2 months old and an afternoon terror

My wee one is 2 months old and has settled into a really lovely, fairly regular schedule as far as eating, sleeping, playing EXCEPT for the afternoons [about 1 or 2 pm to about 5:30 or 6pm].


He's a wonderful nighttime sleeper: generally goes to sleep between 7 and 7:30pm and sleeps through to somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30am, waking up 2-3 times to eat.


When he wakes up in the morning, he gets a diaper change and breakfast then is pretty content to sit in his swing and watch the goings on around the house. He gets sleepy at 8:30 sharp, and generally falls asleep as we walk downstairs; then he goes into the pram and we go for a walk in the park with his sister. He wakes up for a feed around 10am then dozes off and on until 11:30 or 12 when we go in for lunch.

We come in from our morning excursion, he plays with Ayi for a bit while his sister and I eat our lunch, then I feed him and give him a bath, and he seems really sleepy, but only sleeps for about 15 minutes.


After this, it's like he gets stuck in a loop and doesn't know what he wants [or, more likely, I just can't interpret him] -- nursing for a few minutes, drifting off to sleep for a few minutes, rinse and repeat. He has no interest in swinging in his swing, playing, sitting up against me, looking at me, playing with Ayi...


Then, he snaps out of it somewhere between 6 and 6:30pm. Generally around 6:30 he gets a clean diaper, nurses happily and hungrily and goes to sleep for the night at about 7:15.


Any ideas of what he might want?

don't know about 1-2pm but most little babies are generally nightmares from about 5-7pm...my second one especially had it real bad.

It sounds like he may be overtired. When babies are overtired they become fussy, irritable, want comfort, don't want comfort. Their little brains go haywire.


It seems like he has a lot of "up time" during the day. An 8 week old baby basically should only have up time of hour to 1 half hours max (including feed and play). The average number of sleeps in an 8 week old is around 4-5 sleeps a day.


Maybe try to change the schedule a little, perhaps come home a little earlier from your outing and give a feed, then bed. When he wakes later in the afternoon, do a feed, bath, quiet time then bed.


Mind you, it's good that he has sorted out the day and night time. That can be hell when they get it mixed up.


My daughter was a nightmare between 3-6 every night without fail, that was our witching hour.


My new bub is roughly the same, although not as bad as our daughter was, his witching hour doesn't last anywhere near as long and he is very easy to settle thank goodness.


Good luck! If only they came with instruction manuals and worked to our instructions, we would be in heaven!!