Waketime question for 4.5 month old

[nojos011]

Hi there,
First time, stay at home mom here to a 4.5 month old girl.

So I decided to try switch from on demand nursing and napping solely based on sleepy cues/wake time to the EASY routine due to poor napping (ie napping that was taking so much of my time that I didn't have time to shower, eat or talk to my husband!!).   It's been 3 days and while feeds still aren't in perfect routine, they've become a little more spaced out (she was nursing at 45 min intervals when on demand) and naps have definitely improved.  I can now put her down for every single nap which seemed like a distant dream 2 weeks ago.

However, my little babe seems 100% unable to do more that 1 hour of wake time!!  Does this seem normal? I'm seeing that there are babies her age who are doing 2 hours and I can't believe it; Josie would be screaming like a banshee at the 2 hour mark! Should I just keep going with this, try to stretch A time, or do you think it might stretch itself as feeds become more regularly spaced?

Also, since starting this nights have become much worse.  Anyone have that happen in the beginning and then get better? (She was sleeping up to 12 hours straight and now is waking every 2 hours+ unless in bed with me).

[Ima shel Alon]

Hi and welcome!

Could you post your day in an EASY format so we can have a look at the naps and the night time?

1h would be very short for her age. You are right that her A time should be more around 2h. But if all she can handle now is 1h she can't jump straight away to that. The thing with EASY is that once in a while you'd need to tweak the a times and increase them as she grows older. What you do when you need to increase the A, like now, is you up it by 10-15min every 3-4 days and during those days you stick to the new A no matter what (unless LO is extremely OT by the end of the day). After 3-4 days if naps are still short (45min-1:20h long) then you increase it again. The reason that we do it gradually and stick to the same A for 3 days is to prevent OT and to give LO enough time to get used to the new A. There is more about it here: Average A times and "Is my baby ready to increase A time?"
What are A times and how do they fit into the EASY routine?
For EBF babies the EASY cycles can be a bit different. While their FF friends can usually go 4h between feeds at this age, EBF babies only get to that at around 6m. What most mommies do is offer a top up feed before the next S or offer the feed in the middle of the A time. If your LO is just now learning to space the feeds then maybe the first way would be more suitable. That way you know that it's not hunger waking her up early from a nap.
What is happening at night time? Are you feeding for each waking? It could be that she wakes up so often because she gets less calories during the day than she used to when she was feeding on demand, but this should sort itself out because she will learn to drink more at each feed during the day.
HTH

[nojos011]

Thanks for your response!!!

  Here is a breakdown of  into today.  We got wake time stretched today and it seems like it may have done her well!! It might be too soon to tell but she's napped for 2.5 hours )with one brief waking at first sleep cycle). I did my best taking notes yesterday but certainly lacked detail as I didn't have much time.  Here's what I got written (some have no descriptions of her mood etc., just what EAS happened at what time.)

E   6:30   Wake up, nurse
A   6:45-8:20   Diaper change, play with dad, dad put in swing to try to get her to sleep
S   8:20-9:00; 9:20-10:20   Dad brough back to room for sleep.  Cranky.  Nursed (*E) until very drowsy to calm her down, then rocked to sleep
      
E   10:20-10:30   
A   10:30-12:00   
S   12:20-1:00   
      
E   1:00-1:10   
A   1_10-2:10   
S   2:30-3:20   
      
E   3:20-3:35    Woke up bawling. Tried to rock back to sleep with no luck.
A   3:35-6:30!! Nap FAIL!  Would not go to sleep after waking.  Took walk in sling to try and encourage nap, even this didn't work!    
S   6:30-7:30   Went down pretty easily then work 25 minutes later, went down again until 7:30ish.  Tried to get her to stay in bed but she cried and cried until I took her out.
      
E   8:00-810   Nurse
A   8:10-8:30   Sat on couch with mom and dad
S   8:30-1:30am   Very OT at 8:30. Screaming!  Attempted to bounce, sing, rock, cuddle.  Finally fell aslep at 10:05pm.  Wake at 1:30 crying (not usual "MILK" cry, but really crying.  Comforted and nursed *out of habit*) back to sleep until 4:00am, nursed.  Up at 5:45.
Today      
E   5:45-6:00   Nurse
A   6:00-6:15   Play
S   6:15-8:30   Sleep. Asleep at 6:30-8:30
      
E   8:30-8:47   Eat.  Finished one side, only took a little from other.
A   8:47-10:15   Play.  Trying to stretch A time, put in swing at first signs of tired (rubbing eyes with luvie) around 9:30.  Distracted her with walkig around house, showing toys, talking softly.
E*: offered breast before nap, ate some from one side (about 3 minutes).
      
S   10:15-12:50   Nap!! Cried when brought to room,  seemed overtired.  After 15 minutes of nap routine, soothing lullaby, and soft bouncing asleep at 10:30.  Woke at 11:05, shush pat back to sleep. Still asleep at 12: 50.


She seems to be eating more at feeds, but she is still very distracted during the day.  I'm doing my best to offer breast at start of each A time, and if I think she needs to eat, I offer before starting nap routine.  She had a STRONG nipple-sleep association which I'm trying to keep her away from now because it was getting exhausting that no one else had a chance to put her to sleep, and I think we were both confused between her needs for eating and sleeping.  She's doing well without the association, but I do nurse her when she's so overtired she can't settle and it seems to help.

[Ima shel Alon]

Don't worry too much about the feeding, it will sort itself out.
However, if you are jumping from 1h A time to 1:45-2h A time at once you are going to have an OT mess in your hands. It seems like she is already reacting to the OT (waking up 35min into the nap, lots of crying, crying at the NW not out of hunger, takes long to put down at BT and an EW). IIWY I would take it slower than that because I don't think she will simply catch up and will adjust to the new A time, she will accumulate OT and you'll have many more problems than you have now. I'd just be cautious.
If she is waking up so early in the morning then really her BT should be around 12h later, 20:30 would be quite late. You should always aim for a 12h night, 12 h day, but many babies are doing 13h day and 11h night. You are getting around 10h, right? That's not enough, IMO, for her.

[nojos011]

Thanks for the response!

Indeed, I believe she was very OT last night, though that's not entirely unusual.   She wouldn't settle until nearly 10:30pm and I honestly don't remember what her wake times were because I'm so exhausted from how frequently she wakes throughout the night this past week.   Before this week, people kept telling me to count my blessings for having a baby who slept so well at night and now I really want that back!

Today, she ended up awake at 6:20-6:45 for nursing/diaper change, then slept until 9:20 AM.  I think this "counts" as night sleep until 9:20AM?  Anyway, then she started yawning at 10:20AM so I put her straight to bed. She's went down easily and has been asleep for nearly an hour. 

As far as bedtime goes, I do not intend to keep her up so late, but she is nearly always difficult to settle at night and I spend hours trying to soothe her back to sleep.  As a side note, we recently took a 2 week vacation in the Caribbean. I was prepared to lose lots of sleep as I'd been warned by many people vacations mess with a baby's sleep.  Well she was in bed by 8:00pm at the LATEST almost every day on vacation, often between 6-7pm and she was sleeping through the night almost every night!! Naps on vacation were very difficult though.  She usually started getting tired around 45-60minutes of wake time. The first night home she was out at 7pm, second night 8:30 and she slipped right back into fussing until late in the evening. 

Any suggestions on what you do if you put your baby to bed at 7pm but they won't settle?  She usually will nap for a little then wakes crying unless I take her out of the "bedtime" room and play with her (I always try to get her to go back down but I will literally spend hours in the room doing this and it's very stressful for both of us), but then due to the playing she's so overtired she really looses it and cries on and off until finally falling asleep.

[Ima shel Alon]

Today, she ended up awake at 6:20-6:45 for nursing/diaper change, then slept until 9:20 AM.  I think this "counts" as night sleep until 9:20AM?

Yes, it would. I understand that you want to let her sleep late in the morning because she falls asleep at night so late, but I am afraid this is preventing you from having an earlier BT. Like I said before, one aims for a 12h night 12h day. So if you let her wake up at 9:30 there's no wonder she only falls asleep at 22, yk?
I would start and wake her earlier in the morning if I were you to preserve BT.

Any suggestions on what you do if you put your baby to bed at 7pm but they won't settle?

If you move your WU in the morning earlier I could imagine she'd go down earlier in the evening as well without hours of fussing.
I did things different than you. BT was 19 no matter what and if DS didn't settle then I would sit and shh/pat for a couple of hours till he fell asleep. You are right - this is extremely exhausting, but I find the other solution of having an A time even worse. At least it was for us.
After a few BT like this we were always back to having a quiet and relaxed BT. I remember once I tried to take him out of the room and have some quiet A time because he wouldn't fall asleep and I swore I'd never do it again. It took me then far longer to put him to sleep than without taking him out of the room. I also found that if it took me more than an hour to shh/pat and he was still not asleep a bottle helped him to calm down and he usually fell asleep on it.
I am not saying this will work for you as well, we are different, our babies are different and you need to find YOUR way to cope with it. But somehow she needs to know that it's sleepy time now and not A time, I think it confuses her that she is put down to bed and then after a while she has play time again.
Even if you choose to take her out of the room and a lot of mommies do that, then I wouldn't do it for more than 10-15min and then try to put her down again.
How are you trying to put her down at BT? When she wakes up are you using pat/shh or you have a different way?
Also, the BT and the NW would be a result of her day routine, the amount of A time she has and the amount of day sleep. Once this is sorted then evening and nights usually get much better. How are you doing now with A times? How are her naps?