"Hi!

I just read your book and am already trying to notice the sleep signs of my baby and use the 90 minute method. I have a 7 week old and in the past few weeks I feel he has become very sleep deprived. He's getting about 13-14 hours a day and from 6:00pm until 10:00pm we can't get him to sleep at all. My question is how do I get him back on track? I understand all the premises of the 90-minute plan, but I feel like he's so tired, I can't get him to sleep fast enough in that window. For instance today, he's only had about 3 hours of total nap time and it's almost 7pm! He's wailing right now while my husband tries to get him to sleep (we thought the 90 minutes would be up at 6:45). All day long it's taken me forever to get him to sleep. When he does finally fall asleep, he wakes after an hour. A few times I've soothed him and he's closed his eyes, drifting, only to pop them open after 20 minutes--before I even put him down! I'm extremely frustrated and scared for my poor tired baby! Any additional advice would be helpful.

Thanks"

- Ashley

Hi, Ashley,

The evening fussiness you describe is typical for your baby's age (or the age your baby was when you emailed me, sorry for the delay!). Usually this is outgrown by about week 10 or 12.

When my babies were going through this phase, here's what I did: after 90 minutes of evening fussiness, I would rock them to sleep in a rocking chair, or in a sling, and let them get a bit of an evening nap. It didn't stop the fussiness every evening, they were fussy every single evening anyhow, but at least I wasn't as frustrated by it. I knew that after 90 minutes, they'd stilll be ready to sleep. And I knew they'd eventually pass through this phase.

I regard that fussiness as the baby's difficulty in tuning out stimuli, I believe it's an aspect of the developing brain, and it's certainly a common developmental phase.

I hope this part of the evening is starting to improve. . .it should soon if it hasn't already.

Polly.