Which sleep issue to tackle first?!

[rooroo85]

I hope someone can help with this. I posted a few weeks ago about my baby's short naps and picked up quite a bit of advice. My baby is now nearly 5 months and things have improved on the whole -  getting longer naps is still a battle they are not such a rarity! I've tried wake to sleep but I can't seem to get it right. My husband has success at giving him his dummy and rocking him back to sleep when he wakes but I find it doesn't work with me so I do anything I can to get him to sleep longer - including transferring him to the car seat after 30 mins and taking him to shopping, putting him in the sling (I really did try with pu/pd and shush/pat but I could never get it to work in the middle of naps). I know none of my methods are ideal but he is a much better sleeper at night and better natured with the right amount of naps! A few times recently he has managed it on his own HURRAH! So I am hopeful that we will get there. However the times he has managed it are the times when I have forgotten to take out his dummy and he hasn't spat it out. (If I try simply replacing the dummy when he wakes it seems to wake him up more).

This brings me to our next sleep problem - the dummy. He only has it to settle before naps and bedtime and has never been interested in it during the day unless over tired. I never wanted to use one but it was the only way I managed to get him out of the habit of feeding to sleep. We want to get rid of it so that he learns to properly self settle and our theory is the earlier we do it the easier it will be for him. He's had it since he was 5 weeks old Initially the dummy was a godsend for bedtime but now we have to put it back in 2 or 3 times in the night so he settles and I know he should be learning to do this on his own. Lots of people have told me their baby slept better as soon as the dummy went.

My dilemma is this - are we going to make life harder for him and us by getting rid of the dummy before he is able to nap properly? Should I just focus on naps and forget about getting rid of the dummy for a while? Or do you think the dummy may be stopping him from learning to do it on his own?

Just to give you an idea he is on a 3.5 hour EASY but it does get a bit messed up when he has short naps. He goes down to sleep calm and awake (we used pu/pd to get him to go  down awake in his cot, and it worked).

I'd like the dummy gone and long naps established before I return to work in 3 months. One reason is because my mother in law, who will be doing some daycare is very disapproving of it and refuses to use it. Infact she is very unsupportive of our routine telling me I am 'missing the joy of motherhood' because I refuse to feed my baby to sleep anymore. she also makes jokes about me being obsessed with naps telling me tha

[rooroo85]

sorry posted too soon!

she tells me babies just fall asleep when they need to! Ive tried politely to ask her to follow our routine and put him in his cot when shes looked after him only to return home and her say something incredibly irritating such as 'he didn't want to go in the cot and im not giving him that dummy so we had a lovely cuddle and he slept in my arms for a good 15 minutes at lunch time.' I feel life would be easier if he went down without a dummy so she didn't have an excuse not to put him down and then he wouldn't have ridiculously short catnap cuddles followed by overtired afternoons and hellish nights!

Sorry to ramble on and moan about the mother in law. I really hope someone can help.

[becj86]

Hi, can you please post your routine - 3.5hr EASY I'm guessing is 2hr A time with a hoped-for 1.5hr nap? That might be part of the problem - at 5 months, A times are more like 2:15-2:30hr, so he could just be doing short naps because he's undertired.

WRT the dummy, if you want to get rid of it, do it soon. I would also say, though, that your routine will probably have to be closer to what he needs for that to go smoothly - it will be harder for him to settle if he's UT and harder for him to get through the transition and sleep a full nap.

Best thing you can do, IMO, is increase your A time.

WRT MIL - if you can get to a place of set naps by the time she's looking after LO, that might work? What's his temperament? For now, I'd drop LO off to her in the afternoon rather than the morning so she can do the CN rather than messing with the other naps in the day - better chance at a decent night for you, then.

[rooroo85]

Thanks so much for your advice. Sorry it's taken a while to reply. I think you're right about the awake time being too short. I based it on his first awake time. We aim to have him up at 7 and then he's really tired by 9 so I thought 2 hours was more than enough but it's just occurred to me that he is actually awake in his cot before I pick him up. 7 is really my preferred awake time! Yesterday he easily did 2 and a half hours between his naps so thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately he didn't manage a long nap on his own - there was much rocking and replacing of the dummy half way through his nap but we got there in the end! I am really hoping we will get there soon. I find it a lot easier to get him back to sleep at lunchtime than I do for his first nap.

I've been looking on here trying to find a 5 month routine with 2 and a half hours of awake time but they all seem to be 2 hours. Just having a go  at rejigging the times a bit. What does this look like to you as something to aim for?

E: 6.45
A:
S:9.00

E: 10.30
A:
S: 1.00

E: 2.30
A:
S: 5.00

E:5.30
A:
E and bath: 7.00
S: 7.30

I feel like a total novice at this but I'm desperate for it to work so that I can persuade other people that he is better off with a routine. Thanks for the advice about MIL! Afternoon visits will hopefully be less stressful!

[becj86]

Looks good - only thing that I'd suggest is making that first A time a touch longer - you want it to be 2.5hr, just to reduce the chance of short first nap and/or earlier waking and/or long happy waking in the early hours of the morning. That's really the progression from a short/broken first nap and its best to extend while its "only" a dodgy nap rather than dealing with a day that shifts earlier because of early waking. A good nap in the morning will set you up for better naps the rest of the day too.

We are all total novices at every stage of each child's life - they're all different

 

I've been looking on here trying to find a 5 month routine with 2 and a half hours of awake time but they all seem to be 2 hours

That's why they're posting... and it stays a mess til you get A times up high enough so its best to keep increasing A times regularly in line with LO's needs.