My daughter has just turned 5 months old and I'm having issues with short naps and feeding to sleep. She is exclusively BF and eats every 3 hrs with 1-2 Night feeds. I wasn't quite sure which board to put this on, sorry if it's the wrong place.
We started shh-pat at 10 weeks because I wasn't able to put her down until she was in a deep sleep and she would usually wake up the moment I put her down. Now she can go to sleep independently but she wants to be fed until drowsy most of the time.
My easy is not so great, I try to feed when she wakes up but she will only have a little snack just so she's not starving anymore because she wants to be fed to sleep later. I've also tried feeding an hour after waking but she just snacks again. So when nap time rolls around she is ready to take a full feed. The moment she stops eating but drowsy I put her down, she is still awake and I walk away usually with no issues. There are times when she stays awake after eating and goes to sleep no problem but not very often.
I'm trying to stop the eating until drowsy part so I tried waking her up a bit (talk to her, hold up sitting, go outside) when she's drowsy after eating which she did not like. Now only twice after doing this she's been fussing/fighting before each nap and bedtime, like she wants to eat but she doesn't want to get woken up! So she ends up very OT and sometimes we both give in to feeding to sleep.
45 minute naps have been happening since around 6 or 7 weeks, at first she took a longer morning nap but eventually they all became short. I've had no luck extending with shh-pat or W2S, shh-pat she just snaps her eyes wide open and won't go back down and for W2S I've gone in at different times to find the right point in her cycle but they don't go any longer. I tried W2S for morning naps at first and then tried for afternoon naps because she usually wakes up tired. They are almost always 45 mins, very rarely 1-2hr (maybe 3 times in a month). Awake time is usually 2 to 2 hours 30 mins. Usually awake times are longer earlier in the day and they get shorter later in the day as she gets more and more tired. She doesn't use a pacifier. She usually wakes up happy, stretches and talks for 10 mins then cries for me to get her but sometimes later in the afternoon she wakes up still tired.
This is my approx easy give or take 15 mins, sometimes if she wakes up really tired there is an extra nap with shorter awake times in the afternoon.
WU 8
E 830
A 2h15
S 1015-11
E 1130
A 2h30
S 130-215
E 230
A 2h15
S 430-515
E 530
A 2h15
E 7
BT 730
DF 1015
1-2 NF b/t 230-530
Thanks in advance for your help!