I'm working on the 40 minute nap (or course, there seems to be a lot of that going on around here!) I've re=read tracy's sleep interview and in it she says that if baby is waking up early, then to do activity until the next feed, feed her, then put her down after 10 minutes if she's falling asleep at the breast/bottle or if she's awake/alert to keep her up for about 40 minutes. She also says to NOT look at the clock and readjust accordingly during A time later on. THis is the robbing peter to pay paul principle. (see below, i"ve included the excerpt) I think she is referring to an older baby (at least 3 months old), b/c the example was with a 3.5 - 4 hour EASY and she refers to PUPD.
My LO is 9 weeks old, is she too young for this? Should I stick to W2S and shh/pat to get her to her next feed?
Thanks!
From the sleep interview...
Q: Now, naps. If a baby wakes early from a nap, or you never got them to sleep in the first place for a nap?
T: Give them the feed, if you’ve gotten to the point where it is time to feed, then keep them up for 10 minutes, and then go for the nap. Don’t look at the clock.
Q: Now sometimes a baby, after he’s eaten, even if he’s skipped a nap, won’t seem sleepy. Do you still just wait about 10 minutes and then start trying, or do you wait until they show tired cues?
T: Right, you have two scenarios: One is where they’re falling asleep on the bottle or the breast, and the other is the wide-awake. If they’re falling asleep, wake them up for 10 minutes, and if they’re wide-awake, go ahead and give them half an hour – 45 minutes, and then start the process. Otherwise you’re going to have an overtired baby.
Now what you might see, is after 45 minutes of sleep they’ll wake up again, and that’s when you do the pu/pd to put them back to sleep – but if it takes you 40 minutes to get them back to sleep, do you let them sleep the other hour? No, you let them sleep just until the feed time again. You don’t overcompensate.
Q: So let’s say I’ve spent a lot of time doing pu/pd, and I’ve finally gotten him to sleep, but it’s only 10 or 15 minutes until the next feed time, do I go ahead and wake him back up?
T: Yes, you get him up.
Q: Because I know how some moms must feel, I’ve spent an hour and a half to get him to sleep, and I’m only going to let him sleep 10 minutes.
T: Yep, and that’s what you do, you get them up. But that activity time – you’re going to feed him, and then the activity time is going to be very short. That’s where you’re going to compensate.
Q: So let’s talk this all they way through in the form of a scenario: You have a baby who is on a 3 ½ to 4-hour schedule, who has woken at 7am, and gone down for a nap at 9am. Say he wakes after 45 minutes, at 9:45am, and it’s not a growth-spurt or hunger that’s driving the waking. The next time he’s supposed to eat is, say 10:30am on the early end. So from 9:45 to 10:30 is only 45 minutes. Are you going to then do pu/pd until it’s time to feed?
T: Yes. And then you might find that he’s dropping off to sleep as he’s eating, so you’d do what we mentioned earlier, keep him up for 10 minutes after eating, and then go for the nap. Now, if he isn’t dropping off but is awake, then only give him a half-hour or so awake time. Because he’s going to be extremely tired, and then you’re never going to get him down because he’s overtired.
Q: So let’s carry that through – you go ahead and feed him at 10:30am, then keep him up for half an hour after he finishes eating, so let’s say he goes down at 11:15am, whereas normally he would have gone down at 12:30 or 1pm. Now how long would you expect him to sleep?
T: He should sleep for 1 ½ or 2 hours. This is where you don’t watch the clock; you’re applying the principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now when he wakes up, it might be an hour before his next feed, but that’s fine – as long as you’ve gotten a good nap, you’ll have an hour of activity time before feed, and then he might have a shorter activity time after the feed, but his total up time is normal length. The point is this: We’re trying to get him used to sleeping a long time, a good-length nap of 1 ½ - 2 hours.
Q: So if they have a good nap, but wake far in advance of the next feed, that would be activity time.
T: Yes. And this is where people sometimes get confused – and so as I said, you don’t look at the clock, if they’re up a little while before the feed, that’s fine, because you’re still going to have at least another –this is another thing, because he’s had that hour up time, and then a feed, remember if he’s had a good 1 ½ -2 hr. nap he might go the distance, because he’s has that good nap, even if the routine got skewed a bit early. So he might go another hour after his feed.
Q: Now if he doesn’t nap that long, but again wakes up after 45 minutes, you start the pu/pd?
T: Yes, you’d do the pu/pd, same as before. Being consistent for all nap and sleep times, until you’ve worked it through.
And realize that it is frustrating. It’s not easy, it’s never easy. Well, that’s not true, because for a younger baby it is. The hardest stage is between 3 and 6 months, because they’re having a lot of physical changes as well.
Q: In that age range, there seem to be two categories of short nappers: You have the baby who has never napped longer than 45 minutes, and you’ll have the babies who used to nap very well, and now have regressed. Let’s start with the regressions.
T: Great! Because we’ve covered this at times on the site, but I really want to make it a special topic here. Once it’s time to start to move your feeding schedule from a 3 hour schedule to a 4 hour, and it’s around 3-4 months that you’ll start to move in that direction, what you’re seeing is a baby who can stay up longer, but because they’re still eating on a 3-hour schedule, the eating will cut into what should be a 2-hour nap. So then they start to do the 45-minute naps even if they’ve been napping well up to this point. Now this will happen very gradually, and if you’re watching for it, you can see it as it starts. You don’t need to let it get established.
What you need to do is respond to it, because this is where it’s going, to revert to the 45-minute nap. Because they can physically stay up longer, but they’re only having 45-minute naps, they then revert to only being able to stay up and hour and 15 minutes. Okay? But because they’re older, and can store energy better, they only need 45 minutes, because they’ve only been up an hour and a half, or an hour and 15. When really, at about 4 months or so they can start to hold their own for at least 2 hours, earlier for some babies and later for others.
So this is when you get into that vicious cycle of, because I’ve only had 45 minutes I can only be up for an hour and a quarter, and because I’ve only been up an hour and a quarter, I only need 45 minutes!
Q: And I think for a lot of people who have read the first book, and are working so hard on trying to follow cues, it’s that transition that’s tricky, when you’re not just going to follow the sleepy cues right away.
T: Exactly.
Q: Especially if you have licked the 45-minute naps, and then they reappear. It might not be intuitive to say, “Now we’re going to delay when we see the sleepy cues and keep her up a little bit longer.
T: Right. The other thing that parents will make the mistake of doing is trying on the first day to go straight to keeping them up 2 hours. And then all hell breaks loose, and then they’re not relaxed enough to go sleep, so they still only sleep for 40 minutes, and it’s a mess. Sometimes, they’ll sleep less, they’ll go to a 20 minute nap or a half hour – we see this all the time on the website. “We started to keep them up for 2 hours, but then they’re overtired, and wouldn’t sleep at all.”
Q: So it’s important to lengthen the awake time gradually?
T: Yes. Start with adding 15 minutes, and do that for several days. And then if you need to add more to get it up closer to 2 hours, add 15 more for several days. And so on. And keep at it for at least a week, and you will start to see results. But it’s striking that balance, not keeping them up so long they’re overtired but keeping them awake long enough.
