what would you do?

[ming2007]

I am sleep training with my lo, we are on day 5 and have ditched the paci and some bad habits caused by me- no independant sleep and extending naps by sleeping on my chest!! bad bad mommy! so anyway, we have improvement but i want to get your opinions
my lo has real issues usually transitioning from one sleep cycle to another.  so we get a lot of 45 or 30 mins naps.

this morning we had a 45 mins and then after 45 mins of sh pat i got another 45 mins
then the 2nd nap we got 30 mins nap and after an hour of sh pat he has been sleeping so far for 1hr10 mins, i have missed a feed but i would rather help him cathc up on some sleep and do a bit of clustering later on to catch up but now i think of it i should have fed him early shouldnt i? i have just changed to 3.5 hour easy but he still isnt very hungry at 3.5 hours but he is bf so i thought i would do it slowly. i am just so happy to have had a nap for longer than 1 hour for the first time in probably 6 weeks. what i am asking, sorry for the ramble , is 1 hr of trying to extend too much and should i have just given up sooner? I did take him out of the room after 45 mins and it was after that that he went down again.
TIA

[*~goldie~*]

hi there ,
so you have the BW book "th BW solves all your problems" ? (its yellow)... in that it explains more in depth - not sure how old your little one is but if its a 4 hour easy, it reccomends, that if baby is stall awake, or woken up 90 minutes from the begin of sleep time. (So say wake up is 7, nap is 9 and baby is still awake at 10.30), thhen you should just get your baby up and stick to the same routine in that the baby would be awake for 2.5 hours and next sleep would be at 1pm. a sleep cycle is 45 minutes as you know so its pointless trying once theres only half an hour left to sleep. Also if you wait it out till the correct time - (eg.1pm), the baby learns its sleep times and values these windows.
Hope this helps altough Im not sure if it makes much sense
xxx

[carrie72377]

I had thought in the book it says not to skip a feeding....I have not had that issue because my LO wakes up right when its time to eat, regardless of whether he has been sleeping for 10 minutes or 2 hours (more often than not though he sleeps like your LO for only 45 minutes to an hour). I, too, have to sh/pat for naps to last longer than 45 minutes at a time but I feel that its worth it to me because if he doesn't get enough sleep during the day then the nights are especially rough. Good luck!

[marensmama]

When the LOs are under 8 weeks or if they have weight-gain or health issues, or if you have supply issues, I would wake them for a feed.  If that is not the case, the occasional late feeding will not be an issue.

That being said, if you are trying to extend a nap and it's been 45 minutes or the next feeding time has rolled around, take the LO out and feed, then try to put them down again.  You don't skip the nap, essentially, you keep trying for it.  Your EAS routine will be a bit messy, but as long as you separate the E and the S by a bit of A time (sometimes just a diaper change), you'll be fine.  Don't keep him up until the next nap would be due or you will have an OT little babe on your hands.

HTH!