HELP! desperately losing naps!!!

[nursemeg01]

Hi ladies,

Thanks for YOUR ADVICE! Today I did a REALLY long WD, sat in the nursery for about 15 minutes singing before I started my true WD process. Then I did W2S at the 35 min mark. needless to say IT WORKED!!! She slept for 2 hours. I wish I could try it again for the afternoon nap but I have a meeting and so she'll have to nap in her car. Not something I usually do at all but my sitter is out of town. Hopefully it won't mess us up too bad. I'm not sure which worked (maybe both) but I'll try them both again with every nap and maybe we can get over this hump. We'll see...

[inoella]

Yeah!!!
don't worry about the car nap - she might not know what to do with herself with 2 long naps!!! lol!
good luck tomorrow on the a.m. nap too...

[nursemeg01]

Ha! She ended up taking two naps in the car seat. Both 45 min. She seems so happy right now, will try for our same bedtime and then try try again tomorrow! Thanks again!

[inoella]

hope it goes well -
i may be taking a break from BW for a while... just got a post in reply to my "props" question suggesting it was cruel to nurse to sleep and shh/pat... hmm... not really what i was doing but now i'm second guessing everything... i think i'll just re-read the book and try to listen to my instincts for a while!
good luck to you!

[nursemeg01]

Cruel to shh/pat? I don't get it? I agree with trust your instincts. We had a rough night here--put down for bed at 6:30 but wouldn't fall asleep until 8. ugh. She had more sleep today than the past few days so not sure why this was such a hassle.

I can tell you that babies distinguish between naps and night sleep, so if you do a routine differently for night sleep than naps, they can tell and that's fine for them. So if you want to nurse to sleep---go for it. Tracy in the BW says you can do anything you want just be sure to 'do as you mean to go on'---aka plan to stick with it.

hope this helps and happy 5 month B day on Friday!

[Jiinx]

inoella..just wanted to say that it's not 'cruel' to breastfeed to sleep. Maybe she misquoted Tracy?

Yes, breastfeeding to sleep can be a prop as the baby will enjoy going to sleep with a full tummy and enjoy becoming drowsy and calm before sleeping..but if you do a small A after the feed, then the association of breast to sleep will not be there.

*hugs* You both are doing a wonderful job.

[nursemeg01]

I agree. Especially when they are OT--it seems like that's when she'll root for me even though it seems unlikely she's not hungry--in this case what I've done is feed her and then the minute she starts to suckle rather than actually feed, I remove her, change her diaper and then start my WD. IT's a really quick A but hopefully it's not teaching her to fall asleep with only me. I am worried about this though myself since at night basically I feed and put back to bed. I'm hoping that she truly is hungry at night and I'm not creating a habit---

Does she fall asleep independently during times where you don't nurse her right before sleep?

[Jiinx]

nursemeg...I can usually tell that my daughter isn't hungry if I latch her on and she sucks rather weakly. She just kinda hangs out there and doesn't change her suck throughout the feed.

If she's genuinely hungry, then her suck is fast and quick ..like we are when we're starving, yk? We kind of just stuff our mouth and try to get it quickly into our stomachs!

Does that help? I'm sorry I can't provide anything more concrete for you.

I really don't think you should worry about the night feed. It's only 1 My baby was feeding once in the night and she was 7 months. I knew she could sleep through the night bc she's been doing it since 2 and half months. Once they know how to do it, they don't usually 'forget'. It's a developmental thing, I believe. I genuinely know that when my baby wakes at night, there's something up. If it's not cold, pain, hot..then I let her feed for just a couple of minutes and then she falls right back to sleep. Sometimes that's a good clue..if they just fall right back to sleep after a feed

[inoella]

hi ladies! prob. just some misunderstanding going on with that post - we'll move on. 

it's tough when naps are messed up cuz then we end up feeding right before nap time... but i think the best indication that shh/pat has taught independent sleep is for the EW (4:30-5)- i treat it as a NW and just nurse her and put her back down - sometimes she's totally asleep, sometimes not but 99% of the time she settles herself back to sleep w/in 5 min. sooooo great!!!!

ofcourse not yesterday! just when i thot she was out dh showered and that must have woken her up again so instead of getting up from night sleep at 7:30 she was waking up from her first nap! all day was a bit off - i'd love to get something close to the 4 hour schedule so i could predict nap times - think we'll ever get there, nursemeg? 

good luck with naps today!

[nursemeg01]

Not today for me at least. I tried W2S at the 35 min mark. She moved and I laid on the floor for about 5 minutes until she was still then I left. She woke up 10 minutes later. Has been impossible to get down since. I guess we're in for another OT day!

[inoella]

awww... so sorry... how about just patting her back after the W2S / kinda like a combination of W2S and HTTJ  - except not  sometimes I just pat her back from minute 35-50 just to get her through all the potential wake up times... sometimes works...

I have a new problem with DD's new found trick of rolling over. Now as soon as she wakes up she rolls over! so i can't really let her fuss and see if she'll resettle cuz she gets frustrated on her tummy and hasn't figured out how to roll back...

Yesterday was our first lovely day - felt like spring - so we went for a walk. She hasn't fallen asleep in her stroller for weeks so I was just trying to extend her A time and wouldn't you know, she fell asleep before we got back - so then I walked around for another 40 min. - That's one way to get in some exercise I guess!  but then ofcourse wouldn't take another late afternoon CN so bedtime was l-o-n-g...

[nursemeg01]

I am stuck in a rut. I can only get 2 naps out of my DD. If I'm lucky one of them will be 2 hours and the other is 45 minutes. Sometimes they are both 45 minutes as you know...the problem now is that I am putting her to sleep for bedtime WAY early because of this. She's going to bed at 5:30 or 6. She'll have a NW around 3 and then she'll wake up again an hour later ready to play. So far I've been able to get her back to sleep but it takes an hour of trying! Is this because she is getting too much night sleep? Here's today:

Asleep 6:15
Wake 4 Am feed back to bed.
Wake 5 AM---finally got her back to sleep 5:45
Wake 7:30
E/A: 7:30-9:30
S: 9:30-11:15
E/A: 11:15-1:30
S: 1:30-2:15
tried to extend nap, gave up fed at 3
E/A: 3-5
E: 5:30 solids
bath bottle book, sleep by 6:00

[inoella]

maybe Daylight Savings Time will help? 
did she eat much at the 4 am feeding? maybe she just snacked and woke up hungry again?
would she take a CN at 5? or is that a no go too?

I have no other ideas cuz I'm right there with you - took a 2 hr. nap in the a.m. (that's a first!) and then 30 min.! And then way too long A time before finally crashing at 7 p.m. sigh...

hope someone can help...

[nursemeg01]

Yeah I'm excited for daylight savings time...maybe this will at least fix the early bedtime so that's she doesn't end up going to bed at 4 pm! I read somewhere that they drop the CN at 6 months...could they just be early?

I'm really going to try to extend my first A time of the day. I read that sometimes that can help them as they wake up early and then confuse the first nap with an extension of night sleep. I just don't want to end up with an OT baby!!!

does your EASY look like mine? Weird that they both won't CN.

[Jiinx]

my lo was fighting the catnap at 5 months....even now it's such a battle to get her to take decent naps