Is this the right amount for a 3.5 month old?

[seesawbaby]

My lo has been taking 1.5 - 2hour naps for the last couple of weeks.  Some days she will take a 2 hour nap even after being awake for only 1 hour 10mins, especially if it is not a nice day outside.  She usually can only stay awake 1hr25-30mins.  I have tried extending and shortening awake times to see if she will have a consistent nap time but she is very unpredictable.  Our typical EASY looks like this:
Wakes 8:30am
E 8:45
S 10:00-11:45
E 12
S 1:30-3:30
E 3:45
S 5:00 -6:00
E 6:00
Bath 7:45
E 8:00
S 8:30ish - 5am
E 5am right back to sleep.

Is this sleeping pattern normal??  Is she getting enough or too much sleep during the day or at night.  She wakes up a couple times for her paci but never fully wakes to eat until 5.  Sometimes she will give me a two hour nap in the morning and a shorter one in the early afternoon but it all evens outs roughly 4.5 hours of daytime sleep and 8hours then 3hours of night sleep.

[mokey_cat]

Hi there.  I would say your routine looks great!!  It would be a good routine for my LO at that age too (but we hardly ever got it  ).  If you look at typical amounts of A time, your LO is spot on!!
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64158.msg476652#msg476652

4.5 hours is really good for day time sleep and 11 hours is good at night.  I try and aim for 11.5 to 12 hour nights so 7.30am wake up  so in bed by 7.30/8pm.  So the only thing I could suggest would be to keep the 5pm nap as a catnap, so 40-45 mins just to get through the bath and feed, and bring bedtime forward a bit to maybe 8pm.  I am sure I read somewhere that a babies 'natural' bedtime is between 6.30-8pm.  But to be honest, if this routine is working for you and your LO, I don't know if I would change it!!  If you begin to get early wakings or night wakings (other than to feed) then it may be a sign that your LO needs more A time so if that happens, you can increase A time by 10 mins or so to help.

But it sounds like you are doing a fab job 

Laura
X

[becky1969]

Looks good to me! We expect 4-5 hours daytime, 10-12 nighttime at this age.  You probably won't see a consistent routine for awhile longer.  And I'm not sure you'll have SUPER predictable naps until she's about 9 months old, LOL!  With BW we go by their A time and their sleepy cues, so while every day has an identical rhythm (e-a-s), it will happen at different times by the clock.

One way to make it go a little more consistently is to wake baby at the same time every day.  BW usually suggests starting your day around 7:30.  that's so your day ends at 7:30 and you and DH get nice quality time at the end of the day but not too late at night.  I personally never did that, just followed by son's natural waking patterns.  It meant that I couldn't predict day to day what time on the clock his nap would happen, but by around 6 months we got in a really good groove so that I knew within 30 minutes or so when naps would happen.

The only thing I would say is that your bedtime is too late.  All your other A times are AWESOME! But you let that last one go 2.5 hours, which I actually think is causing your 5 am waking.  I think if you put her down within her window you will see her skip that 5 am feed.  I think if it were me I'd experiment for 3 days by making sure bedtime is no later than 1.5 hours after she wakes from cat nap, so around 7:30.  That 5 am waking is probably an OT waking, and even though she eats (she's still little, so will be pretty hungry by morning!) I have a feeling she'll sleep right thru that 5 am mark if her bedtime is moved forward a bit. 

The way to do that? Skip all the fancy before bed stuff like baths etc.  At this age I gave my son a bath between nap #2 and cat nap so that our bedtime routine was VERY simple and consisted mostly of tanking him up with food and hanging out with mama/dada.  They don't get dirty at this age, LOL, so a bath isn't absolutely necessary -- esp. as they she isn't on solids yet (oh boy do solids bring on a whole new kind of mess!)  Anyway, simply nighttime routine and put her to bed within her sleep window and I think 5 am waking will disappear.

Otherwise? you are doing FANTASTIC! What a great routine she's on! Those long naps are fantastic.  Congrats!

[seesawbaby]

Thank you for all the advice.  Last night she had a nap from 4:30-6:15p.m. and I was so worried she would not want to go to bed. But she was showing me she was tired about 7:30 so I started bath and bed/ bottle routine early and she was asleep by 8:10.    She didn't wake up until 5:30 so I fed her then.  Sometimes it worries me to move her bedtime up because she usually has a feed between 5:30/6:30 and if I move bedtime up than it isn't a full two hours from her last feed and I worry she won't eat enough.  I have tried to feed her more at the supper bottle but she can only take 5oz max or she spits up alot.  She is on zantac twice a day and that definately helps.  She always pukes in the bathtub no matter when her last feed was.  Any tips on the cluster feeding to help sleep through the night would be helpful?

[mokey_cat]

Do you do a dreamfeed at all?  We introduced an extra feed at 10.30 or 11pm when DD was 6 weeks and it helped a lot to cut out the night feeds!!  So we did this rather than cluster feed.  My LO also has reflux so we really needed to sit her upright and wind her well for about 15 mins after but she very rarely woke for it.  It is very cute watching them drink milk in their sleep!!

X

[seesawbaby]

I did the dreamfeed once and lo woke up with horrible gas in the night so I never tried it again.

[mokey_cat]

Our LO was pretty gassy too so each night she would wake with gas maybe 1 hour after the DF so we would have to wind her but she would settle easily afterwards.  It was the same if we fed during the night as well so I hated night feeds!! 

We stopped DF at 4.5 months and she is fine without it now so I am glad we did it but I understand your concerns.  Was it a while back you tried it?  Maybe her system is more mature now and can burp a bit easier?  DD has a lot easier time with wind now compared to when she was younger. Just an idea  .

Just thinking, when DD was 3.5 months, she would feed at about 5-5.30 but I would keep this feed smaller than normal so that she would take her full feed before bed.  It was just enough to keep her from screaming from hunger through the bath lol.

X

[seesawbaby]

So after tweaking bedtime and moving it up for routine to start at 7:30.  She is still going to sleep between 8:15 and 9.  It seems like whatever I do in the day still doesn't make her fall asleep at any different time.  Her naps are now going really wacky because she has just learnt to roll.  She is swaddled and on a sleep positioner but she will do her "sit ups" in bed during her sleep transition and causes her to be very restless.  She lifts her head and her legs up at the same time while on her back.is this a normal developemental thing?  I also only have her a time as 1hr 20 minutes in the am, then 1.5hrs for the rest of the day.  The end of the day a is still 2 hours as she will not settle and shut her eyes until then.  The last three days she has been doing only 3 hours of daytime sleep and nighttime is being affected with many nw every hour until 1:00 am where she does go a longer stretch.  help?

[mokey_cat]

Im really sorry to hear you are having a bad time  .  I know that these kinds of milestones mess up sleep!!  Rolling, sitting, walking etc.  They want to practice when they are meant to be sleeping!!  Try to give your LO as much time as possible practicing her new skills during her play time so she does not need so much practice at sleeping times  .

I am pretty sure that waking so soon after bedtime is due to OT but I'm not very sure how to fix it as she seems able to handle the 2 hours A time before bed.  Have you tried posting your routine on NW's board as you will get great help over there!!  It could be just the rolling that is causing the sleep disruption  .

Hope tonight is better for you 

X

[becky1969]

You might look at overstimulation as a cause for trouble sleeping at the end of the day.  Touchies and spirited LOs especially have trouble winding down at the end of the day 'cuz SO much has happened.  For my guy, I found that I just couldn't bathe him between cat nap and bedtime or he'd get wound up and wouldn't go to sleep.  I also found that we couldn't do any light/sound toys during that period of time either for the same reason.  We ended up using the period between cat nap and bedtime to just hang out in the swing while mommy and daddy had dinner, or even just sit on the couch while mommy watched TV.  he just needed things to be ultra calm, without too much extra stimulation involved.

Also, think about your wind down : is it different than nap wind downs? It should be slightly different to cue a longer sleep period is coming.  It should also not be too stimulating either, but only calming.

As for naps going wacky it could be a combo of those mobility milestones as well as a developmental change in sleep that occurs around 12 weeks.  Their REM/non-REM sleep pattern changes at that age so that they rouse somewhere between 30-45 min and don't realize they are supposed to go back to sleep.  What we usually do to help them get over this rousing period is to use a method called "Holding Thru the Jolts" (HTTJ).  Here's a FAQ that explains how to do it (page down a couple of Qs to find it).

http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=85499.0

 Why don't you read thru that and then I can coach you trying it?  I also have a feeling she's ready to stretch A time a bit.  Even 1.5 hours may be a bit short for her, hence the rousing.

[seesawbaby]

Well last night after much work my lo went to sleep around 8:30..she babbled herself to sleep.  She didn't wake up once for the soother. I heard a noise so went in at 2am and she was awake and making razzberries with the soother still in her mouth and must of put herself back to sleep because I didn't hear from her until 5:45 for her bottle.  There were only two different things that happened in the day.  first, she was at the babysitter's and did not have a nap all morning.  Then fell asleep as I fed her at noon, I let her nap on me for 45 minutes then we left the sitters, I had so errands to run, then put her back to bed at 2 and she slept til 3:30.  so we only made up for a short nap she missed in the morning.  She napped again from 5-6:15.We went for a walk in the evening..daddy was playing ball, then wind down at 7:30 with bath bottle and to bed.  Second thing is that the tv was not on at all during the day at home.  Normally we have the tv on but try not to let her watch it as I know she will stare for hours at it and not play.  I guess maybe the tv overstimulates her more than just lots of playing.  So glad she isn't waking every hour at night, and hopefully her naps will straighten out today back to normal. 

[mokey_cat]

WOW thats great news honey!!!  I hope it continues for you 

We cannot have the TV on either as it OS DD near bedtime so we just have everything nice and quiet!!

X

[seesawbaby]

Now that we are officially 4 months old this week things have taken a change for the worse.  I thought maybe her bladder infection was back or her reflux meds needed to be upped because we are not having good naps or night times.  She is now doing one 2 hour nap, one 1hour nap, and sometimes another 1 hour nap.  She is waking earlier and does not want to go down for her last nap ever now.  The last three nights she has had A time of 3-4 hours because she does not want to sleep no matter what I do (shh pat, swaddle, let me rock her to sleep, etc)  Night wakings are every 1.5 hours until feeding time of 5 am then she does settle until 8.  I know the NW, EW are because she is over tired but I can't seem to get her to sleep at the end of the day to hold her over until bedtime, even putting her to bed early does not work.  AAAHHHH!!

[becky1969]

Post routine and we'll take a look!