EASY needs some tweaking

[Dairy Queen]

Hi there,
Does my EASY need tweaking?  DD is 5 ½ months old.  She used to wake up at 7, feed every 4 hours, and her naps were 2hr, 2hr and 45 min.  The naps are now getting a little shorter and the night has moved from 12 to 11 hours within the last few days.  Here is what our routine looked like today:
6:00 wake; she just coos and plays until I pick her up at around 6:30.
6:30 feed
8:00 sleep; she goes down really easily for her first nap.
9:30 wake
10:30 feed
11:30 sleep [but sometimes, it’ll be closer to 12:00 before she is actually asleep.  Not as easy to put her down as nap 1, but still OK]
1:00 wake
2:30 feed [but she is really tired and tends to fall asleep on the breast since it’s been about 90 minutes of A time already… and I keep having to wake her up to ensure she gets a good feed]
4:00 Catnap for 45 minutes.  It’s sometimes hard to put her down… she’ll cry and with shush-pat, we get her to sleep for 30-45 min.  I try to put her down earlier, but haven’t been very successful.  She’ll just cry and cry.
6:00 bath and feed.
7:00 sleep.  (I try to out her down earlier, but she’s generally asleep only by 7)

For the last few days, she has been getting up around 8pm, and it takes us about 15-20 minutes to put her back down.  Then, around 9:30pm, I wake her for her DF.  She then sleeps until around 6am.

Any thoughts?  Overall, I am happy with our routine, but a little concerned with the fact that it’s getting a little hard to actually put her down and her general mood is not as good as it used to be.  Is it time to eliminate the catnap? What should I be changing?

Thanks!
Sherry

[aimeeL]

Hi!  It does look like from your EASY that maybe your LO is ready for a bit more A time?  I don't know if she's ready to cut down the CN yet... but I'm wondering if some more A time will help overall?  Has your routine ever had the S going all the way to the end of the "cycle"?  Or have you always fed about 1 hr after waking?  Or has that just happened recently due to the shorter naps?

Anyways - so yes, she might be trying to make up some A time by waking up earlier!!... so maybe try stretching out that 1st A time just a tad?  And seeing if that produces longer naps?  I know that when my LO's A time needed to be longer, her naps started gradually getting shorter and shorter until they were just 1 hr 15-20 min ea!  And all of a sudden, DH and I were looking at each other going, "What happened???" 

Keep us posted. 

[Dairy Queen]

Thanks.  Sometimes, she'll sleep for a full 2hrs, which makes it a full 4hr cycle, and I end up feeding her right when she wakes up, but it's becoming more and more rare...
Also, when she wakes at 6am [when the target is 7am], should I feed her right away, or wait until 7?  She is usually in a great mood, so I could stretch it out if I wanted, but the probelm is that the cycle kind of chages since she gets sleepy around 8-8:15 rather than 9am.
What is the typical A time for a 5 1/2 month old?
Thanks!
Sherry

[aimeeL]

Hmmm.. that's a toughie.. I've read on some threads before that you should aim for the wakeup time that YOU want, as opposed to just going along with your LO's wakeup so as not to reinforce the EW...  So I think I would feed at 7 a.m.  My LO has been doing some EWs on and off the last few weeks, and I sometimes try to go in and APOP to extend the sleep a bit.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  But I totally understand how that throws off the cycle.  Another thing I've heard others do is stretch that first A time as LONG as possible - again, so as not to reinforce that EW... so they come to realize that they can't depend on that first nap to make up on their lack of nighttime sleep.  I've found that I can't usually push L for the entire normal A time, but I can come somewhere in between without her getting too OT..  I also think that I might try feeding her right after waking up from the 1st nap, so you can more or less get back on track with your Es being right after your S - iykwim?  That way, by the end of the day, you don't have her having the majority of A time before the E - and therefore not nearly as sleepy??

Here's a site for typical A times...
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64158.msg476652#msg476652

My LO was a little on the short side of A time for quite some time, barely making it to 2 hrs at 5 mo, I think... but here we are 2 mo later, and she's almost at 3 hr now.

HTH!

[Dairy Queen]

Hi there,
Thanks for the great advice.
DD went to sleep at 7 :40pm last night and woke at 5 :20am.  She wasn’t crying but she did make lots of noises for about twenty minutes, and then started to cry.  I went in, fed her in the dark and then put her right back down.  She slept until 7:20am and then I fed her again so as the “start the day off right” I guess, although she certainly did not drink as much as she normally would.  Should I have fed her?
Anyhow, she went back down at 9:30am [total morning A time = 2hr 10min], and I’m crossing my fingers to see whether she can stretch the nap to 2hr ;-)
If the ideal sleep time is between 7- 7:30pm for us, when would the ideal catnap have to take place? 5?  Also, do I wake her if she goes over 30min?
Thanks!
Sherry

[aimeeL]

Whew - it's been awhile with the BW site down... how have things been going?

I tried asking around for a general rule of thumb as well as far as the CN goes - but there doesn't seem to be any definite answers because so much depends on your LO, how long the CN is, how much sleep they've gotten that day, etc.. But yes, when we still had a CN and were aiming for that bt, I tried to do the CN at 5-ish - no later than 5:30 p.m.  I sometimes would let her go up to 45-50 min if it'd been a bad napping day... I read somewhere that you should wake either before or after 45 min so as not to let them get in the habit of sleeping for just a 45 min cycle...

With that situation you mentioned - about waking at 5:20 and then feeding shortly thereafter, I think you did the right thing.  At least that's probably what I would've done... they don't eat as much then at the start of the day, but I just go with that.  If she had woken up later, say 6-ish or 6:30-ish, I would've tried to hold off until the am feed... but that early, I think that's fine...

HTH!

[jopan78]

my DD is 6months old. She was cutting her nap to 45min for the past week. I extended her awake time and managed to get her to nap at least 1hr 15min or more. Hope it works for you too.