Short naps and night wakings for 5-month old

[cns]

Hi, and thanks for this great forum

We've been trying EASY with our 5 month old daughter for 16 nights now, initially aiming for a 3.5 hour schedule as she is EBF (not really by choice, she just has always refused a bottle ). She sleeps in a co-sleeper next to our bed at night, and in her cot in the nursery for naps. Before introducing the routine we had been fairly good at feeding her after naps rather than feeding to sleep, and we even had a very nice couple of weeks about 14-16 weeks where things seemed to be going in the right direction. But then things went south around 3.5 months and we had to rock and bounce her to sleep for longer and longer which wasn't working for anyone...

The good news is that EASY does seem to have made some progress on getting her to sleep for naps and at night. She will go to sleep after a wind-down with shush-pat in about 20-30 minutes now (compared to 60 minutes at the start) with only a couple of PUPDs and sometimes none (started with 30+!). When she goes into the cot her eyes are generally closed and her breathing is calm, but she is still moving around a bit. We have white noise on a low volume all night.

However, we have a couple of problems that don't seem to be getting any better. In fact some things are getting worse.

First, her 3 daily naps are almost always 35-45 minutes. She wakes up pretty happy most of the time, and we haven't had much success extending the naps yet. She might go back for 5 minutes more after 10 minutes of PUPD & shush-pat but then she starts screaming and fighting until we take her out the nursery.

Second, and worse, she now wakes up a lot through the night. When we first started EASY she would at least sleep for the first 2-3 hours of the night (7-10pm) before waking, and then wake up 2-3 times more for feeding. This felt like gradual progress. But for the past week, she has predictably woken up about 7:45, 8:30, and 9:15. Often by the 9:15 wakeup she won't go back to sleep without a lot of screaming then another feed. We've certainly never got to the point of being able to give her a dream feed!

We'd really like to know if there is anything we should tweak to get things back on track and her sleeping better at night. We can deal with the naps TBH but I wonder if that might be affecting the night wakings so I wasn't sure which board to put this on

Here's an example day (yesterday):

Woke up at 6:30
E: 0700 - 0720
A: 0720 - 0850 (including a tiny bit of puree as we're weaning her)
S: 0850 - 1005
E: 1015 - 1035
A: 1035 - 1225
S: 1225 - 1310
E: 1315 - 1340
A: 1340 - 1515
S: 1515 - 1600 (woke up in the middle, shushed back to sleep)
E: 1600 - 1620
A: 1620 - 1800
Last feed: 1800 - 1820
Wind-down (bath, book, songs): 1820-1840
S: 1900
NW1: 1945 (10 mins to resettle with shush-pat)
NW2: 2040 (10 mins to resettle with shush-pat)
NW3: 2100 (10 mins to resettle with shush-pat)
NW4: 2115 (wouldn't resettle in 20 mins, screaming, so fed)
We went to bed here
NW5: 0030 (fed and back to sleep in 30 mins, needed a hand on her chest for an hour or so though)
NW6: 0300 (fed and back to sleep in 30 mins)
Then slept through to 0645, with a few reassuring "hand on chest" moments when she seemed to be stirring about 0500.

[creations]

Hello and welcome to BW forums

It sounds like you might just need an increase in the A time. Those short naps of 45 mins and being unable to resettle properly sound like she is a bit UT (under tired).  the good news is that because you were on a settled routine before this and because you've been teaching her independent sleep, it should go quite smoothly to increase that A time and for her to begin to nap longer again.
LO can appear OT (over tired) when you first increase the A time, try not to be too concerned about that, help her when needed (as always) with shush/pat or a hand on her etc as you have been doing. After a few days she should settle into the new A time.
It looks like she gets about 2hr 20 A time, I would increase this to 2hr 30/40.
Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!

Hopefully the NWs will ease off once her day sleep is more settle.  It could well be that having a couple of short naps in the afternoon is leading to her being a bit OT for BT and that's waking her.  this is also the beginning of the nap drop which comes at around 6 months.  For the CN to be dropped you are looking for an A time of around 3hrs and 2 naps of 1.5-2hrs.  Just letting you know what is coming in the next month so you can see how increasing the A time now begins that process.

With the night feed, if she wakes around 9pm I would just go ahead and feed her,it's been 3hrs since the last feed, 3-4 hrs is fine to feed at and pointless trying to get her to sleep at 9 if she is hungry.  When the NWs stop the chances are she'll do the 3.5 hrs - 4hrs between feeds at night but it's ok to feed a little earlier if she is disturbed.
We generally don't advise solids before 6 months but if you are giving a little just make sure it is only a little, too much solids now can fill her up without giving her the calories she needs which can lead to being too full for milk in the day but more hungry rather than less hungry during the night as she tries to make up for the calories she missed.  You did say it's only a tiny bit so perhaps just a little taste of something.

Hope this helps - let us know how it goes or if you have any further questions

[cns]

Thanks for the great reply. We'll try to extend her A time and report back in a few days

[creations]

You're very welcome. Hope it goes smoothly for you.
Will be here for your update

[cns]

Sorry, it turned out to be quite a few weeks rather than just a few days

Things do see to have improved a bit with our now 6.5 month old daughter. However, it's still not great and this last week things seem to be getting worse again.

The good news is that we generally managed to get her to sleep from 7pm bedtime to around 11:30pm quite regularly, and she is in her own room now. She seemed to get much better at going back to sleep after a sleep cycle. We've had one night with just one feed, and quite a few with two, going back to sleep after an occasional battle. We've also got her eating 3 meals a day.

The bad news is that in the past week (maybe following a couple of recent colds) things have started slipping and she is waking up more in the night and is becoming increasingly harder to settle after the first feed. Sometimes we are in and out of her room for two hours until she finally sleeps properly about 1:30am. We haven't seen any major improvement in her naps either.

Then yesterday it started to get worse again:

Woke up at 6:30
E: 0700 - 0715
A: 0715 - 0900 (including solid breakfast)
S: 0900 - 1010
E: 1010 - 1025
A: 1030 - 1230 (including solid lunch)
S: 1230 - 1315 (in buggy, normally this would be in her cot from approx 1300 - 1330)
E: 1315 - 1330
A: 1330 - 1550
S: 1550 - 1620 (in buggy)
E: 1620 - 1630
A: 1630 - 1800 (including solid snack)
E: 1800 - 1815
Bath, book, bed: 1815 - 1845
Bedtime at 1845, went to sleep quite easily, woke up after 5 minutes and was back to sleep by 1900
NW1: 2015
NW2: 2115
NW3: 2215
Repeatedly woke between 2215 - 2345
Fed at 2345 then would only sleep in our arms until 0130
Fed again at 0130 and 0530
Slept on us until 0630

Unfortunately shush-patting and PU/PD don't seem to be working too well any more. I think she might be getting too old for it.

Any ideas what this might be, and if our routine is still suitable for her age? We have tried dropping the catnap but then she is really cranky in the lead up to bedtime because her naps weren't good before.

[creations]

Hi there
Looks like her A time is on the short side again.  If you can now go for A time for 3hrs and get 2 good naps you should be able to drop that CN and do an EBT if needed.

As before really, LOs can need some help when you increase the A time but give it a few days to settle. If you prefer you can increase in 15 min increments, stay for a couple of days and increase again.  Some get more than 3hr A at this age, it's a little trial and error to see what works for your own LO, don't be afraid to increase it, those UT naps end up leading to OT anyway.  You will hopefully see her settle better on the longer A time and see that shush/pat or adapted is still useful - remember these tools are to support your LO they don't force them to sleep they let them know that you are there with them and that they are not alone.

hth

[cns]

Another quick update on this, as things are going better (right now, at least  ).

We've managed to extend her second A time as suggested, so she's now generally napping from 9 to shortly after 10, and from around 1:30 to around 2:30-3. She doesn't seem to need the catnap any more now she's nearly 8 months, so we've dropped that and she goes to sleep pretty well at 7. At the moment she is still waking up once or twice a night for feeds but we are gradually weaning her off those too.

So it seems that the longer A time has definitely helped! Thanks.

Fingers crossed that we don't have any regressions now 

[creations]

What a lovely update   Thanks for taking the time to come back with that, it is always lovely to hear good  news

Sleep needs change and change in those first couple of years, each time seems to settle into a routine and then the next thing comes along.  It's all pretty normal and often confusing or exhausting or both.
I would think you'd be roughly okay now for a couple of months.  At around 10 months lots of LOs sleep goes off track or routine needs a bit of a tweak as they approach the 2-1 nap drop.

Have you joined the birth clubs?  lots of members like to drop in there for some general chit chat.