Hi,
My 5.5 week old daughter has been napping really well during the day, with good 1.5-2hr naps as part of our 3 hour EASY routine. However, when we hit the cat nap time at 5pm ish, I cannot get her to settle for a decent sleep which is impacting on the whole evening leading to hours of hysterical crying (and 2 very fraught parents!)
I know the evenings are typically a difficult time for such a young baby, but I'm pretty sure it's being worsened by the fact that she overtired from not having a decent cat nap. I've been watching for her tired signs, and she usually is more tired at this point in the day, so I'm trying to get her off to sleep earlier than usual. I'm using shh/pat (I used it really successfully with my son 5 yrs ago) but despite eventually calming her down and continuing the patting in the cot, generally we get to the stage that 45 mins has passed and still no sleep. On the rare occasions she sleeps, it is fitful and she wakes every 15mins despite me staying and holding her through the jolts (in the cot.)
I don't know where I'm going wrong??
In the end, I usually feed her again about 6pm-ish, quickly clean her up, reswaddle her and attempt to get her back down again. It's now 9pm and she is still raging (my husband has taken over to give me a break) and there is absolutely no doubt she is overtired by this stage... she's been awake for nearly 5 hours. It's the same story nearly every evening and it's really wearing us down, particualrly as we have another child to get fed , washed and into bed.
Any thoughts on how to get her to catnap or what else we could try? Or is it a case that she will just need to grow out of this phase where she can't handle the evenings and can do a bit more A time to get her through?
Thanks,xxx
