Need advice about babies dropping naps

[lizzymac99]

Well that first nap of the day may have been considered a continuation of her night sleep so I am not sure?  She had awoken at 5:40am (after a really early BT the night before of 6:30pm because of how naps fell that day) so I treated it like a night waking and went in and changed her bum and fed her in the dark while swaddled... she was awake for about 50 minutes in total and then drifted off and fell asleep by 6:30 am.  Stayed asleep until right before 8 am! 

This morning she woke up to eat at 4:40 am and I put her right back to bed by 5:15 am and she slept until 7:45!  I have just put her down for a nap now again at 9:05 am and she fell asleep in there within a few minutes.  She had given me a yawn or 2 so that's why I chose to put her down then.  It looks like she is starting to be able to handle about 1.5 hours of A time now but in the morning sometimes a little bit shorter.  I will update later with how the day goes... I am feeling hopeful with a new plan in place and the fact that she is eating all at once now and I can get some things done while she sits in her chair or plays on her mat... finally some "Y" time for me!!  Once she starts to nap a bit longer I can start moving towards a 4 hour easy routine and dropping down to hopefully 3 naps a day and then 2 later.  The video monitor has been SO helpful for me

[lizzymac99]

One quick question about short naps and A times... what if her whole day is short naps?  Do I do short A times for her all day then?  And how much shorter?  I have been pushing her to about 1.5 hours of A time now that she is 4 months old (tomorrow!) but wonder if she has a day like today where all naps are short do I do shorter A times for each one then?  This will put me back at square one with 5 naps in the day then I suppose but hopefully only for one day. 

Nap extending only seems to work for her if she does it of her own accord (which has only been one time so far) because if I intervene and go in she is WAY to social and distracted by my presence.  She thinks we are playing and remains perfectly content to lay there swaddled and try to catch my eye and smile at me, or giggles over and over. 

[Smurfette]

How long was that nap at 9:05?

Yes, if you get short naps, then you have to reduce the next A time a bit so they don't get OT. But once you get a good nap again, you can go back to gently extending the next A time. (Anything less than 1.5 hour is not considered restorative enough, but some LOS are just fine with an hour and 10-15 min naps.)
Use the nap length as a clue about she needs for the next day. If you do a certain amount of A time before that first nap and get a 45 min nap, then you know she was UT and can go further the next day.
45min + = UT and 30min naps and under are considered OT

When you have tried to extend, how long do you try for? I know in the beginning, my LO would take about 20 mins and would babble and blow raspberries. I would always quit at that point thinking she wasn't going to go back to sleep and then just one day when I stuck it out and realized that's what she needed to do to resettle herself, I got her back to sleep. Now, it's way quicker (3 mins or so if I get in there right away) but it took awhile to realize that. Not saying that's what's happening here, but just thought I'd share my experience.

Also, when extending, it helps to have a dark room and not to make eye contact with them for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Don't worry if you have to give 6:30 as a BT...it isn't all that early or unheard of...lots and lots of us do that regularly, especially if your LO wakes up around 6:30 am to start her day. That may just be when she wants to go to bed and then you can eliminate that 5th nap.

Let me know how it goes!

[lizzymac99]

Her nap at 9:05 was about 47 mins long, then the next one at 11:40 was 40 mins and then at 2:00pm was 40 mins... she is now fighting her last nap of the day at 4:00pm... sigh....

[lizzymac99]

Well... it is now nearing 5pm, still fighting this nap by crying and screaming as we try to soothe her, I guess we will be moving on to the caride right away again.  I just can't figure her out!  I have no idea what kind of A time will work but perhaps trying a longer A time first thing tomorrow before the first nap.  That will mean ignoring her yawning though which I thought was a cue and why I choose to put her down when I do in the morning... I feel like I know absolutely nothing about my baby when I have days like this which is almost always

[Smurfette]

((Hugs))

Its ok! It's hard to figure these LOs out sometimes! We all feel like this once in a while! It WILL get better!!

Let's try to help you out.
 I have been told by other wise women on this forum that yawning can mean one of three things...

a) they ARE tired and need to go to sleep
b) their body is just responding out of habit to when it was used to going to sleep, but can be pushed further
c) they are bored and just need a change of scenery

Based on the fact that she gave you an UT nap, I think you can rule out  the first one.

I'm thinking this is what's happening...

her first nap is an UT one (hence it being 47 mins), that means the next day (assuming all things equal to the day before, same kind of night, relatively the same amount of night sleep) you can extend her A time longer.
Because her first nap was UT she didn't get enough sleep to fully restore her little body and then progressively became OT as the day went on. By the time you hit that last nap, she is in full blown OT.

When you start the next day and she yawns early, change her scenery/activity, take her outside for a bit, or do what you can to see if you can gently extend that A time. Then based on that nap length, adjust your day accordingly.
If she gives you OT nap, try extending it if you can. This will take time, but if it starts to work (over the course of the week), it's one more tool in your toolbox for helping your DD get more sleep in a day.
I find it helpful to get into my LOs room as soon as I hear her wake up as it takes less time to get her back to sleep, then if I wait and let her really wake up and cry. But that's just me, some other ppl wait to see if their LOs will resettle themselves. If my DD is OT, she won't. She needs help.

Hang in there, you're doing great!!!

[lizzymac99]

Ok... so rather than give up and resort to the carseat I chose to get her up for 20 minutes did some quiet playtime and offered her a small bit of milk, then did her wind down and put her into her crib again, she cried for about 15 minutes but I was able to coax her to sleep!  By this time it was quite late at 5:42pm so I woke her after 45 mins and then we did her bedtime routine over about an hour and she was back to sleep for the night at 7:30pm.  She slept thru until 5:40 am but woke with a big poop (I heard it on the monitor!!).

I treated this one like a NW as it was before 6am, and fed her in the nursery after I changed her, put her back down at 6:20 and she was asleep by 6:30.  She woke up around 7:30am but was content so I layed my head back down and told myself I would get her when she started to fuss.  Well I woke up with a start at 8:30 am and looked at the video monitor to find her ASLEEP!  She slept until almost 9:00am!  One question that I have is that when I leave her for a bit and watch her on the video monitor after she wakes from a shorter nap she will sometimes start to doze off and on but only for very small bits of time like 5 minutes or so.  Do I still start counting A time from the original wake-up since those little dozes off and on aren't really sleep and she is wide awake in between them?  I know in the case of this mornings she had actually put herself back for a real long sleep again so I was able to count from the 9am wakeup.  Anyway I have just put her down for another nap after 1.5 hours of A time this time, so a bit longer than normal.  She yawned once in the crib a few times and was asleep within 5 minutes - fingers crossed for a longer nap!

[lizzymac99]

Ok so nap at 10:26 lasted only until 11:03 after 1.5 hours A time...
The next nap was 12:39 (would have been sooner but she got the hiccups and started fussing after the first time I laid her down) and has only lasted 30 minutes!  Maybe I have been pushing her to much with the A times?  I dunno... she is exactly 4 months old today and was born 1 week early only...hmmm... or is this just a temporary side effect after lengthening A times and I need to be more patient?

[Smurfette]

9 am, wow!
Just be careful that she isn't making up all of her sleep in the morning and then not wanting to take long naps for the rest of the day, or worse, not sleeping well at night.

In regards to those little wakes...it's hard to know for sure. I think you just need to make a note of it (how many there were, how long they lasted, etc) and see how she is after them.
How long will she continue to go in and out of sleep like that if you leave her? Any chance she would just go back into another 45 min sleep cycle?

[Smurfette]

How was she when she woke from the 1st nap (crying, happy) ?

[lizzymac99]

I have left her for 45 mins and she will generally doze for a few minutes, wake up and look around, doze again but not actually sleep.  She wakes up from every nap happy whether it is 30 minutes or 2 hours... she is a very happy girl almost all the time.

[lizzymac99]

Ok, so she surprised me and finished of the day with an over TWO hour nap!!!  But I have no clue why... anyway the day looked like this:
Awake 5:40am
S 6:30am
A 8:56am
S 10:26 am
A 11:03am
S 12:39pm
A 1:10pm
S 2:49pm
A 4:46pm

Then she fell asleep on my shoulder at 7pm after an hour of crying and screaming due to a bad gas bubble, because of this I chose to comfort her to sleep and swaddled her and put her up on my shoulder and rocked her until she stopped crying and fell asleep.  We didn't have a chance to do her bedtime routine at that time because she was in pain.  She awoke again at 7:30pm and I have done her bedtime routine now and laid her back down at 8:00pm.  Looks like she's already asleep now at 8:20pm!  SO I am not sure how I got a 2 hour nap out of her but I am NOT complaining!  Just wish I could figure this out and duplicate it tomorrow

[Smurfette]

Did you intentionally keep her up longer for that last A time? If I'm reading it correctly it looks like an A time of 1hr 40 min? I'm confused too, TBH, but perhaps that's what did it?

Other than her gas bubble, how was her mood through out the day?
Either way, short naps are somewhat developmental and you have just begun to try to change things (hasn't even been a week) so it will take some time. Her little body is use to cat napping for 4 months.

Let's see what happens tomorrow. How was her eating today?

[lizzymac99]

No that last A time was not intentional, she just took awhile to eat that time and I had left her in her crib after the previous nap for 45 minutes (happy) to see if she would drop off again.  The A time was longer because I sort of ran out of time!  She has actually been eating really well the past few days.  Yes with each nap shorter than an hour now I will leave her be in there and give her a chance to fall asleep again - it hasn't really worked yet but I am going to keep at it. 

I am also totally confused now too....

I was wondering if maybe I should be getting her more tired during A time by getting her to practice physical stuff like rolling over?  Now that we actually have time and I am not trying to feed her for the entire time maybe my A time with her is too low key?  We never go outside or anything - mostly because of how she used to eat and take so long!  Most of the time she was being held as I tried to feed her.  She has a little gym mat, a bouncy chair, and lots of toys but I don't want to OS her...

Her mood yesterday was happy all day, that is how she always is unless she is in any kind of pain

[Smurfette]

Yes, for sure! I bet she will love the new activities! Just start to wind things down before nap times so she isn't going straight from high activity/energy stuff to trying to go to sleep.