Dear pbmom,
Don't worry too much about going over the schedule in great lengths. It is different every single day.
H
ow much daytime sleep total is he getting? And how much at night again? The lowest amount in the last 10 days has been 82 min. The longest was yesterday which was 3hours and 20 min (it took 4 naps to get that). I thought that might turn us around. He didn't wake after the hour he went to bed last night. He just did tonight
But he woke at 6 this morning, ready to go. I totally messed up his first nap. And the day went down hill from there. I'm not going to bother everybody by posting today's mess. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. The day that he only slept 80 min was a weird day. He only slpt 32 min for the first nap. He was over tired from a meltdown the night before. Then the next nap was 50 min? He's been doing that and I don't understand. Even if the first nap is bad he is taking a 50 min nap on the second one. This seems to be true most of the time whether I decrease the A time or not. However, today I didn't decrease the A time because most of the time is fine (and I wanted to wait until 3h to feed) and he only took a 30 min nap for the second nap.
His night sleep seems to be between 10 1/2-11 1/2 hours. Sometimes we have night wakings and early wakings.
If you don't count settling time Lyle is only at 1h30m for the first nap and 1h40 for the rest. He is so low on his awake time. I'm sure that is the problem, but boy, increasing it by even ten minutes has caused 11 days of madness.
Do you think I should increase by 5 min tomorrow or so? I tried to increase the second nap to 1,45 on one day when he took a good first nap, and then ended up being a mistake.
Today I worked really hard to put him to bed earlier, but by the time he was up from not taking his cat nap it was 5:47 and I had him back in bed within the hour, he still woke up 48 min after going to bed
He tried to hard to take the cat nap that I left him in his crib until he fussed. I stayed the whole time with him. Only helping when he fussed.
How does he go to sleep? Independently? Or are you there with him helping him along? When he wakes and he fusses, do you always go right away? What if you leave him for a bit? He's not doing the I need you cry, right? Before the total disaster that has become our routine he was doing really well. I could place him in his crib and he would go to sleep within about 12min. Now right when he started going to sleep within 12min I started getting 45min naps, that I couldn't extend. I've always had 45min naps, since we started EASY.
In hindsight I should have started increasing A time then. But I thought he might Well after the 30min mess we had because he was so overtired. But most of the time I could extend them. So I have equated 12min with bad, I don't know if that's true or now. He seems all over the place. 12 is about the lowest. He usually takes 20-30min to settle. And it seems that I might get a long nap, or a short nap, either way. Now it has come down to I might not even get a nap.
I have been helping him more. And he's been using the paci more. He use to not really use it. But we just started using it to extend his naps
I always try to make sure I stop patting when he seems settled.
I do go right in to him when he fusses. I do this because in the past if I don't then there is no chance of resettling him. Do you think I should stop doing that since the naps are not good anyways?
Today I camped out in his room for the third nap and I got a two hour nap. The only real nap of the whole day.
