Help with EASY for 10 week old short napper!

[melloyello]

Hi there,

I'm hoping to get some help as I am dealing with a seriously OT 10 week old resulting from a few weeks of short naps. We do get the odd nap/day where she naps longer but generally she is waking at 30 or 45 minutes. Up until a few days ago I was usually able to resettle her so she was doing ok, still getting a decent amount of sleep, but that has become much more difficult recently.

I have really tried from day 1 to "start as I mean to go" and things were going pretty well initially, so it's tough not to beat myself up and wonder what I'm doing wrong! For naps she generally falls asleep no problem (unless she is OT like lately) in the bassinet with her pacifier after a few minutes of cuddles. She is awake going into the bassinet. At bedtime she doesn't have the pacifier at all, goes down awake and babbles for a few minutes. When she wakes at the 30 or 45 minute mark she will often try and get herself back to sleep but gets upset after 10 minutes or so. If I am in her room from 30 minutes on I can sometimes lay my hands on her and help her through the jolts and she will stay asleep but I have a toddler as well so this is really only possible for the third nap of the day which often coincides with his nap.

I should add that she is a tummy sleeper. We fought her on this for the first 4 weeks but she would go nuts in her swaddle and very little napping was happening until we tried her on her tummy. I'm a huge proponent for swaddling (we used it with DS until he was 7 months!) and I know some babies resist it at first but she seriously hated it and it made her sleep worse. She is obsessed with trying to suck on her hands right now and tries to find her fingers when she wakes mid-nap but can't quite get them in her mouth so this might be part of the problem. It likely causes her to wake more.

Another issue is that she will not do motion naps - hates her carseat with a passion and screams the whole time she's in it and will not fall asleep in the swing. She will take a short nap in the sling however. So we can't even AP to get a longer nap out of her!

I feel like I've tried every possible A time, right now it's about 1 hr 15 min, and nothing seems to help!

It's pretty hard to give a good picture of our EASY because it's been all over the place but here was yesterday:

WU and E 7:20am
A 7:20-8:35 (1 hr 15 min)
S 8:35-10:05 (1.5 hrs, woke at 30 min but was able to resettle, then slept for another hour)
E 10:15
A 10:05-11:35 (1 hr 30 min)
S 11:35-12:15 (40 min)
E 1:10
A 12:15-1:40 (1 hr 25 min)
S 1:40-4:30 (2 hrs 45 min. I helped her through transition at 45 min and she slept for 1.5 hours but then still seemed tired so gave her paci and she went back to sleep until I woke her at 4:30)
E 4:45
A 4:30-5:45 (1 hr 15 min)
S 5:45-6:30 (45 min)
E 7:50
A 6:30-8:15
S 8:15

She would not wake at all for DF at 10:45 (that's a whole other issue) and then woke at 1:00am and 4:00am for feeds then slept until 7am. We've been experimenting with not doing the DF as it seemed to be disrupting her sleep and causing her to wake more often but we decided to try it again about a week ago and she was doing well with the DF at 10:30 and then sleeping till 3:30.
I guess to summarize here are a few of my main questions/concerns:

1. How long A time should be after a 30 minute nap??
2. Could the pacifier be making things worse already at this age because she falls asleep with it for naps? It's really my only hope of extending naps at this point though. When I resettle her I'll put it back in and will often have to replug a few times before she goes back into a deep sleep. Will this hinder her from ever sleeping through transitions on her own?
3. Her second nap has always been the toughest - I really don't think she's EVER slept longer than 45 minutes for this nap but then will often take a longer third nap (2+ hours) - or at least she used to! Is it ok to just accept this short second nap? I don't mind it so much because then her third nap ends up being at the same time as DS's so I get a bit of a break. How long can I let her sleep for at that third nap? Is 2.5 hours too much?
4. When do babies typically find their fingers (so she can self soothe)?
5. I know DS went through patches of short naps and they eventually resolved themselves so do I just accept this for what it is right now and give her more naps or do I keep trying to figure it out?

Thanks for any insight! Sorry this is so long-winded!

[jessmum46]

Hi there

I do wonder from what you posted whether she might be in some discomfort, e.g. silent reflux?  Is that something you had considered?

To answer your questions:

1 - after a 30 min nap I would probably take 15-30 mins off her normal A time, watching carefully for cues.  Unfortunately it's not an exact science. 

2 - the paci could be starting to become a prop at nap time, but if she does have reflux then the paci is often very helpful.  Even if not, you have a toddler to deal with too and it may be that a quick paci resettle is actually better than spending ages doing shh pat or a variation.  If you want to get rid of the paci later down the line there is plenty of time to do so when LO is more settled and you have some help with your toddler. 

3 - if it's working to have a short second nap and longer third nap, by all means do that . I would say 2h is probably enough at this age, maybe 2.5h if she seems extra tired or has super short earlier naps. 

4 - I would say around 3-4 months is typical to find the fingers/hands for self-soothing. 

5 - yes, if all you get is short naps just offer more of them in the day.  It's up to you how much you want to 'investigate' them - if you are managing with how things are, then don't worry yourself trying to change it.  But if you'd like our support and help to try to tweak the routine a bit, then always happy to offer it

[melloyello]

The thought of reflux has definitely crossed my mind but I guess I just brushed it off because I don't know enough about it. Can I ask, what would lead you to wonder that?

[jessmum46]

There's some good info here: Reflux 101 - General reflux information

The things I wondered about were the frequent short naps, settling better on her tummy, not liking the swing or car seat (for some refluxers it crunched up their tummy and makes reflux worse) but settling in the sling (position presumably more upright?). I'm not saying that's what it is, just it might be worth considering

[melloyello]

Yes, definitely worth taking a look at. Those are the same things I wondered about myself.

We have had better naps the last 2 days, some still short but a few longer ones as well. The short naps have also been 45 minutes instead of 30 so hopefully she is not quite as OT. Sometimes we get good naps on 1 hr 10 min and then some on 1 hr 45 minutes so I'm really at a loss as to what I should be aiming for with A times. She doesn't give me any strong sleep cues that I can see. Sometimes she is yawning after having only been awake for 10 minutes!

The second short nap is working pretty well for us right now but she needs longer ones as well to keep her from getting OT so any suggestions for tweaking our EASY are greatly appreciated!

This was yesterday:

WU 7am
E 7:35
A 7-8 (1 hr)
S 8-9:30 (1.5 hrs)
E 10
A 9:30-10:50 (1 hr 20 min)
S 10:50-11:50 (woke at 45 min, resettled but woke 15 min later)
E 12:30
A 11:50-1:35 (1 hr 45 min)
S 1:35-3:20 (1 hr 45 min)
E 3:45
A 3:30-5:15 (1 hr 45 min)
S 5:15-6 (45 min)
E 6:15
A 6-8 (2 hrs)
E 7:45
S 8pm

DF 10:30

NF @ 3am, then woke again at 5:15, resettled and slept till 7am

I think I mentioned in my first post that we have been playing around with not doing the DF because she will usually do a longer stretch of sleep without it in the first part of the night (5+ hours) whereas after the DF she generally only does 3-4 hours... but at least it's 4 hours of consecutive sleep for me! So not sure what to do there...

[jessmum46]

There is a link to average A times by age here:  What are A times and how do they fit into the EASY plan?  Somewhere around 1h20 would be an average at this age, but LO will probably need slightly shorter than that if the previous nap isn't a full nap.  The 45 min wake-up in her second nap may be a problem tranistioning between sleep cycles or it could be she needs just a touch more A time to have a settled nap.  you could try an extra 5-10 mins low-key activity and see if it helps? 

The other thing I wonder is whether you might consider BT slightly earlier?  Normally we aim for a 12h day, maybe 12.5h, with BT 7/7.30pm presuming you start the day at around 7am. 

We never did a DF here - I just fed DD when she woke.  The DF doesn't work for all babies - for some it disturbs their sleep cycles too much.  You may find however you have more success if she is bed for the night a bit earlier - the DF is meant to be about 3-4h after BT, so between 10-11pm based on a 7pm BT.  10.30pm may just be a bit early after the 8pm BT

[melloyello]

Thanks so much for your advice. We actually had a great day today with no naps less than 1 hour and the second nap (which has always been short) was 1.5 hrs! Also a great night last night with just one waking. If only we could replicate this everyday! She seems to have found her fingers actually and didn't need her paci for naps at all!today, just popped her fingers in her mouth and sucked away. I'm assuming she did this at transitions too because I did hear a bit of noise on the monitor at 45 min but she never cried out. She's also probably caught up on the OT so that helped as well I'm sure.

Our normal wake time is 7:30 so that's why we do an 8pm bedtime, although it's sometimes earlier if we can manage it with DS's bedtime too.

Today our A time was 1 hr 15 min for all naps but she seemed extra tired. Do A times gradually increase as the day goes on?

[jessmum46]

It varies, often the first A time is shorter than the rest but some like a long first A and shorter as the day goes on, others have increasing A through the day.  Really it's a case of experimenting

[Claudiamummy]

have really tried from day 1 to "start as I mean to go" and things were going pretty well initially, so it's tough not to beat myself up and wonder what I'm doing wrong!

Can I just add, do not beat yourself up!, try to enjoy your time and not let this consume you :-)...
and fwiw, dream feed was NOT appreciated by my lo at all!, I didnt bother with it after that! lol

[melloyello]

Thanks for the encouragement. I've definitely been more relaxed this week and what do you know, she's been sleeping much better! I think they must feed off our energy!

We've actually brought back the DF and it seems to be working better now. She will sleep till 4 or a bit later after the feed at 10:30. This means only wake up for me which is very nice!

[jessmum46]

Hooray!  Hope it continues x