Author Topic: 6 week old - struggling with naps and bedtimes  (Read 5019 times)

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Offline sunny90

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6 week old - struggling with naps and bedtimes
« on: August 25, 2020, 16:59:39 pm »
My baby girl (after 4 boys, and after a 4.5 year gap) is 6.5 weeks old and I've been trying to keep to EASY since she was born.

A few problems:

  • I don't have time to shush pat her because frankly I have 4 other kids who JUST went back to school and my youngest is still only in school til 1.
    So I'm only able to keep her sleeping through the entire S time if she's in the baby carrier. I've tried rocking her in the stroller in the swaddle, but then I basically need to rock her the whole time, and it's very hard to keep her asleep even being rocked.
    I don't know when to make her bedtime. Til now I've been feeding her at 8 for bedtime until she's asleep and then she was sleeping til 1-2 ish (a couple of nights she even went til 3 am!) but for the past few nights she's waking between 11:30-12. The thing is her last nap is til 6 so really 8 pm is a very long time to go but I feed her at 4 and 6 so should I be putting her to bed at 7 and just feeding her an hour later? How do I work out the feeds? I always nurse before bedtime to differentiate between that and naptime.
    She was having problems nursing at the beginning (her latch wasn't good) and she still falls asleep while nursing. The lactation consultant told me to feed on both sides because of this, to make sure she feeds enough. So feeding can take about 40 min sometimes. So I can't figure out her A time because she falls asleep while she's nursing.

This is what our schedule basically looks like.

630/7 - E (she usually drifts off during this feed)
830ish - S (I often put her in the baby carrier around 8:15 and she ends up falling asleep in the next 15 min)
10 - E
1130ish - S
1 - E
220ish - S
4 - E
515 - S
6 - E
715/730 - bath and pjs
745ish - E and put to bed

It sometimes can take me til close to 9 to make sure she's all the way asleep and now that she's waking up just a little over 2 hours later is completely exhausting me.
When can I start moving her towards independent sleep? Can I start doing PUPD? With my other kids at least I'd rock them in the stroller and they'd sleep for 45 min before I had to work on keeping them asleep, with her she's maybe sleeping for half an hour before stirring and having to be jiggled back to sleep in the carrier.