jmoran - I would always aim to give them the chance to sleep 11-12hrs at night. If you find that putting them to bed at 5.30 leads to 4.30 wake up then you can safely say they only need 11hrs at night in which case you will need to give them a 13hr day or at least a 12.5hr day with 30Min's to get to sleep. If this proves to be the case then you will need to continue to try to squeeze in a catnap, but I think you may be surprised and find they sleep longer at night for getting to bed in good time. When shifting their day, you shift it by 10Min's a day. So first you stretch the first A time by 10Min's, you give them breakfast & bottle 10Min's later than normal and any snack 10Min's later than normal. then everything else bottles and meals will all be 10Min's later than usual, including bedtime. You repeat this every day or if necessary every 2/3days, Its important that their meals & bottles all shift with their sleep as all these things are markers to their body clock about what comes next and when. Slowly as bedtime creeps later and later so the mornings should follow, until both wake up & bedtime are 7am/7-7.30pm. I have advised this many times, not sure if anyone else has tried it or not but it worked like a charm for Lily.
Amy - To get her over the OT I would let her sleep as much as you can during the day without it affecting her bedtime if she is unwell this could be tricky. If you find that by cutting her am nap and having a long pm nap pushes bedtime too late, that could be why your wake ups are getting earlier as it seems most LO's have a time past which will lead to guaranteed early wake up, for us its 7.15pm anything later than that will almost always lead to an early wake up. If this is the case then I would let her sleep as long as she wants in the am and aim for a late catnap of 30Min's and put her down no more than 12-12.5hrs after wake up. I think a lot of the problem with this transition is that because of the reduced amount of sleep they will take it is very hard to get over OT and OT can happen so easily. Something else I've definitely noticed, in DD and other LO's is that AP and props can really become a big problem at this transition. I became DD prop, she needed me there to get to sleep or to get back to sleep if she woke up. For you I would say that the paci could be causing problems too. One last thing, Lily like your DD has always tended to wake in the evening for NW's, if only slightly OT at bedtime she will wake after 45Min's or 1hr 30Min's or sometimes every 45Min's for several hours, but I have found that providing she gets to bed earlier than I think she needs, these evening wakings don't happen. Quite often it helps her to have just 11.5hr day and she still wakes up at 7am or sometimes 7.30am. When her routine is perfect for her (which has happened for several periods only to be mucked up with routine change) we get no evening wakings 7pm bedtime and 7am wake up. Sorry I was too late to answer your question re todays routine but I would say after 1.5hr nap she will prob go about 3.5hrs to next nap, thats where I would of started from.
