Short napping 4 month old (surprise suprise!!)

[LucyA]

Same old story, dd is nearly 4 months, and wakes between 30-45 minutes into her naps. I can generally resettle her, or keep her asleep if I catch her before she wakes, but I then have to stay in there with her for up to an hour before she settles properly back to sleep again. Meanwhile my 2 year old is roaming the house, periodically coming in to see me and wake dd up!

I guess it's largely routine related. Currently we do something like this:

8am wake and feed
9.20 winddown
9.30 asleep. Sleeps for 30-45 minutes, takes 20-60 minutes to resettle, then sleeps for another 30-75 minutes
11.30 wake and feed
1.05 winddown
1.15 asleep. As above, but usually quicker to resettle, 5-20 minutes.
3.30 wake and feed
5 winddown
5.10 asleep, might not be able to resettle at all
6 wake and feed
7.30 feed
8 asleep
10.30 DF (sometimes she wakes for this)
2ish and 4ish night feeds. She used to only feed at 4ish, but has started waking around 2 and not resettling easily. Then I try and feed her between 4-4.30 or she won't wake for a feed til 6ish, which then means she won't eat when she wakes around 8am... Anyway, I'm not bothered by the night feeds for now.

I am still helping her fall asleep, I put her down, then help her to roll onto her side and suck her thumb. Once she is drifting off to sleep I can usually leave her to it. When resettling I have to stay with her.

To complicate matters, she has started rolling in the last few days. This doesn't seem to be what's waking her though, although it might get in the way of her resettling herself for now.

She does seem to be very susceptible to overtiredness, and seems to need a lot of sleep.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

[deckchariot]

Do you think she might be ready to start transitioning to a 4 hr EASY?  Typically, a 45 min nap would indicate that she actually could go with a longer A time.  At 4 mos, most lo can do at least 2 hrs, I know she's not quite 4 mos, but she may be heading in that direction.  Have you tried extending her A time at all?  Even just 5 or 10 min.

[LucyA]

Naps are more often 30-35 minutes, and  she wakes cranky and crying. A couple of times she's been up closer to 2 hours, she's woken at 20-25 minutes and is hard to resettle. She will quite happily eat every 4 hours, but A times don't seem to be anywhere near 2 hours.

[deckchariot]

if her naps are hanging around the 30 min mark, then she's probably overtired (sometimes it's so hard to get the right A time), so maybe then even scale back a few minutes on her A time.  You're right that if she can't do 2 hrs of A time, she's not ready to move to the 4 hr EASY.  You may want to try keeping a sleep log to see when exactly she's waking during the naps, once you notice a pattern, you could try w2s.  Also, if you try to extend her nap and you aren't successful (I'd only try for maybe 30-40 min), get her up and have some low key A time until the next feed, then I'd only keep her up for 30ish min and start your wind down for the next nap, otherwise her OT cycle will just keep spiraling out of control.

[LucyA]

So we've had an up and down few days, but seem to maybe be getting somewhere. We had a couple of days with major ot, dd was just a screaming mess, wouldn't even sleep in my arms, but eventually got a little sleep in the bjorn.

Anyway, yesterday looked like this:
7.40 wake and E
8.55 S - stirred a bit at 30 min, but didn't really wake
10.05 wake, I got her up
11.30 S - cried for a couple of minutes at 25 min, but sh'd her back to sleep
1.35 wake
3.05 S - stirred a little around 30 min, didn't really wake
4.45 wake
7.20 S - this was preceded by a meltdown during her last feed, she then woke another couple of times before settling properly for the night around 9pm.

Today she got up at 7.15, first nap at 8.20, she slept for nearly 1.5 hours without my help!

So really short A times seem to be the answer, and I guess they'll stretch out a bit as naps get better. What length naps do you think I should be aiming for? about 1.45-2 hours, with third nap a bit shorter?

[deckchariot]

Lucy - it seems like the short A time is helping!  YEAH!  I'd say aiming for the 1.45 - 2hr naps for the first 2 is great, then the 3rd is more of a catnap (45ish min) just to get her through til bedtime.  Once she starts taking better naps and gets a bit older, you can probably start extending that A time.  It looks like you're doing great!!!!

[LucyA]

Ok, so for second nap today, 1.30 A time, then she woke at 45 min, got her back to sleep, she woke again 10 min later, back to sleep, woke again 15 min later, then slept about another hour. What does that mean??
Then third nap, she didn't seem tired at all really, eventually she had 1.50 A time, woke after 40 min happy and smiling. Trouble is, that was at 4pm!!
She had a 10 min sleep in the bjorn around 6pm to get her through to bedtime, but woke 4 times in the first hour. I ended up feeding her again the 4th time, she's been asleep an hour since then.
 

[deckchariot]

hmmm....since you were able to extend her on that first nap, I'm guessing she just needed some help getting through the sleep cycles.  Babies brains can't figure out daytime sleep until 3-6 mos, so she's still trying to figure that out.  The NWs right after going to bed could mean that she was OT by bedtime (which will happen when naps are a bit nuts).  If she hasn't napped well, you may want to put her down earlier than normal and start again the next day.  Believe it or not, it looks like you're making progress!!!!  Hang in there!!

[LucyA]

This is so frustrating. She didn't seem tired this morning, so kept her up a few minutes longer. Woke at 35 min, spent the next hour waking every 10 min or so. Next nap, 30 min then horrible ot screaming. She had the rest of that nap in the bjorn and is now napping again in my arms.

Note to self: err on the side of very short A times!!!

[deckchariot]

Lucy, I'm sorry today was rough!  don't feel bad about the bjorn nap!  When Abby would have a horrible day, I did whatever I could to get her at least one good nap a day so she'd go to bed well and sleep through the night so I could start fresh in the morning.  But it looks like you are right - she was OT for that first nap.  I found as Abby got older, her sleep cues somewhat disappeared and I really had to do more clock watching.  Then when I did try to extend her, it was really more like a longer wind down than extra A time.    And remember, you get a new start each day!  Hang in there!!!

[LucyA]

Hi! Things have been a bit patchy here, but I think we're kind of seeing some improvement.

DD has started wanting to sleep on her tummy, so I've been letting her. The first day she took a 1.15 hour nap and a 1.20 hour nap without me extending either of them! Back to some shorter naps since, but more often 40 min than 30. I'm also noticing that she will sometimes wake happy at 40 min if she's had a shorter A time.

I'm thinking the need for short A times may have been a blip for some reason (developmental leap/growth spurt??). We're off for a week on Monday, so things will be a bit crazy while we're away, but when we get back I think I'll try for A times around 2 hours and see how we go from there.

[deckchariot]

Lucy - I"m super glad you're seeing success!  The next week will be a bit nuts for most of our lo's - so just ride it out!  You may be right about the short A times being just a blip developmentally.  Good pick up!