Wide Awake in the Evening
Sometimes a baby will “go to sleep nicely” in the evening but wake up a couple of hours later and simply not be interested in going back to sleep. If it doesn't seem that he is hot or cold or otherwise troubled, you need to look for a reason elsewhere. There can be many reasons for this type of sleep disruption. Some of them are:
This is a newborn who doesn't yet discriminate between day and night.
This is an older baby, and he is more aware of what's going on in the household and, having woken up, wants to be part of the family's activity.
Your baby is more sensitive to noises now that he's a little older, and the normal noise level in the house is now sufficient to wake him up.
Your baby does not need as much sleep as he did previously, and so he has “taken a nap” rather than going to sleep for the night. Try putting him to bed later.
Your baby did not drink enough breast milk or iron-fortified infant formula.
When this wasn't a problem before, why do babies suddenly start waking up hungry? Of course, if you're nursing, it could be a disruption in your milk flow. But if it's not that or if he's drinking from the bottle, the cause must lie elsewhere … within the baby himself.
Among the reasons for a baby not drinking enough to fill himself up sufficiently, count simple distractions as a prime suspect. When your baby is a newborn, although he's aware of the world around him, he'll zero in on your breast or the bottle and largely ignore all else around him. But as he grows older, he grows more aware of what's going on around him and is more easily intrigued by sights, motions, and sounds.
Within just a couple of months he can be distracted by the motion of a shadow on the wall as a tree branch waves outside the window in the path of incoming light from the sun or a street lamp. He can be distracted by his older brother zooming past him at top speed as he races through the house. He can be distracted by a loud voice suddenly emanating from the television. The world is full of distractions that clamor for his attention, and any of these can take him away from the task he's supposed to be set on: feeding.
