waking 20 mins into sleep cycle

[qjane983]

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on my current situation...

Victoria (9 months) has started waking up 20 minutes into a sleep cycle, for naps as well as when I put her down at night and it takes me up to an hour to resettle, she does still sleep through the night once I finally resettle her. She is still breastfed at least 4 times a day and is well established on solids. When she wakes up she sounds quite distressed so I go to her and she is still sort of half asleep but crying really loud and sounds scared so I always go in. She is teething at the moment and the top two teeth are just poking through the skin, I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it so I have been giving her a dose of pain relief before bed just to cover all my bases. We got rid of the dummy 4 weeks ago and also the swaddle about 2-3 months ago.

Her EASY is as follows, sometimes she may have an extra BF at 9pm if she wakes.

7am wake up and BF                     2.30pm - wake up and BF
8am - solids                                 5pm - solids then bath
9.30 - sleep                                 6pm - BF and sleep  
10.30 - wake and BF
1200 - solids
1.00 - sleep

[deckchariot]

I'm wondering if she needs a bit more  A time.  Most bubs her age are doing between 3-4 hrs of A time, and it looks like she is well below that.  I might try extending her A times - just by 15 min every 3-5 days.  Keep in mind, it can take a whole week for a routine tweak to show up in a sleeping change.  It's possible she's just not ready to sleep, so she dozes, but never gets into deep sleep, so she wakes quickly.

Teething can also mess sleeping up terribly.  We found that giving pain meds 30 min before sleep times was the most effective, so you could give that a try as well.

hth
michelle

[qjane983]

If she stays awake longer before a nap would that mean she gets less breastfeeds throughout the day? or would I just shift her bedtime to 7pm?

[deckchariot]

I'd shift her bedtime - most bubs can do a 12 hr day/night, and you should still be able to keep the bfs the same then.

[qjane983]

well she's still doing it... waking up after 20 minutes. I am keeping her awake around 3 hours at a time now and she is definatly tired. Should I push her A time out even more? Now when she wakes she crys for a few minutes and then just talks to herself in the cot until I finally get her up after around an hour. The problem is that she is really grumpy during the day becasue she's not sleeping although she is still sleeping really well at night. Any other ideas?

[mumma2cubs]

I agree - they are really short A times for a 9 month old....I'd be aiming closer to the 4 hour mark....

The way I'd do it is push them out 5 - 10 minutes every 3 or so days until you hit the magic number (longer naps will result when you get the right time) then leave it there until you get shorter naps again.

You won't lose any breastfeeds - you can feed upon wake up and just before nap routine if you want to - just not to sleep.

[qjane983]

ok well she was up for three hours 15 minutes this morning and is now having a nice long sleep... she woke up after 40mins but has put her self back to sleep after a few minutes and is still asleep now after 1.5 hours. Here's hoping I've cracked it.

[deckchariot]

YAY!!  Keep in mind that you may need to keep extending those A times.  here's  a helpful chart so you can see where you are in terms of the "average" A time for her age:  http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64158.0