if you need to put him down earlier. You need to put him in for a nap or night before he exhibits those signs.

Good luck!

I don't think this is particularly abnormal for a 5 week old. It totally sucks, but I there isn't a whole lot to be done with such a young baby. The only advice that I would offer is that 90 minutes might be too long for him at 5 weeks. I would try reducing that time to an hour.

I agree with @kiddosc: . You're doing all the things i'd suggest. My only thought is that 90 minutes might be too long. My LO couldn't even make an hour at that age.

So with my son he could be up for 90 minutes or more at that age. My daughter would barely make it to an hour! So maybe try les awake time?!

Our night routine is:

Bath, lotion, diaper, jammies, bottle of pumped milk, swaddle, white noise, put down, soother.

We always did a bottle of pumped milk before bed with my son too. They both always did a long first stretch (save for random weird nights of course).

Neither of them are great day sleepers. Well ds wasn't. At all. Dd is ok but nothing consistent. I feed on demand during the day and it's very rarely every 3 hours. Often 2 and sometimes 1.

Good luck!!

@Pumpkin Pie: Ours was actually a "tank-up" feed that happened right around 7 p.m. It was a big 6 oz. bottle or so. I recall the Moms on Call recommended it being a bottle so you actually knew how much was consumed. Our little guy was a big eater and would down the whole thing and then be content all night. I do think using their whole feeding/sleeping schedule helped us get onto a good pattern.

In our case, time made it better. As DS got older, he spaced out his feedings and did much better with his night sleep. I know how much it sucks to get no consecutive sleep at night.

Agree with @looch:
1) I was a slave to his routine and for the first 4-ish months of his life I made sure we were always in for his nap and if I heard him stirring I snuck in and put his paci back in and extended the naps as much as I could. We went from 45 min stretches that I could extend by replacing the paci to 1.5-2 hour uninterrupted naps around 3/4 months. I still to this day make sure we are always home for his nap because he is guaraneed to take a 2-3 hour nap that way. Only exception is we allow car naps if we need to travel somewhere (rare since we are city dwellers).
2) 1.5 hours might actually be too long of wake time. I didn't realize till about 4/5 weeks that my sons max awake time was about 45-60 mins. Anything more than that and he was yawning and rubbing eyes, which I also learned around the same time means you've missed the golden window to put them down for sleep like looch said. I was a WRECK for the first 4-5 weeks not knowing these things.

I'm sure some would say I had a unicorn sleeper or that it was luck, but it was WERK. Parts of it suck (being stuck at home and a slave to his schedule) but I am seriously high sleep needs (didn't know till he was born) and routine + being cuckoo about his sleep = happy sleeping baby = happy sleeping mama with "me" time. It's not for everyone, but it worked for us.

Also, this might be a good age to start trying naps in the crib. You can try naps only, doesn't have to be night time. You don't have to, it's purely opinion! But I started exclusively doing sleep in the crib at that age and it made life a lot easier not having to wean from anything else later.

@ShootingStar: amen to everything you said!

Oh another thing I didn't know but found interesting (and I learned all of this from the weissbluth book I told you about in another thread). Bedtime for a loooong time should be between 5:30 and 7pm! Which interestingly is when most people complain about a Witching hour. Correlation is that the baby is over-tired and wants to go to bed but adults don't realize it because it seems too early. We started doing a 6:30/7pm bedtime with a routine at 5/6 weeks and it was SO nice. I know it doesn't always work for everyone (particularly working parents) but since I sah it worked.

@pinkcupcake: I'm totally in the same boat right now. Achy back and all.

Hang in there! DS2 didn't sleep longer than 2 hours until 8 weeks (often times, it was 1-1.5 hour stretches in the beginning!). A few things I did right around then that *may have* helped. 8/8:30 bedtime, period. I EBF him, but started giving a bottle of pumped milk as his last feeding and pumped right after I put him down (aka right before I went to bed). And, we moved him to his room. Which was right next to ours and connected by an adjoining door that I kept open. He then started sleeping 8-12 or 12:30 and by 3 months started stretching it out more....by 4 months we were down to usually one waking! We would do like 8-2:30/3 and then be up for the day around 6:30. We had some regressions, but for the most part he had one waking (sometimes two) until he STTN at 14 months. Sometimes he would sleep 8-2, be up again at 5, then sleep until 6:30 or 7. Yes, it took him to weaning for him to STTN. But, he became my awesome sleeper after that, sleeping 8-7 consistently and rarely rarely waking at night. Hang in there mama, the beginning is a blur of delirium.

FWIW I did the same things with DS1 as him, but he just was more of a typical newborn sleeper and started sleeping in a little longer stretches around 6 weeks.

@pinkcupcake: oh and see my recent post about how to escape the co sleeping hell someday soon

@LCTBQE: it used to really make me mad when people were all oh my baby sttn. Yeah? Good for you. I also combed through boards. Nothing really worked with us except time. I
After everything was failing I just paid attention to what he wanted and with some patience it worked out.

Oh, I forgot to mention that around weeks 4-9 were the worst for us. I don't know what happened, but around 1 month old DD was a mess. It got better and better after week 10. At 3 months, it was MUCH better, but at that time I was too exhausted to notice the difference.

I feel for you. When LO2 comes in December, I'll probably be here asking this very question + crying.

@LCTBQE: Aww, thanks . I hope things were better for you last night. Just remember that this won't last forever. While you're doing it, it might feel like it, but he won't be a newborn forever. I think that's the biggest difference I feel this time around - I have more patience because I know all stages are a phase. But with LO1 I thought everything bad was going to last forever.

@LCTBQE: I just wanted to say that I always advise new moms to lineup help during the second month of life because for both my kids weeks 5 to 8-10 were the absolute worst. The first month you hang with adrenaline and some extra help or meals from people but month two is when the babies have SO much growth and development and the sleep deprivation really kicks in. The 6 week growth spurt and the 8 week leap were always the worst and Weissbluth calls this period the height of fussiness. In short, regardless of what you're doing it's just a shitty shitty phase.

I am also a hardcore schedule mom and found eat play sleep and full bellies at each meal to be vital. First nap of the day being at home and solid is also key. At 5 weeks my kids were barely making it 50 minutes of wake time and I would start watching for cues at 45 minutes. At six weeks we booted my first son to his own space for sleep and with my second we did it at 4 or 5?

Basically the second month still sucked BUT the hard work put in for routine during that time was invaluable in month 3 and beyond. Suddenly by 10-ish weeks their sleep extended. Neither of my boys had the horrible 4 month regression everyone talks about and I think it's because we worked so hard on their sleep routines before that would hit.

So hang in there. We also moved to big cribs in the second month and dropped swaddles by the 3rd month. Basically anytime their sleep started to fall apart we just ditched another prop because the sleep was going to be crap anyway.

Allow fussing. Give your kiddo 5-10 minutes to fuss before naps or whenever they wake up. As you have found, it helps a parent start to ID the different kinds of crying. It also helps the baby to learn to self soothe. Our second baby started to suck his thumb around 8 weeks and it's his jam now.

For both my boys our sleep routine is short - dark room with white noise and I sing them the same two songs while swaying and patting their backs. My 5 month old usually calms down and rests his head on my shoulder as I'm getting through the second song because it's been his cue since day 1. My 2 year old is the same. He knows those songs mean sleep time.

Good luck you are doing a great job!!