My daughter is so inconsistent!

[shimmer]

She is almost 6 months old, and sleep has improved dramatically since we began sleep training (taching her independent sleep) 2 weeks ago.  However, she is so inconsistent!  She has been struggling with her afternoon nap by cutting it too short, however, on thos days, she slept through the night!  Yesterday, she finally took a decent afternoon nap, but she woke up very early this morning and really struggled to get back to sleep.   Is it because her catnap was too late due to her having a decent afternoon nap?  And should I cut her morning nap short?  Is 3 hours of total daytime sleep sufficient?  It seems ridiculously low.... maybe I just have to accept it. 

7:45-ish wakes
8 feed
10 nap
11:30 wake
12 feed
2 nap
3:30 wakes
4 feed
6 catnap
6:30 wake her!
7:30 bath & feed
8 in bed (usually asleep by 8:10 at latest)

However, her afternoon nap lasted only 40 min. two days in a row and she slept awesome those two nights, but isn't the afternoon supposed to be the most refreshing?  SO was it actually the total hours that affected night , so should I shorten the morning nap?  Or, cut the catnap & put her to bed a tiny bit earlier (but she would be exhausted)!  Our sleep doctor (we have a specialist because she was extremely colicky & our ped. felt sorry for us) says baby whisperer is great but that for most babies with Malia's personailty it rarely works.  Help me prove him wrong. LOL.

[andrea21]

Hello..

My Ds is nearly6months old and since he was born up until 4.5months,he had no sleeping routine except he slept thru the night from 7 weeks old.
In the end i tried pu/pd,pat ssh and nothing worked.
So I had read in Tracey book that some babies don't need alot of sleep during the day,if they aren't cranky when they are awake.
So I just watched my DS when he started to get rub his eyes and I put him down then.Some days he can have 2 lots of 1.5hrs and 1 45min sleep and other days he can have one 2.5hrs and one 1.5hrs.
I found for my Ds was to watch him and for me and everything we have going on it works good for him.
This is our normal day and he is never cranky,only if he don't have an afternoon sleep,but don't get cranky until 6pm.

7am awake and bottle
8am breakfast
8.30/45-9.30/10 sleep
11am bottle
12noon lunch
12.30/1pm-2pm sleep
3pm bottle
3.30/45-4.30/5 sleep
5.30pm bottle
7/7.30pm bottle and bed

This works really good for us,but only when I sat back and just watched him when he got tired put him down and now he goes down most times at the same time.

Hope this is some advice.
Andrea...

[Richelle]

HI,

I think 3 hours may be a TAD low for her age but not ridiculous  ! 

I think you are reading her VERY well.  Is there anyway to push her naps out at all, so that she is just having 2 naps?  Do you think that if her last nap ended around 330 or 4PM she could make it to bedtime?  For example:  nap#1 - 9Am to 1030AM / nap #2 - 2PM to 330PM.  If she wakes early from her afternoon nap then on those days maybe let her have a little catnap to carry her through to bath/bedtime.  My DD dropped her catnap at 6 months as it was starting to effect her noghttime sleep.

My DD's night sleep suffered if she slept too much in the daytime and I had to come to terms with it.  She has never needed a lot of daytime sleep, at 6 months she was getting 3 hours too and then slept through from 7ishPM.

HTH,

Richelle