If she can sleep at night why not during the day?

[Miracle Baby]

ok - so this developemental stage where they start waking at the 45min mark because of difficulty transitioning between sleep phases etc etc etc... if this is true then why can they sleep ok at night.  My AG is 16weeks and wakes once a night (usually) but freqently wakes at the 25min mark of if lucky the 45min mark during the day - once in a blue moon she will do the full 1.5hr nap.  why is this?!  It's killing me.  She was fine in the day till about 11 weeks (about when she got the hip-spica on and was in hospital for reflux).  Now she takes ages to go to sleep, wakes at the 25min mark and then I do the "dummy run" till it's actually TIME for her to get up and have her next feed - sometimes for an hour!

[*Jo*]

Hey You!!

so the nights are going good?? thats fantastic, can you put your routine up at the moment so we can have a gander at it?

also this is the time where they are sorting out their day sleep, we had ALOT of 45min naps at this age, yet he was STTN 12 hours straight, then at around 5-6 months his day sleep started to settle down at bit

[lauri]

Sorry to high-jack but am in the same situation: so we should just remain consequent and keep on going even after the 45-minute mark? I always wonder how babies announce they are no longer tired at this age, as crying is what they do.

[Miracle Baby]

 hi you - you too :-) hee hee

will put routine up in next couple of days currently 11pm after an awful evening and stuff-all volume for AG today 505mls again instead of 645 (which she's managed ONCE) - am wasted and need to go find my DH for cuddles - he's probably the smart one in BED! :-)

high-jack all you want love :-)

but yeah a! - when you've done everything you can to get them to go back to sleep and they categorically will NOT!  What do you do - get them up and play with them??  feed them?

[*Jo*]

well for me i lived in DS room for awhile pretty much, i shh/patted to the very end, i hardly ever got him up (perhaps i was a bit anal in that regards) Im not sure if hes a better sleeper now because of that (used shh/pat the other day for the first time in 4 months to extend a nap) or whether it was just developmental. Its up to you wether you want to push it hard with patting or not but you can have a play with it too, sometiems i did get him up for 20mins and then take him back to his room, do wind down again and try again, that hardly ever worked but it did once or twice, every baby is different and its a case of working out what works (I know that doesnt help much)

Like i said, i was anal, i stuck to the feeding times alot but every now and then i would feed half an hour earlier in the hope he would go back to sleep afterwards due to having a full tummy (Sarah i also counted mls every day as Caleb was also dropping down low on feeding wiht his reflux and MPI) not very often would it extend a nap either and then i was left with a long time to the next feed but if he did sleep i would let him catch up and have a longer nap than usual.

I await your routine

[snoopz]

Do you have any tips on ssshh/pat while they're still in the cot? I've tried to do it with my son but he looks totally uncomfortable. When I pick him up to ssssh/pat his eyes start closing nearly immediately but in the cot he just goes red in the face from being on his side and stares up at me.

[*Jo*]

i think it depends on your LO, we didnt turn Caleb on his side, instead we left him on his back and patted the mattress as though it was his back, firmly at first then waiting for him to fall asleep and gradually getting lighter and lighter. also i didnt do the sshh as much, instead i used white noise.

[Miracle Baby]

ok - SO, the routine... well every day is different but the hospital want us on a 3hr feeding cycle which we stick to for the most part but ocassionaly if she's sleeping FOR ONCE it will be 3.15/3.20

The day starts between 7 and 7'45 (I shouldn't let it go so past 7.30 but when she's still asleep at that time of morning it's so very hard to force myself out of bed!!!! lol)  For the most part either she wakes around 7am.  if she wakes earlier I shh-pat + dummy and try and get her to go back to sleep.  I'm not really persistent with it coz I so wasted that I only do it for a couple of mins so it sometimes takes 2 or 3 attempts - where as if I had the energy to stick at it for 10mins it would probably only take 1 attempt... ahhh... short term pain for long term gain?  I'm not there yet - taking the easy road...

 ANYWAY!

So if I just put my feed times up and say feeds take 10-15mins and then it's A until S about an hour 20 later.  Though she OFTEN shows tired signs (yawns) at the 45 or even 30 min mark!!!! I'm figuring her yawns after a feed are just waking up yawns.  does that work?  It's just I tried writing my day down in EASY once and it took FOUR PAGES - I don't think you want to read through all that!!! I write enough as it is! LOL!

Actually no - that won't work will it? cos you need to see where her short naps are happening.... hmmm.... can you wait a few days and I will try and track nap length as well as feed ammounts/times
:-)

Today - please God don't let me jinx her! - we had a good am nap!! and she's currently most of the way through her next one! :-) (twenty mins to go!!) :-)  I can NOT believe it! 

conversly nights have not been great (related to low feed volume during day I think) and she's been waking around an hour or and hour and half earlier than she usually does.  When she wakes I jump immedeatly to her room and sshh/touch and give her the dummy so she settles then go and make her bottle.  the last two nights she's gone back to sleep and we've let her coz it was really too early anyway and she's slept for another hour or so then woken REALLY grumpy and had loud screaming feeds - not fun for poor DH he force fed her two nights ago, last night I suggested he stand and rock her as he fed her coz I watched him do that another time (wouldn't have thought of it myself) and it seemed to work then.  It did work again this time too.  She didn't have a good feed but it wasn't awful in the end either.  She is also waking earlier than 7am when she has a crapy night (like 6/6.30) so I have to do what I described above.

ahhh..... I should eat lunch... I forget to eat... stupid I know! It's not like I'm not hungry!!!

Apologies for the thesis!!!!! (ocupational hazard!!! Classics and English teacher! LOL)

I talk a LOT! (words is my dominant love language!) and find it REALLY hard to stay on topic!!! ha ha ha ha!  Can you tell?!!! :-) :-) :-)

[~Sara~]

Hi ladies

Here's an interesting thread comparing day and night sleep:
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64515.0

[*Jo*]

ok, so when she took a decent nap this morning what did you do? what was it that made this nap any different from the others? can you recreate that again??

let me know how the next nap went, im praying it was a good one for you!

[Miracle Baby]

we had two REALLY good naps today and one where she woke at the 45min mark and went back to sleep after a couple of re-insertions with the dummy and shhhing.  45min cat-nao in evening (rather than 20mins).

Thinking hard I DO think stimulation levels played a part... but the thing is she LOVES beings stimulated and is such a responsive wee button I feel like I'm doing her a dis-service by not interacting with her as much. but then again a well rested baby is a happy, growing baby... we also had better feeds today.

  Evening was the usual disaster - only 30mls with losec, refused any more and took ages to settle to sleep for the night.

[*Jo*]

well thats awesome about the naps and feeds!!!
with the losec do you get it flavoured? we get it in bubblegum or grape flavour and he takes it so much better.

also theres nothing wrong with stimulating her at the beginning of her A time, just make sure the last 45mins or so are getting more and more chilled out so shes not hyped up at the end of it

[Miracle Baby]

ugh!!! Not even worth trying to write down today's routine!!!

Had to take daddy to work in case he couldn't get time off for appoointment. AG didn't sleep at all that cycle.  then turned out daddy could get time off so fed her at 10pm then had to get NC done and her into capsule before she was ready - GRUMPY baby. 

Appointment went well though.  Pead was able to explain to DH what I couldn't and he's more relaxed now (which means I will be too!!!!! whew!).  but she didn't sleep that cycle either cept for a weeny nap so was basically up 5 - 6 hours straight!  uhg! 

feeds have been crap (no surprises there) but she had a big long nap this arvo (two 45min blocks though, I think, I was half asleep myself, might have been 25mins and and hour ten or something) which was good.

will see what evening holds...

45mins! yieks.

Ok so typical awake cycle goes
E - 10mins
A - play - 30-40mins - Hanging in bouncinette - looking at dangly toys - can't touch them though, stupid hip spica prevents her getting level with toy bar, so sometimes I give her a rattle to hold which she's pretty good at now though she hits herself in the face with it sometimes.  Also sometimes I prop her up with a blanket under her back so she can lie on the floor, she does a fair bit of rolling from side to side when we do that.  We do lots of talking - she tells AMAZING stories! lol!  a real chatter box and smiler, laugh-er.  Sometimes lying down included BBT.  Yestday I figured a way of propping her up on a cushion so she could do "tummy-time".
   - 45/60min mark (from eyes open) starts showing tired signs (yawning, rubbing eyes (has just started doing this SO cute!) and getting grizzly
    - NC (or finish this if I've already taken it off earlier), sit with "Mo" the seahorse who plays wee lulabies, anywhere from 30sec to 5mins, we do "pray to Jesus" which really only takes a few seconds to a minute. Swaddle.  Walk and sshhh for length of one Moyra Brenan track then flick CD to radio static and put her down
   
So she is really only eyes open to in bed for an hour 10-20 tops  sometimes only an hour if she's getting really grizzly at being kept up.

There's more useful things I should tell you but AG isn't settling to evening catnap so I better go tend to her... :-)

[*Jo*]

oh i hate to be the one to tell you this BUT.....

at 4 months old her A time should be 1 hour 45 mins to 2 hours, i know this isnt ideal as she is OT but it could explain the 45 min naps?

let me know how your evening goes (By the way you can turn that white noise up pretty loud if you need to!)

[MummyToBen]

Hiya,

I saw your thread on the reflux and colic board saying that your lo's reflux pain is still not under control, and that she is having relapses

You might find that quality/length of time of your lo's naps are MUCH more to do with the amount of pain she is in rather than A times etc.  Of course, routine helps as much as you can put it in place (an OT reflux baby is not a happy baby  ), BUT, until her pain is sorted out you may be better off just recognising the need for accidental parenting sometimes, and just doing whatever you need to do to get her to sleep as well as possible under the circumstances.  I think otherwise you have the stress of trying to get your routine under control as well as the stress caused by having a baby in pain iyswim. 

I wouldn't worry too much either about creating bad habits, in my experience as soon as B's pain was sorted out, he pretty much turned into a self-soothing, good sleeper immediately  , so all the months of me worrying and fighting against using APOP were pointless and only added to my stress!!  So it's just doing what you have to do to get through this time....

Sorry, if this has already been said - just wanted to encourage you really that you just need to ride this wave, and probably give yourself some slack in terms of your routine etc, while you are sorting out her meds and getting her pain free. 

Hugs,
Claire x

Ps, I sometimes gave B calpol (paracetamol) a little while before naps if his pain was bad - as i figured that I would do that if he was in bad teething pain and so it was right to do it for his reflux pain (which was MUCH worse than teething!!) x