9 week old only naps for 45 minutes

[nickylab]

My little girl is 9 weeks old and naps for 45 minutes during the day. Once that 45 minutes is up she is awake. I have tried putting her back to sleep but she just wont go. I have tried putting her down as soon as she is tired and waiting until she is more tired. Sometimes when she wakes up I wait till 3 hours has come because I don't know what else to do and sometimes I will just feed her when she wakes up cause I don't know what else to do. Can I wait to feed her when she wakes up until the 3 hour mark comes?This is what most of my days look like.
 
E 7am
A
S 8:30am-9:15
E 9:15am
A
S 10:30am-11:15
E 12
A
S 1:00pm-1:45
E 2:00
A
S 3-345
E 4:30
A
S 5-545
E 6:30
A
S7:30-8:15
E 8:30
S 9pm-4am
E 7am

When she wakes up I mostly feed her so she stays on the Eat Awake cycle, but mostly when she wakes up she is not really hungry so I don't think she is waking cause she is hungry. She seems to get a good feed each time.

Please Help!

[Chicane]

Hi Nickylab

Firstly congratulations on your baby and welcome to the boards.
Do you have a copy of Tracy's book? It very handy to have at home.

At this age babies can really only handle 1 hour or awake time, this includes, feeding, changing, cuddles and settling for the next nap. Be careful not to over stimulate her too much while she is awake, everything is still very new to her so she doesn't need lots of toys, games or noise at this stage. Ideally, you need to aim for a 12 hour day,so if LO wakes at 7am then bed time is 7pm.

I think your short naps are because your baby is OT (over tired) I would start by decreasing her A time to 1 hour. Also, are you swaddling? This can be a very helpful thing to stop your baby from jerking her arms and waking herself up.
Check out the sample routines here for more info and some other links http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=164253.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=164034.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=52283.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=63275.0

let me know how you go

xo

[nickylab]

i tried shorter awake times and this has made no difference. i have been swaddling her since she was born. if these short naps continue, do i feed her when she wakes or wait till i hit 3 hour mark. if i feed her everytime she wakes then she is eating every two hours. please help
thank you for your response

[suca]

hi nicky welcome to the boards!

Personally I wouldnt feed her at this stage, I would wait until 3 hours (ish).  At this stage I certainly do not have the perfect EASY in fact its probably more EAS AES EAS etc  We normally have a few 45 min naps and one long nap during the day hence not a perfect EASY

[Chicane]

My advice would be to feed her when she is hungry. But that's just me, how I like to do things. Its okay for you to wait closer to the 3 hr mark and its okay to do it early, try to focus more on learning her signs and signals...is she giving you hungry signs? then feed her. is she giving you tired signs, put her to bed. It can take a few days for changes in routine to take effect, so I would keep on doing the shorter A times and try to follow some of the sample routines I posted in the link. BW is not about the clock, its about learning your baby, deciphering the signals they give you and responding to them appropriately. Focus on that and on developing your wind down ritual and shh/pat techniques...check out the FAQ sections in the boards and if you can get a copy of Tracy's book you will find all of the info in there too...give it a few more days and keep me posted...you're doing great. xo

[nickylab]

Thank you. 

[Chicane]

you're welcome...keep me updated...I think its so great that you are starting to think about these things now...I waited too long and it was way hard to establish EASY...xoxo