Need help with my EASY ASAP!!!!!

[chirojaz]

Ok, so I was not sure where to post this because it is actually a multifactoral problem that I am having.  My DD is 20 weeks old and I have been implementing the BW model of routine since she was 3 weeks old.  I have been trying/wanting to transition my DD to a 4 hour EASY but have been having trouble.  First off, she starts to show sleepy signs after being awake for 1 1/2 hours so it has been hard to get her to a 4 hour EASY.  I have tried to extend her awake time but it has backfired on me each time.  She became so overtired that she would not take a good nap when I tried to put her down and then the rest of the day fell apart.  So we are sort of on a 3.5-4 hr EASY right now but I am having a hard time with it.  She has been REALLY bad with naps for the past few weeks.  Her first nap of the day is usually good but the afternoon and early evening naps are not so good.  She will not take longer than a 40-45 minute nap in the afternoon on her own.  After that first 40-45 minute nap she will wake up and just start chatting/looking around while still swaddled and in her crib.  If I want her to sleep longer I have to get her out of the crib and rock her in the glider, cover her eyes, and when she falls asleep I try to put her back in the crib and she usually wakes up immediately.  I don't think that PU/PD is appropriate because she wakes after that short nap happy, she's not crying or needing to be consoled, she just WON'T sleep longer and it's killing me!  I am getting so sick of having to rock her, sometimes I stay in there for an hour holding her, just to get her to her next eating time.  So the short naps are really getting hard to handle. 
The other problem I'm facing is that she is not sleeping well at night.  A couple of months ago she had periods/nights where she would sleep til 4:45 or 5am, and one night til 6am after her last feed at @ 10:15pm but those were even few and far between.  Now she is on this "habitual" routine of waking every night around 3:30 am Because I knew that she "could" go all night without a feed I, for the past month or so, did not feed her in the middle of the night.  But then the 3:30 wake up turned into also waking around 4 ish, 5ish, and 6ish.  She would either be out of her swaddle or we would just put the pacifier back in and she would doze back to sleep.  After her first feed at 7am and her awake time I would put her down for her first am nap around 8am and she would sleep like a rock for 2-2.5 hours.  Because I was tired of hardly sleeping from 3:30-7am I decided to feed her at 3:30 a few nights ago and see what happens.  Sure enough she did not wake up until 6:30 am so for the past few nights I have fed her when she woke @ 3:30am and we both slept til @ 7am.  I know that is probably not the best thing to do but I am at a loss.  I am assuming her waking at @ 3:30 am is probably a habit and I have not tried the W2S because I am just scared too
Here is what our EASY roughly looks like
E 7am
A 7:30
S 8:30/8:45 (usually sleeps til 10:30 or 11am)
E 11am
A 11:30
S 12:30/12:45 (only sleeps for 40-45 min before I have to rock her back to sleep and let her sleep on me)
E 2:30/3pm
A 3:15
S 4/4:15/4:30 (depends on the day) only sleeps for like 40 minutes
A 5
E 6
A 6:30 bath and bedtime routine
S by 7pm
So my problems in a nutshell:  Short naps, not sleeping through the night, can't get her onto a 4hr EASY because she can not stay up for 2hrs at a time without wrecking havoc on the rest of the day.
Please help, I am feeling very frustrated with EVERYTHING! 
Thanks!
Jasmine

[becj86]

She may well have some periods of being hungry at night - growth spurts... if they last more than a few days though, they could well be becoming habitual.

She is actually pretty much on 4hr EASY by the times you've posted. The fact she is waking happy and chatting to herself would indicate to me that the 40-45min nap is an undertired nap. I'd try extending the 2nd A time by ~10-15mins and see what that yields you in terms of a nap. She may need a shorter A time to start the day and be able to extend the next one before the nap that is currently short and difficult to extend without APing. At this age, you probably don't really want her sleeping much more than 40mins in the afternoon - its 2naps + catnap territory on the way to 2 naps.

[chirojaz]

So, I thought the same might be true about being understimulated so I have tried with the second activity hour to keep her up longer and that's when it totally backfired on me.  She woke around 11am, I fed her and then we did a mellow activity (mostly me just holding her) until around 12 and then went to whole foods to get some lunch.  She started yawning by 12:30 in the store and so when I got her home to put her down it was around 12:45, she fell asleep around 1pm.  So she was up for about 15 minutes more than normal and she hardly slept for that whole nap period.  She initially slept for like 10 minutes, then woke up and I could hardly even get her to go back to sleep in my arms the rest of the nap time.  That is why I am at a total loss, I have tried to stimulate her more because I thought the same thing and that didn't work.  So what now??  She is supposed to be taking a 2hr nap where she will only take  a 40minute nap and I am just stuck.  Any other ideas?

As far as the 3:30am waking, the nights I fed her she did seem hungry, was definitely rooting when I picked her up.  BUT why is it always around the same time?  That's why I feel like its more habitual.  Last night she woke at 2:30am, my husband tried to give her the pacifier which she usually takes and goes right back to sleep but that didn't work.  He ended up having to rock her back to sleep.  She then woke again at 5am, so I fed her and she slept til 7am. 

I'm also curious what to do about daylight savings which is coming up next weekend!! She is VERY likely to wake up at 6am now with the time change.  Any ideas on that one?  Should I try and put her to bed later?
Thanks
Jasmine

[becj86]

Around this age, boredom can look very similar to tiredness. DS' activity times around this age involved things like playing on the floor with a few different toys around him so he could pick what to play with, lying/sitting on a mat while watching me doing the washing. That way he could chose to be passive or active as it suited him. I found that to extend A times we would do a normal A time (no more or less stimulation) right up to when he'd usually go to bed, then walk around the garden or read a book or sing a song to get him through that extra time - sort of like you would to distract to lengthen out a feed or when overstimulated.

Do you have a wind down routine before naps? Have you tried white noise or music or something while she's sleeping - I've started that recently with DS, playing music while he's sleeping and he resettles better during his naps.

The other thing you could consider doing is capping the first nap of the day to ~1.5hr - she's getting a 2-2.5hr nap at the beginning of the day and to get to her ideal total day sleep, she really would only do two shorter naps in the afternoon. That way she will still get a restorative sleep but may sleep better in the afternoon.

You get hungry around the same time of day, right? Same for babies. Partially its related to learning that that's time to eat and partly its due to needing nourishment then because their tummies are so small and milk digests pretty quickly. At this age, its unlikely she'll be able to go through the whole night without a feed and since resettling isn't keeping her asleep for long, I'd say she's genuinely hungry. Habitual waking is very precise - they wake at exactly the same time within a minute or two - you could set your clock by it.

Daylight savings - You can do it a few ways - extend a day by 1hr and get her back onto the 7-7 routine she's on at the moment, or let it become 6-6 and push it by 10-15mins at a time til you get back to 7-7.

[chirojaz]

Thanks for all the good ideas!  My wind-down routine for naps is nothing too extensive so maybe I am not doing that right.  It usually consists of me first changing her diaper, saying "goodbye sun see you when I wake" and closing the blinds/drapes, then swaddling, and sitting in the glider with her and sing her the same couple of naptime songs that I do every day.  Is that enough or should I have a little longer wind-down?  What would you suggest? I do have white noise going for naps and bedtime but it's on a timer and only lasts for 45 minutes.  I used to have a fan going all the time in her room for white noise but with it getting cooler I stopped using the fan.

Do you think I should try and extend her morning activity time so that she is in bed by 9am instead of 8:45 ish?  If I shorten her first morning nap that is 2-2.5 hours to about 1.5 hours then she wouldn't really be on a 4hr EASY unless I did an activity before her second feed of the day.

You also mentioned having two shorter naps in the afternoon.  To my understanding, according to BW with a 4 hr EASY she should have a 2hr nap in the am, a 2hr nap in the early afternoon, and a catnap (30-45min) in the early evening.  Is that right?  I know things with babies can't always work out like such clockwork but I just want to try my best

[becj86]

That wind down seems alright to me, it obviously induces sleep for her if she's going to sleep reasonably easily Just thought if you didn't have one it might help.

White noise turning off exactly when she needs it to transition through to the next sleep cycle could be an issue - could you turn it off after an hour instead?

Have you ever extended the first A time of the day? If not, I'd give that a go and see what happens. Shifting S to 9am should help break up the day and night for her too - she could be tacking that long morning nap onto her night sleep to compensate for the poor night sleeps.

Yes, the 2hr A time followed by 2hr nap is how 4hr EASY usually starts off, then it grows to 2.5A and 1.5nap still with a CN, then A time grows to 3hr and you lose the CN, usually by around 6 months. She's at the younger, more sleep end of that, but capping that first nap of the day may help to get her to have a longer sleep in the afternoon so she gets two restorative sleeps during the day instead of one, which should then help with night sleeping.

You may have to suffer a few bad days to get her onto 2hr A time but she should be able to do it reasonably comfortably once its bedded down so to speak. The 2hr naps are indicative, not necessarily what will happen - babies are all different and some need more or less sleep than others.

[chirojaz]

Ok, sounds good. I am going to try and wake her up after 2 hrs in the morning.  This morning she woke up at 6:30 but I let her play in her crib til about 6:50 before I went in her room to feed her at 7.  With that said, she started yawning and rubbing her eyes by around 8, I did some light activities to try and push her activity time a little longer, she started yawning and looking more tired by 8:15 so I started our wind-down process at 8:20 and she was asleep by 8:30 (2 hr A time).  She woke up at 9:50 so I went in, put her back on her side and shushed her back to sleep and am planning on waking her at 10:30.  Does that sound like the right thing to do?  I didn't want to try and push her to 9am because then she would have been awake for 2.5 hours and I think that's a bit too long for her.  So I just followed her sleepy signs.  OR should I be waking up and feeding her when I hear her like this morning 6:30 so that when I wake her up at 10:30 I wouldn't have to do an activity before feeding her again at 11 but would have fed her at 10:30.  Then I guess this would make her bedtime more like 6:30 instead of 7.  What do you think?  I really would rather start my day at 7 instead of 6:30 but if it's going to work out better for her "routine" I can sacrifice
Thanks!

[becj86]

Sounds like she's got some good solid sleepy cues - keep reading them

I would probably have gotten her up at 9:50 when she woke - that's 1hr 20min (quite possibly 2 sleep cycles and therefore restorative if her cycles are ~40mins). I'd say give it a couple of days doing the 2hr A time and see if that nap stabilises or gets shorter, in which case she may be ready for 2hr + 5 or 10min.

It's ok to have a shorter feed interval in the morning (I'm not a stickler for the 4hr between every meal thing, it was somewhere between 3hr and 4.5hr when DS was that age - he fed closer together in the morning but didn't have as many NF's as is considered 'normal') - or to do an activity before feeding mid-morning. Times are based on what actually happens, not the clock, so you did the right thing not pushing her to 9 - you'd probably have had a terrible day with OT then!

She can play in her cot - it's not going to hurt, in fact if you do it regularly from this age, you lay the foundations for her to stay in bed playing quietly when she wakes at the crack of dawn and wants to be up for the day