My questions are about nap time, night wakings, and EASY schedule. I hope it's ok to post them all
My son is 4 months old (18 weeks). I had some breast milk supply issues that took about 8 weeks to get over but now I am exclusively breastfeeding. Our sleeping struggles have been happening for about 5 weeks now. Our typical EASY schedule goes something like this:
7:30 am: Wake up
Breast feed
Play (Jolly Jumper, playmat, singning, etc)
9:00 am: Nap time- I try to catch his earliest sleep signals, but he still cries for 20-30 minutes while I try and settle him before finally falling asleep
9:30am: He finally falls asleep
10:00am: He wakes up, try to resettle with breastfeeding (sometimes works)
10:30am: He gets up from nap, weather he fell asleep again or not- usually he does not so total nap time is 30 minutes.
Repeat these 3 steps until around 5:30pm
5:30pm Start bedtime routine (breastfeed, bath, read a book, put in swaddle bag). His arms are free outside of the swaddle bag as he's started rolling over onto his stomach, so we don't want him trapped facedow)
6:00pm As soon as we put him in the swaddle bag he starts to cry. We know he's associated it with bedtime because as soon as it's on he starts to cry inconsolably. He'll typically cry for about 30 minutes or so and then something that we try finally settles him down.
6:40pm Once he's asleep at bedtime he only sleeps a maximum of 40 minutes before he wakes up and starts crying again. Recently he's been crying for 1.5-2 hours after his first sleep before he'll go back down again
8:40pm He finally falls asleep again, but he'll only sleep for 3 hours max before getting up to feed.
11:30pm He wakes up for a feed, usually falls back asleep without much fussing. From this point till morning he does stints of about 1-1.5 hours of sleep before waking up and I breastfeed him back to sleep. He usually only takes a couple of sucks before falling asleep again though.
4:00am Recently he's started really waking up at 4:00am and crying inconsolably. It has been taking 1.5-2 hours to get him back to sleep when he does this.
7:30am After a night of fitful night of sleeping he wakes up ready to play, meanwhile I feel like I've gotten a total of 3 hours of sleep all night and am exhausted.
His crib is in the same room as ours and we have blackout curtains so it's pretty dark in there. When we put him down to sleep we've been putting him down drowsy but awake, but he starts crying almost instantly. After 5 minutes we'll start trying to settle him with a pacifier, and a fluffy teddy that he likes to have rubbed on his head (at least he used to, now it doesn't seem to work as easily as it once did).
At bedtime, we'll go in every 5 minutes or so for a 1 minute to settle him. More often than not he is still crying after this 1 minute so we leave the room and let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in again, then 15, then 20. After about 30 minutes of this we'll usually give up and lie down in bed cuddling him and I'll breastfeed him to sleep. Some nights breastfeeding him to sleep still doesn't work and it takes 2 hours before he'll finally fall asleep.
It's been extremely hard to follow a 3 hour EASY schedule, since he only naps for 30 minutes, and often need to nurse to sleep. So I guess my questions are:
How can I get on a better EASY schedule? How can I get him to nap easier, even though I'm catching his earliest sleep signals? How can I get him to sleep longer than 30 mins, and not wake up after that sleep cycle? How can I make bedtime easier, even though we've had a firm routine since he was 8 weeks old? How can I extend the time between his night feedings? Obviously he isn't hungry if he only nurses for a few seconds.
Thank you for any advice- I am beyond exhausted!
