Need help on extending naps and early wakings

[Eahawkin]

Hi! I have a 5 and 1 week old baby that used to be an awesoe mapper and then started short naps around 12 weeks. I've been able to extend his first nap to an hour and 15 minutes- but no luck with a longer am nap or a long pm nap. Also, he's dropping his car nap. Problem is recently he has been having early wake ups around 5:30- so his 2nd nap is done around noon! I've been trying to take him on car rides and stroller walks to get more naps in. Some days it works and others he won't- so then he is overtired by bedtime. Here is our schedule:

6.2
A 6:25
E 6:40
S 8:35

A 9:10
E 10:30
S 11:20

A 12:30 - extended with shush pat
E 2:30
S 3:55 at grandmas stroller ride didn't work so car ride home nap

A 4:25
E 6:00
S 6:10 asleep at 6:50

6.3
A- 5:40
E- 6:40
S 7:55

A 9:15
E 10:30
S 11:30

A 12:10
S 1:45 (car)

A 2:15
E 2:30
S 4:40 stoller ride

A 5:05
E6:25
S 6:35 asleep at 7:10

6.4
A 5:45
E 6:40
S 8:05

A 9:20
E10:30
S 11:35

A 12:20 extended shush pat
S 2:05 car ride

A 2:40
E 2:45
E 5:30
S 5:50 asleep at 7:10

Any help would be wonderful! I am having a really hard time with this!

[Eahawkin]

Also- he sleeps through the night. 

[creations]

Hello and welcome to BW forums
Sorry to see you didn't get any replies yet. Sometimes when we see there is a "reply" to a post we can assume someone has responded already when in reality it was you adding more information.

How long have you been extending nap 1 with shush/pat?  A few days?
Do you also try on the other naps but it fails?
How long has your LO been on this A time?  I see it is around 2hr 20 which is within the guidance times but I'm wondering if he needs a little more?

[Eahawkin]

Thank you for your response! I tried shush pat for all naps for a good 2-3 weeks. I stopped because it would just upset him, and now he has 0 ability to self soothe back to sleep. I'm kind of surprised at how quickly that fell apart.

I scaled back the awake times because he was miserable and was beginning to wake up from naps crying. He had a hard time falling asleep and would wake up at 30 minutes. We are still dealing with 30 minute naps. Yesterday and the day before he had one nap each day that was an hour and a half- the rest were 30 min, but wow, what a difference.

[creations]

There is a developmental period between 4 - 6 months where a lot of LOs start to short nap even when they were previously napping well. it's often called the 4 month regression. Looks to me like your LO is going through this as it started around 12 wks.  The good news is that you are probably getting towards the end of this phase and things should really start to get a bit better in a couple of weeks.  The problem can sometimes be perpetuated by A times which are too short (because often we think LO is OT so shorten the A) so just be mindful of that.  At 5.5 months A time is around 2hr 30 or a little more.
You could try extending the A time prior to just one nap (say the first A time of the day) and see how it goes, maybe do a W2S (wake to sleep - are you familiar with it?) to help through the 30 min mark and remind LO to nap for for longer.

Don't lose hope. My LO was totally independent for sleeps from pretty early on but he also went through the 4 month regression and we had 40 min naps 5 times per day for 2 months. He did come out the other side.  It's exhausting though spending all that time putting them to sleep and then they wake up so soon after.  Hang in there.

[Eahawkin]

Thank you for the response. I do hope you are right! I hope he starts napping well again! I actually hired a sleep consultant and we start Saturday. I'm looking forward to getting help on this and hopefully helping him sleep better! I'll keep you updated on how he is doing! I really appreciate your response to me!