nearly 14 weeks struggling with BT and OT from day

[tazz]

Hi all,

My LO will be 14 weeks on Tuesday, I have had him on a consistent BT routine since 10 days old and from 5 weeks has been able to self settle to sleep at BT with little or no troubles, he also self settles at night after feeds with no trouble.  I aim for bed time to be asleep around 7pm, then he wakes for a feed mostly around 2-3am and then sleeps until 5-6am.  I give him another feed then but if its after 5:15 the birds are up and so is he!  Last night though he woke at 11pm, so I fed him and then he went through again until 5am, another feed and slept till 7am.  (this is very unusual)  I never give him a dream feed becuase I have two older children and they start their day at 5:30 and I aim to be in bed for 9pm.  So his day usually looks like this:

E 0600
A  1.5hrs
S  7:30 - 8:10ish

E 0900
A 1.5hrs
S  9:30-10:15ish

E 11:30
A nappy change
S 12:00 - usually this is a big sleep becuase he is so tired by then anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 hrs

E  when he wakes
A 1.5hrs
S

my problem is this, quite often my LO needs a sleep around the 5-5:30pm mark and becuase he is so tired, its a huge struggle to get him to have theis nap and I have to rely on APOP to get him to sleep, then I only let him sleep for 15mins or so and then get him up, bath, feed then back to bed to have him settled at 7pm.  I was wondering last night whether is would be easier if he is due a sleep at 5:30 to just keep him up and put him to bed at 6-6:15 after his BT routine, he will be very tired but at least hes had a really good wind down. 
I have been trying really hard to extend his naps in the hope that he might not be as tired from the day.  He does self settle for most of his naps but I have to use white noise and quite often a dummy to get him to resettle.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.  I have only just discovered BW but I have always followed a similar feed/play/sleep routine which is why I thought BW would work well as he was pretty much used to it already.  He is swaddled in one of those love to dream swaddles with their arms up as sometimes he likes to suck on his hands but doesnt need this to fall asleep. 

[jessmum46]

I think I would just go with APOPing a catnap around 5-5.30 and then bed at 7pm if that's what suits your family.  I think if you try to push him beyond the point of being OT to a 6/6.30BT without a nap you may well have more trouble settling him.  That said if his day starts anywhere from 5-6am, 7pm is quite a late bedtime.  We normally aim for 12h days at this age so that would make BT (asleep for the night) more like 5-6pm....which seems to be when he is getting tired anyway?  I don't know how that would work for you, it's quite an early BT but for some families it works well.  What do you think?

[tazz]

thanks, the last two days he has been waking at 6:30-7 so that has been a much more reasonable time to start the day.  I think he is a really sucky baby and I have tried swaddling with one arm out and he has been much happier as he is learning to suck his thumb.  He is still a bit young yet for him to have mastered it, the only problem I am having now is 30 min naps instead of 45mins.  Is there somewhere that lists how long you should shorten the A times after a catnap, I was still keeping him up the normal A time and am wondering if that might be part of the issue.  Its a much happier drift off to sleep time with him being able to get to his thumb, though he doesnt actually have it in their when he finally drifts off, it just calms him, but it takes him about 15 mins to fall asleep. 

[jessmum46]

Unfortunately there's no rule about how long A time should be after a short nap.  It can be very individual, some babies need almost a full A time to be able to settle after any kind of sleep, whereas others will need their A time reducing significantly.  Some people use the rule of reducing A time by the amount of sleep LO missed in their nap.  It's a case of experimenting really.

Glad you are getting a better WU