Question about extending 45min naps...

[AvaMadeline]

I have been reading so many posts about these 45 min naps and thought I would try extending it. I went into the bedroom at the 30 min mark and waited until Ava jolted. I put my hands on her stomach and feet and we made it thru that one as her eyes remained closed. The first one came just after the 30min. mark. The 2nd one came at 45min almost exactly as her "sleep sheep" stopped seconds and that is 45 min. I put my hands on her again and she opened her eyes. Once she opened her eyes she saw me and began smiling and stretching and that was it. I put the soother back in her mouth but it just fell out from her big smiles! Suggestions?

[mokey_cat]

When I am holding my LO thorough the jolts, I apply pressure to her legs and use my other hand to cover her eyes (kind of just hover my hand over her face  ) because if she sees me, its all over!!  I use a miracle blanket so that keeps her arms and chest really tight anyway so I dont need to bother with applying pressure to her chest.  I also have to make the room as dark as I can (use blackout curtains but Im amazed at how light the room still is!!).  If she opens her eyes, I keep them covered and sometimes she will go back to sleep - more often though she would wake and then I would just leave the room (if she wasnt crying) to see if she would settle herself (she never did but I cannot get her back to sleep when she is babbling away).  So when she starts crying, I would then use shhpat to see if she will settle and go back to sleep.

I had about 3 days of holding her through the jolts before it actually worked - and even then, it was usually only the morning nap I could extend.  In the past few days though, my LO is sleeping nap of 2 hours on her own so Im really glad I did help her get used to sleeping through the jolts.

I find that when my LO wakes smiling, it is usually an undertired nap and I really struggle to extend them so when I increased A time, I was more likely to keep her asleep or get her back to sleep.

I dont know how everyone else does it - but this is the way it worked for me.  Hopefully you will have some success soon as I know how frustrating 45 minute naps are!!!

Laura
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[AvaMadeline]

Thanks Laura!

Well we definitely have way too much light in the bedroom. We have blinds and they don't keep any light out! Should look for those blinds or something this weekend.
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Well she may be undertired but I try and go by her cues, the yawns... and she always seem to start that after an hour or activity time. She does not fight me too much and seems to fall sleep pretty welll lately so I assume she is tired. Never though about being undertired....hmmm.

I'll try covering her eyes and see if that helps. Can I also ask you when you stop swaddling? I swaddle Ava in a blanket but am thinking about the miracle blanket or sleep pockets (not sure what they are called) that everyone mentions. Is there one you would recommend?

[mokey_cat]

Well she may be undertired but I try and go by her cues, the yawns... and she always seem to start that after an hour or activity time. She does not fight me too much and seems to fall sleep pretty welll lately so I assume she is tired. Never though about being undertired....hmmm.

My LO shows sleepy signs (or what I thought were sleepy signs) early so I think my problem was UT naps.  I have now realised that she was bored and can easily last 2 hours awake (I was putting her down after 1.30/1.45!).  So since I increased A times, she is starting to take longer naps. 

I think its also developmental though - most babies will wake after 45 mins so they have to learn to get through it on their own.  What age is your LO?  DD started taking 45 minute naps at 10 weeks and I have only just started getting longer ones now and still get 45 minute ones most days!!  She is 18 weeks, so I have been holding her through jolts and using W2S for a long time!

I still swaddle for naps but not night time.  I think I will try and stop swaddling when DD can take consistently better naps and can get herself back to sleep when she wakes early (so it may well be a while yet  ).  We use the miracle blanket but thats the only one Ive tried.  Its great though and they cannot break out of it which was always a problem for us.

Laura
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[AvaMadeline]

Thanks Laura!

Ava is 17 weeks  I have found that she is UT so have extended her "A" time to about 90 min. That seems to be helping but we are still at about an hour and a bit but any but longer is great! Hmmmm, the miracle blanket huh... Well, we use the blanket and seem to be okay. Her arms are out but have always been. She loves to put her fingers/hands in her mouth now so I could not take that away from  her. She does use a soother but spits it out as soon as she is alseep. We use it to ger her to recognize that its sleep time and it works perfectly.

Can I ask you if you do the DF? How does your lo do during ther night? We have 2 wakes up usually but since trying the DF we are up three times (every 3 hours). I have posted under bottle feeding. Any comments would be appreciated as the nw kill me 

[mokey_cat]

Thats great news  .  Thats the same with us - when we extended A times, she napped better!!  Dont get me wrong, we still get 45 minute naps but I just give a shorter A time after it and then she will maybe do a longer nap next time.  If she is sleeping over an hour, then it sounds like she can get through the 45 minute mark on her own - thats brilliant!!  I probably wouldnt bother swaddling then because it helps them through the 45 min jolts which Ava can do anyway (love the name by the way!!). 

I actually just stopped the dreamfeed 2 nights ago.  It seemed to wake her up and she always sick and then would be unsettled for a bit after it so I tried just leaving it for a night and it made absolutely no difference to when she woke (we upped her oz during the day).  Some babies dont do well with the DF so if your LO is waking more often after the DF then I would just leave it out - but I think it takes maybe a week or so until it starts to make a difference.  How long have you been doing it?  It took us a few days for it to work (she just wouldnt open her mouth the first few times!) and we got our night feeds from 2 to just 1 about 4am after 2 weeks so I was really happy with that.  Then she started sleeping though (I say sleeping through but she has hardly went the whole night without waking!) without a feed when she was about 12 weeks.  We just offered her a dummy when she woke to see if she was truly hungry ( i suspected she wasnt) - she would usually fall asleep again and if not I would feed her but this got less and less until she didnt need a feed.

But if the DF isnt working for your LO and making NWs more frequent  - I would probably just leave it out.  Better to be up twice than every 3 hours  .  Or maybe give it a bit more time and if it doesnt get better, just go back to what you were doing.

Or it may be the 4 month growth spurt  .  TBH I have never noticed my LO going through one but that may be why she is up for feeds more often.

We actually have been really lucky with nights so she will sleep 7.30/8pm until 6 or 7am with maybe 2 or 3 wakings.  She can usually settle herself though so we just leave her unless she cries - usually she just babbles and sucks her thumb for 10/15 minutes.  But if we have had a bad napping day and she is OT, she will be up maybe 3 or 4 times and will need settled so I try really hard to get good naps!  It seems her days get earlier and earlier though so I need to do something about it.  Our clocks went forward an hour so she normally wakes at 6 which is now 7 so Im hoping that has helped  .

It sounds like you are doing a great job though!!  Hopefully you will get your night wakings sorted soon  .  Sorry Im not any more help with that.

Let me know how you get on.

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[JLMom]

Hope you don't mind me asking..
My LO, 14 weeks just cut her naps down from 40 minutes to 30 minutes.  We are putting her down around the 1 hr 25 minute mark.  She seems tired at that time.  I'm so confused as to whether or not she actually she is.  Reading your post makes me wonder if she is bored too.  Do you do long wind downs?  My LO falls asleep pretty quickly in her crib as well which makes me think she's ready for her nap.  She's waking up happy, although if i take her out of her crib and hold her for a bit, she will fall back asleep.
Good luck with your LO!  Sounds like you are making great progress!

[mokey_cat]

Hi JLMom

For us 30 minute naps usually means OT but it sounds like it may be UT for your LO.  As she is 14 weeks, she will probably be moving towards a 4 hour EASY soon so will be able to handle more A time.  We were totally getting my LOs tired signs wrong.  She would yawn and get fussy but after a walk about the house or a song on the bed she would be fine again (we had been putting her to bed then!!).  When she woke after 45 minutes and babbled, I knew it was an UT nap even though I usually could get her back to sleep but holding or cuddling her too.   The problem is that they are tired but just not tired enough to take a long nap on their own. 

So as we gradually increased A times, naps got better.  I think your A times seem quite good for her age but I would maybe try increasing really gradually to avoid OT (we tried 10 minutes every 3 days).  We are now at 2.15 hours a time which is high for her age but it works for us.

Do you use white noise?  The 1st day we turned it up louder than usually was the day we got our 1st long nap.  Maybe a coincidence but Im too scared to turn it off now!!

I do a really short wind down - just a few minutes.  We have 5 mins quiet time in her room 1st though to get her more relaxed but when I close the blinds and start swaddling she always gets a bit grumpy and want to be put in her cot ASAP so I just plonk her in, give her a kiss and leave her to it - it took ages to be able to do that though (a lot of shhpatting to start and dummy weaning etc!!)

HTH

Laura
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[AvaMadeline]

Good afternoon!

Well I am proud to say that Avs has been sleeping for THREE hours... yes I said 3!!!! Very strange and probably a little too long but I won't wake her up! I should have been sleeping too, lol. This is double her usual so not sure where this came from. Laura, as for your reply, we use the "Sleep Sheep" but it times out at 45min. I love it and would recommend it. And lately we have a short wind down. Once I swaddle her, give her her soother, turn on the Sleep Sheep, she is usually asleep within 5-10min. Sometimes she even goes down awake and falls alseep on her own, which I love! I am lucky but this too took work. The sh/pat worked at the beginning but not for long. I think it irritated her. So I would sometimes do just thr shhh but now I do neither. Just the swaddle, soother (which she spits out once asleep).

We dropped the DF last night and had a better night, thank God! She went down at 7pm, woke at 10:30, then 4am so that was a good stretch!

Lets see how we make out tonight.

PS. Still sleeping... 3 hours and 15 min. I have been in a few times to make sure she is okay and she just looks so peaceful sleeping but I will go in soon I think if she stays sleeping....

[mokey_cat]

WOW - that is a long nap    - well done Ava!!!!  How long did she end up sleeping?  How was her night after the long nap?  Sometimes I find that if my LO has a really long nap (so so rare that I will usually let her!), we get more NW's as a result.  But to be honest, its nice to have some time to do stuff during the day after months of short naps  .

Its really great that she can get through the 45 mins on her own so if you ever get short naps again, it will probably be a case of adjusting A times so thats brilliant!!!

Thats great news about dropping the DF.  It doesn't work for all babies so its good that you are back to normal  .  And that was only really 1 NW for a feed cos you would have done the DF around 10.30 anyway so it looks like she can go longer stretches during the night.  Once we stretched the feeds until 4 am, it was only a few weeks later that she could go the full night so hopefully it wont be too much longer before she sleeps allllllll night 

XXX

[AvaMadeline]

Good morning!

Yes, it was crazyyyy! She ended up sleeping for 3 hours and 40min.  Last night she went down at 7:30, woke at 12:30 and 5am so that was 5 hour stretches! Pretty good! I just hope we can get rid of the midnight feeding for starters. That would be amazing!

I love seeing all these cute baby photos! I tried to upload Ava's but it has a broken link. I'll try again. Maybe the file was too large!

[mokey_cat]

Maybe the file was too large!

Yep - I had to shrink mine down to get it on  .  Congrats on the longer stretches at night!!!  And I wish my LO would sleep as long during the day!!!  That was a mega nap  .

X

[AvaMadeline]

Okay, got it!!

Yes, that was great but can I duplicate it!! That is the question  No luck yet....

[mokey_cat]

Awwwww - what a lovely pic!!  Your LO is so cute  .