At what point did you notice your LO started to have a witching hour? DD is only 2.5 weeks, but already I noticed she's crankier and harder to settle in the evenings. I'm guessing it will only get worse over the next few weeks...!
-
@hilsy85: with DD, I honestly don't remember. I know she had one (although she was generally fussier all day long but evenings were especially worse!). with DS it started right around 2 weeks. Its generally from 6-8pm, and now at almost 5 weeks I'm noticing it's getting easier to settle him and I think it's getting better. But that could change!
-
@NovBaby1112: I also don't remember when it started with DS, just that it was definitely there around 6 weeks! I hope this doesn't last long...
-
God, seemed like day one. And by witching "hour", I assume you mean "all evening and night"; or maybe that was just my infant
-
I know it wasn't right away because I remember thinking we somehow skipped over it...nope! I'm thinking maybe 5-6 weeks? I just asked DH if he remembers and he said oh god no I just remember wanting it to stop!
-
Started around 3 or 4 and lasted until bedtime at 9. Nonstop screaming for hours for weeks. Yay...
-
The 2nd night in the hospital. We tried to send her to the nursery and they had to send her back because they couldn't calm her down. It's not like I could either, though! The first night home she screamed for about 4 hours straight before passing out. Once my milk came in a couple days later it was a little better, but not much. DS never had a witching hour to the same extent.
-
@yoursilverlining: eek thank goodness it's not that. I am sorry!
@lawbee11: ha DH is convinced that DD is easier than L was...I feel like she just hasn't hit the super fussy period yet!
-
@Mae: what age did it start at?
@twodoghouse: arg awful!! she was super sleepy for the first week and a half or so, and she still is during the day/night...just not the evening.
-
@hilsy85: She was 5 days old. Although to be fair, we found out in week 3 that I had a low supply, she wasn't gaining weight, and was probably hungry which was really pissing her off. Once I started supplementing with formula she didn't scream the ENTIRE 5-6 hours. Then in week 5 our pediatrician informed me I had to make her nap (FTM fail.. I sort of thought babies just slept when they needed to. I didn't know I was supposed to exert effort into making sleep happen, so she hardly ever slept at all during the day her first month). That helped a little too. At 8 weeks we fell into a good nap schedule and she became a happy baby.
-
@Mae: ah gotcha. It definitely seems like a lot of the fussiness is related to being tired. But it just happened that all of a sudden she needed a lot more help falling asleep, whereas before she would just conk out easily.
-
@hilsy85: its the time for it, I think! I remember with mine I just kept telling myself I had to survive until 8 weeks. At 8 weeks everything would be okay (because that is what everyone told me). And it was they were the looooongest most miserable weeks of my life for sure. But then it was all good, somehow, at 8 weeks! Hopefully your LO doesn't get too much worse.
-
I think from 6-12 weeks?
-
Ds1 - 3 weeks!
Ds2 - we skipped it entirely!!We started putting ds2 down w ds1's bedtime (730-8) at 2-3 weeks and our last nap just fell into place with that being the end goal for the day.
-
@hilsy85: not till almost 5 weeks with LO 2. I tried putting her down for the night earlier, but she won't have it. She'll sleep for like, 20 minutes and then wake up to eat and scream some more, haha.
-
Around 3 weeks until 8 weeks!
-
It's amazing how much this stuff becomes a blur! I barely remember this, I just know it happened, it sucked, but it was short lived.
My pediatrician and some other sleep resources I read (also a blur) indicated that witching hour simply means that the baby is overtired and should be put down to sleep earlier. So if witching hour starts at 6pm, for example, try putting the baby down to sleep before 6pm.
We did this, started putting him to bed at like 5:30 because witching hour was happening around 6pm. Nipped it in the bud! That was also at the point that he couldn't stay awake for more than like 1-1.5 hours at a time so eventually I figured all of that out and just followed that pattern. And at the end of the day he was capable of even less awake time. So even if he woke up from a nap at 5, Id basically just do a feeding and put him right back to bed at 5:30. He'd sleep for a few hours and then that was considered the first wakeup of the night for us.
Hope this all makes sense! Typing it off quickly before I go to sleep!
Reply
Subscribe to our newsletter
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite0
16 comments