3 hour morning nap

[ainsleys mom]

We battled 30 minute naps for a long time and they still sometimes occur, but this week ainsley has been napping 3 hours from 8:30-11:30am.  We start the day at 7am!  Is this going to cause a problem?  It does seem to be a little harder to get her down at night, but not much.  She goes to sleep for the last time at 9:30pm.  Any help would be great.  Thanks in advance.

[ainsleys mom]

Oh sorry, she is almost 4 months old.

[vadensmommy]

Welcome to the boards!
I hope you meet some great folks and learn lots and lots - I know I have!

BW usually recommends a 12 hour day and a 12 hour night, and what you've posted is that she is up at 7, and doesn't go to bed till 14.5hrs later at 9:30pm.  Your baby is probably making up for her missing night time sleep in that first morning nap, which is common, but not always desirable.  You can get into issues with getting too much daytime sleep which can cause some night wakings, and sometimes crib parties (where lo wants to stay up and play in the middle of the night), which aren't very fun for the parents!  BW also recommends not letting your lo nap for more than 2hrs at a time because this can disrupt night sleep as well.  If she is sleeping 3hrs, she is also sleeping past a feed, which again can lead to night wakings due to hunger.

At her age she-depending on how close she is to 4mo and what type of feeds she gets (breast milk or formula) she probably would be on a 3.5-4hr EASY routine.  Let me know about this since many breast fed babies don't get to a 4hr EASY the same as bottle/formula fed babies.

In order for her to be on a 4hr EASY she would need to be able to stay awake at least 2 hours.  So a typical day might look like this:

E 7
A 7-9
S 9-11

E 11
A 11-1
S 1-3

E 3
A 3-5
S 5-5:45 just a short catnap to get you to bedtime

E 5:45 - you can feed here, or wait a little later, my dd always wanted to eat a little earlier at night
A 5:45-7
S 7 for the night

Dream Feed (let me know if you have questions about what this is) around 10 or 11 -whatever is convenient for you.
Cross your fingers until morning.

Hope that helps.  Let me know about what kind of feeds she gets, and we'll go from there!

[ainsleys mom]

Wow that is helpful.  I have had her on a 3 hour cycle since very early on.  She turned 4 months on Dec 28th.  She is teething also.  Her morning naps are now 1.5-2 hours so that is better.  Most of the rest of her naps are 30 min.  I have been hoping she would move to a 3.5-4 hour easy, but so far it has mostly been 3 hours with some exceptions daily due to naps.  Here is her typical schedule.  See if there is anything that I could do to make it better.  I definitely appreciate the help.

7am  E
7-8:30or45  A
8:45-10:30  S
10:45  E
10:45-12:30  A
12:30-1  S
1:45  E
1:45-3:45  A
3:45-4:15  S
4:45  E
5:45-6:15  S
6:15-8  A
8  E
8:30-9  S

This is a rough routine as every day is a different day.  I would love to get it more constant if that is possible!!  Thanks for any help.

[vadensmommy]

It looks like all her naps are short naps, except that first one, which to me, says she definitely is ready for a longer A time.  I would work on extending her A times to 2 hours first.  I think that will probably help the short nap issue. That way, you can consolidate 2 of these naps, so instead of napping 4 times a day as she is doing now, the goal would be two longer naps, and a catnap.  She is already having 1hr 45min A times most days, so I would just keep her up 2hrs for her A times tomorrow, and see how she does. 

Is she taking full feeds at the 3hr mark?  Most babies start taking shorter naps, have night wakings, take less at each feeding, have early wakings, among other symptoms, when they are ready for the switch to the 4hr EASY.  How is she sleeping at night?  Is she having any night wakings, or does she sleep 9pm-7am straight?

So she is awake from 6:15-9pm some nights?  That is a pretty long time for a baby so young.
I still think her bedtime is way too late, and that is going to contribute to her being more tired during the day, and make it much much harder to get her on a good 4hr EASY during the day.

Take a peek at the routine I posted in the last post, and see if she will follow that, because it would be a pretty ideal routine.  What do you do to help her sleep?  Do you do pat/shh?  Have you ever tried wake 2 sleep?

[ainsleys mom]

I will definitely try 2 hour awake times starting tomorrow.  We put her down tonight at 7:50 for the night and she woke up at 8:20 when she spit out her paci (as always) and sneezed on top of that.  Then we rocked her back to sleep and right now she is out.  Strike that, was out.   

As for the feeds, she almost always takes 4oz with about one feed of 6oz per day.  At night she usually wakes up one time around 3:30 to eat.

Our normal way to get her to sleep is rock her a little to calm her down.  She gets pretty keyed up when she is swaddled for bed.  Then we lay her down awake and she drifts off.  Normally.

[vadensmommy]

Love the new avatar!
Let me know how things go with the 2hr A times
Your wind down sounds a lot like what we did in the beginning.  Actually I started off rocking dd to sleep, and gradually went to laying her down awake.  She was an angel baby so that worked just fine for us, but I know it doesn't for everybody.

I hope that if you manage to get her to 4hrs btwn feeds, she may start taking in more during the day and not need that 3am night feeding.

Do you do a dream feed?  You might consider starting one if you don't, that might help with the 3am feeding as well

keep me posted!