5 month old - nap times down to 30 minutes! How do I keep her on EASY?

[Baby Georgia]

My DD has always taken a little convincing to fall asleep, but has always slept very well once she's finally gone down. She has slept through the night since 4 weeks old (woohoo), and has historically slept for the suggested amount of time at each nap on both 2 hour and 3 hour EASY.

Georgia is now on a 4-hour EASY and doesn't seem to be able to sleep for more than half an hour at a time for naps. To be honest, this doesn't seem to affect her mood, and she still currently sleeps through the night, but we are concerned that these things may start to be affected with prolonged lack of naps.I'm also not sure how to keep our LO on EASY if she's waking up from naps so early?

When our DD wakes each morning, she is fed first of all, and then kept awake until her A time is around two hours, before attempting to put her down for a two-hour nap. I keep a close eye on her to look for signs of tiredness before the two hours is up, as I'm conscious of her getting OT and sometimes have put her down for a nap after 1.5 hours awake time.

However, if she then wakes up from the nap after 30 minutes, and I feed her after her S time, she will no longer be on a 4-hour cycle. If i wait until it's been 4-hours until she feeds, the routine will look more like EASAEA. What is the correct thing to do?

Please could you also advise s to how I can lengthen her nap times, as I don't feel half an hour here or there is really long enough.

Many thanks xxx

[Baby Georgia]

Just to add, my DD has started to use a dummy to fall asleep more recently. We've tried not to use it but recent colds and teething troubles have ended up with the dummy being used more frequently. It's probably about 50/50 with and without at the moment. Not sure if that has anything to do with it? Her length of nap remains the same if it's used or not...

[creations]

Hi there.
Sorry to hear you are having some difficulty with naps at the moment.
Did the short naps start when you increased her A to 2hrs?
Is anything else going on that might be disrupting her sleep, teething? reflux?

It sounds like she is OT although the A is good for her age.  Have you started any new baby groups or anything like that?  More visitors to the house perhaps?  If not OT she could be OS.  Or it could be developmental.  Generally if the A time is ok then you would need to look around for other reasons for sleep disturbance to see if it is anything you can control.  LOs naps tend to improve around the 6 month mark.

You could try to extend the nap with W2S (wake to sleep)
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=223809.0
This can help to extend the nap.  You do it for 3 days and stop on day 4 to see if she is transitioning alone, if not use W2S again day 5,6,7 and again hold of day 8 to see if she can transition.  Some people have success with this.
You might want to set yourself a limit to how much you attempt to extend as it can be quite tiring and even stressful.  Maybe just try one nap each day (the same one each day, I recommend the first one as you can get a better afternoon if the firs nap is longer), and you might limit your attempt to 20 mins.  It is up to you.

If you choose not to extend or if LO doesn't re-settle then get her up and get on with the day.  Reduce her next A time a little (say 10 mins less) to avoid OT.  you might also need to add more naps into the day to see you through to bed time.  At 4 - 5 months we had 5 naps per day as they were short!

EAS timings.  You need to track the A from when she wakes, not when she feeds so that you don't accidentally give her a really long A time.  Track the E time separately and keep feeds as regular as possible at the 4hr mark.  It is fine for your EASY to be EASAEAS.  Short naps can throw the routine off so if you see an E and an S about to clash then you might feed a little earlier than the 4hrs so that she can feed, have a minute or two awake after the feed and then be put down for the nap.

hope this helps

[Baby Georgia]

That's really very helpful, thank you so much! Georgia has recently sprung a couple of teeth, and the amount of dribble she's producing might suggest there are more on the way, so that may well be the answer.

I'll have a look through the W2S information and see if I can extend her nap time that way. Thanks for providing so much information and clarifying about the EASAEAS, it's all been really valuable.

x

[creations]

No problem.
Feel free to post again if you need any clarification.
x