DD is 16 weeks old. She is a very sensitive/touchy baby that has been a very poor napper since the beginning. After an excruciating 3 hour car trip yesterday, during which she screamed 90% of the time (very common for her), and only fell asleep after I put her sun hat to cover her eyes and gave her 2 minutes of the bottle while I was at a traffic light, she finally conked out. Can you tell she gets easily overstimulated?
Yesterday was the final straw for me to decide she needs tp learn to help herself, and thus we started last night without me jumping around, rocking, letting her suck on a bottle to get to sleep. Last night wasn't too bad, and it only took a few rounds of shhpat combined with gradually extending check-ins. She also slept 8 hours in a row (a first!) and slept until 8:30am (also a first!)
Continuing with naps todays... we are doing extremely well with her falling asleep on her own, but she is sleeping really fitfully, waking after 5 - 20 minutes. I let her fuss a little before going in, and she is falling back to sleep, but she won't get past these little wake-ups. She is swaddled, so it's not her arms waking her. Now, she has never napped longer than 45 minutes when I get her to sleep in her Rock and Play (after rocking and bottle and being conked out), and then she wakes up fussing because she can't get through that transition. I've tried wake to sleep and sitting right beside her to help her transition and neither of these work, so I decided to just give it time and work on extending naps later, but no matter what, she'll usually sleep those 30 - 45 minutes. At least once or day, or if we are out and about, I will put her in my Ergo and wear her for an extended nap, anywhere from 1.5 - 3 hours. I've found that if her longest nap (being worn) occurs last before bedtime, she sleeps the best at night, like, not in the morning with a few more catnaps later.
Why is she waking up in these first 20 minutes suddenly? Is this to be expected?
