Need advice on getting better quality naps/feeds for my 5 MO

[sophielloyd]

Hi there!

sorry have been sifting through all the information on napping but cant seem to find my answers in between keeping my grumpy baby happy!

I have a 5 month old wee girl who we have always had trouble getting to have decent naps throughout the day. We did have a good period where she was sleeping 2 hours and getting 3 naps but this has since gone out the window. We are now lucky if we get an hour first nap in the morning and anything more than 30 mins after that. I have been squeezing in 4 naps a day to compensate. She is often still grizzly when she wakes but cant get her back to sleep. I was holding vigil in her doorway to quickly resettle if stirring at the end of one cycle but this seldom works. She just starts falling asleep at the 1hr45 A mark in the mornings and I can usually stretch out a bit longer as the day progresses. She is up around 7.15 most mornings and down to sleep between 7-8pm at night or earlier if she missed the afternoon sleep. She was waking 3 times a night but last night slept through 11 1/2 hours so hope this will be the new normal for her! we have been using the no-cry sleep solution to help her sleep at night but still end up feeding to sleep during the day as she does not feed well often having 2-3 feeds in an A time and then ends up falling to sleep on the last feed- I am slowly using gentle removal for this and making some progress.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated so we can have the happiest baby! I am also studying an online post graduate nursing paper and need more time in the day to do this!

[*Kara*]

Hi hun.. you have more issues than just naps happening so will pop you over to the EASY boards to have a look at a routine adjustment to get sleeps and eating under control a bit better for you

Could you post a typical day for us in EAS format?

Like this:

E 7am ( this would be wakeup and first feed)
A
S 830-10am

This will give us a clear view of your day as it is now...

Here is a link to some routines for her age group and also a link to typical awake times based on age:
Sample EASY Routines from 0 - 13mths+
Average A times and "Is my baby ready to increase A time?"

[sophielloyd]

Thanks have had a wee read through some of that hopefully we can get on track. The hardest thing is getting her to have her feed after waking and feed well and for long enough to not snack to top up. We are also moving house in a week (we live in New Zealand and it is an overnight trip to our new house across the country)  but we had such a bad night last night that I feel I need to make changes now so we can at least get some better sleep before! I think she is teething as she is ear pulling a lot and scratches the back of her head. She has eczema as well so think she scratches this too. She is often holding her hands in her mouth and crying- cant see any sign of teeth at the moment but she has had one come up and go back down. This is roughly her routine from yesterday..

E-7.15-7.30
A
E-8.00-8.05
S-8.45-9.50 fed to sleep

E-9.50- 9.55
A
E-10.30-10.32
A-
E-11.45-11.50
S-12.00-12.45

E-12.45-12.50
A
E-2.15-2.20
S-2.30-3.00

E-3.00-3.10
A
S-4.45-17.15

E-17.15-17.20
A
E-18.30-18.32
A
E-19.00-19.30
S-2100 (this was a battle! she was happily awake for ages and I just cuddled her till she got grizzly and started to settle then put her to bed and then she was awake again. We eventually got there settling in bed with me holding her hands)

E-12.30am
S-12.45

E-3.00
S-3.20

A- 4.30- tried to resettle with success but then woke crying 10 mins later and could not get back to sleep. tried for small feed to settle then wide awake and upset. Got Dad in at 5.05 so he could stay with her and settle without feeding and I could (try) and get some more sleep. Eventually after nappy check and paracetamol (as she seemed to be upset by her teeth) she went to sleep at 6am on Dad in her room until 7am when I then gave her her first feed. She did feed well for 30 mins (although very sleepily) so I am attempting to try hold her out for 4 hours and work at getting her sleeping longer at her 9am nap. I am so tired and not coping so I figure it cant get any worse I might as well try and get her routine sorted. Any advice from what you see here would be greatly appreciated!! I can see myself that the snacking is most likely our issue but breaking that will be the challenge! I can get her to fall asleep without feeding so we are getting there with that.

[Ima shel Alon]

Any signs of Reflux?
Are you BF or FF? Either way it looks as if your LO is a snacker, I am afraid. It sounds like you already know that, though. I can see two ways to go about it, one is to gradually reduce the middle of the A and the end of the A (right before S) feed. You can do it by shortening the feed by a minute every 3 days if you are BF or reduce the bottle by an oz every 3 days if you are FF. For the feed after WU you keep on offering a full feed and if she empties it then you can start and increase it because she will shift her calories to that one feed instead of three (at each A). The other option is to go "cold turkey" with those two feeds and leave just the one after WU. There will be some crying and you will have a day that she is more hungry and unsettled but it should sort itself out as she will learn that she needs to take more at this one feed.
If you are BF it's very important that you do transition to have more gaps between the feeds because if she is snacking she is not getting enough of the hidden milk.
Also, if you are BF, don't expect that she will space her feeds to 4h, most BF babies don't get to that until around 6m old. The right way to go about it is to get her on a better A (I'll get to that in a sec), get better naps and then feed at WU.

Right now her A time seems rather short for her age. If you looked at the links Kara gave you, you can see that most babies her age are doing 2h A time and some even more than that. Her first nap seems UT to me, as well as the second one and perhaps by then she is OT because she didn't get any restorative sleep in the first part of the day. IIWY I would be working on increasing her A time to be more around 2h throughout the day and perhaps she will need even more than that. It's better to do it gradually to prevent her from getting OT and it also takes LOs a few days till they get used to a new A time. So you increase the A by 10-15min every 3-4 days. If after 4 days you still get UT naps (between 45min and 1:20h) then you increase the A again. If after 4 days you are getting OT naps (30-35min) then it could be that the jump was too big for her and she would need 5-10min increases or that she just needs more time to get used to it, then I'd stick to it for a few more days.
What do you think?

[sophielloyd]

She is BF so thats where it is a little hard! yesterday I fed her then once more in the A time and managed to stretch to 3.5 hours which I think your right it is probably a good ground to have at the moment! I kept her up 2 hours in the morning stretching her 10 mins passed when she was showing tired signs. She still did a 30min sleep and I tried resettling for 50mins with no luck. The next sleep might have been too late but I did manage to get her back to sleep after 30 mins for another 45 which was good! then she still had her 30min afternoon nap and went to bed at 7pm asleep at 7.45. I have been trying her with bottles of expressed milk to get her nice and full when she wakes too. She did wake after only 3 hours at night then 3 times more at hourly intervals so not a good night. Not sure why this was but I managed to feed her on the first waking (as it had been 5 hours since a feed) and then on the last at 3.30 and she slept until 6.30. But we will keep going as making baby steps in places! have been reading as much as I can on this forum when I can and finding some good tips! Thanks so much!

[Ima shel Alon]

If she used to do first thing in the morning 1:15-1.5h A time then the jump straight to 2h can be too much for her and that's why she gave you what sounds like an OT nap - 30-35min. I would try and increase the A just by 10-15min at a time.
The NW which were not hunger related can well may be due to OT from her day.

[sophielloyd]

Just thought I would update on what a great week we have had! I have been feeding her expressed milk via bottle during the day to fill her up better and she has been feeding so well and has been so much happier! she is now awake from 2hr10 to 2hr45 in the late afternoon and napping around 1.5hr twice a day with a smaller nap later on. I held vigil in her room for a few days to get her through the 30min mark and all I do now is just go in at 25mins and put her on her tummy or give her a little jiggle and she then sleeps through. Nights have been much much better if she does wake is easy to settle and has one breast feed to see her through until around 7. The next phase will be increasing her awake times to move onto 2 sleeps but think that will go so much more smoothly now. You were so right about OT as what I thought were teething symptoms were OT signs and have since all but gone! Thank you so much for your help I will continue to use this awesome site as a resource to have the happiest baby I can have!

[*Kara*]

So great to hear!

[Ima shel Alon]