Please Help Us with the 45 Minute Nap Monster at 4.5 Months

[raquelatx]

Hi ladies... I have a 4 month old that will not nap longer than 45 minutes, sometimes I get lucky (very rare occassion), we'll get 1.5 hour nap. I had my 2yr old on EASY and I would like to do the same for the baby but the catnaps are making it impossible. I know she wants/needs more sleep because if I hold and rock her upon her wake from her short nap, she will sleep for 2 hours-- IF I HOLD HER.  If I don't hold her, she stays up. She will also sleep for hours if I'm wearing her; should I just always wear her??   Please help as I've never dealt with a chonic short napper where ALL naps are this way.  Her schedule is as follow (she just started taking formula; she used to be breastfed until a couple weeks ago):

wake  7:30-8:00am
eat 5-6 oz 8:30
sleep 10 to 10:30 or 10:45
eat 11ish
sleep 12:30ish to 1:15ish
eat 2:00
and so forth.... she's good about a 3 hour Easy but doesn't nap for long. THat's the problem.

In the evening, she'll go to sleep for good about 8:30pm and will sometimes wake up at 1:30am (4oz) and 4:30am (4oz)  for a feed. And then she's up for good around 8am.   Is this also normal? Should I be giving her a full bottle or working on making the nighttime feed amounts less? 

Any feedback, suggestions or help, I would gladly appreciate!!


Raquel

[ZacsMumme]

Hi Raquel,

Unfortunately it looks like your LO is a developmentally short napper from first glance. Your nights look pretty good for a 4mth old and 2 NF is common especially if you have been BF. You may find your LO doesn't wake for a feed at 4.30 once she is established on the formula as it doesnt digest as quickly (she may wake later ie 5.30)

There are a few things you can try. You could try playing a bit with that first A time, first try adding 10mins then if you get a 30min OT nap you can try bringing it back 10 from what it was originally.
Have you considered W2S? Ill attach a few links for you to look through, let me know what you think.
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=213387.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=649.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=85499.0

PS Most LOs outgrow these naps around 6 months and sleep longer on their own. In the meantime when you can APOPing to get the longer nap is fine

[raquelatx]

thanks so much. i guess i need to work on getting a schedule down, period, and go from there. what i mean is that you say shorten or extend her A time and test it out. sometimes she's up for 1 hr 45 minutes and sometimes 2.5 hours... it's whatever she chooses at this point. i need to work on making them 2 hours across the board and see how it goes, right?

[scsparks06]

Hi Raquel, you might be right above with being a little more consistent across the board with her A times. However, babies can have different A times throughout the day. We just graduated from the 45min naps (I hope). Maybe it's developmental, maybe it's tweaking. Mine is 5.5mos. We had a good solid 1.5hr nap back at 3-4mos then everything went wacky. I ended up finding that my LO needs less of an A time in the morning to get her 1.5hr nap established, then she can do longer A times throughout the day. Watch your LO's signals for the next few days and see what she establishes, then work from there. You can slowly add time to your A after you have an idea of what she is saying, IMHO. If she's waking at 7:30 and going down at 10, that's 2.5hrs A time and that's expected of a 6 mos old! If she's easy like mine is, she won't grumble too much when you push her and that can easily add to an OT cycle of 45 min naps. Check out the activity boards for samples of schedules that are age appropriate for her.

PS I grew up in Austin - love it there!!

[creations]

The A times don't necessarily need to be equal throughout the day, some like a short first A time like scsparks has found success with, some like a long first A, like my DS.  His first A times of the day needed to be substantially longer than recommended for his age, BUT a lot shorter for the rest of the day.

Lots of other things also impact on the A time and naps, stimulation being one to look for.  OS or US can impact on how tired LO is.  My DS's long first A was always at home with his own toys in his own environment and rarely with any visitors.  He played lots but could cope with a long A with this level of stimulation.  However, the afternoons we went out 5 or 6 days per week to play groups and other activities, these were always substantially shorter A times because he was super stimulated from the groups, the toys, environment, the other kids and parents etc.

I advise keeping a written record over several days or a week with all the times and a rough note of what level of stimulation there was plus how easy/difficult putting to sleep was and LO's mood on wake up (happy and rested or crying with tiredness).  You might feel like things are all over the place right now but after recording it all you may be surprised what you discover and that would be a good place to start working out the best routine for your LO.  When you begin to experiment with timings this written record will help you keep track.  You don't have to do it for ever but it really helps during a period of change.