Why is 9-week old waking up crying 5 minutes after going to sleep??!!

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3/31/11 at 5:28am

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DS is 9 weeks old today. For the past week or two he has woken up 5 minutes into a nap or bedtime crying and fussing. I mean like you could set a timer to 5 minutes and he would do this every single time. This is after being nursed, swaddled, soothed, white noise, being put down before overtiredness kicks in (he's awake barely an hour or an hour and a half before having to sleep again),.I put him down quietly and gently, watch him settle in, close his eyes, breathing gets heavy. I wait a minute or two to make sure he is completely asleep before slipping away etc. Then sure enough, 5 minutes later....waaaaaaahhhhh!! I settle him back to sleep then he'll stay asleep but the crying 5 minutes in is baffling me....

He doesn't care to be worn for naps, he's more stimulated by it than soothed and prefers laying down to sleep.

Is this some kind of early separation anxiety where he realizes he's all alone? Or a big twitch that's unsettling him? He's still kind of catnapping all over the place - 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, which I can accept. DS1 was like this - catnapped into infinity until he was about 4 months old when he finally started taking better naps so I know it eventually ends but the waking up 5 minutes into the inital sleep is making me crazy!

My 6 mo old still does this. I think it has to do with baby sleep cycles- that babies stay in "light" sleep longer and can wake themselves easily, and just need some help to get into deeper sleep. I have come to do two things-- one is, wait a minute and see if it continues. Sometimes I get a 5-10 sec cry and he soothes himself back to sleep. The other is just hands-on, putting a hand on the head or chest to get him back down. That usually works. The one exception is when he gets the leg thump-- he'll pick his legs up and thump them hard onto the mattress, slowly waking himself more. I've learned that stroking his legs from the top down will calm him and stop the leg thump-- but i just discovered that last week after months of struggling with it. Good luck mamas!