We had some great successes over the last month getting DD to sleep independently. She was sleeping through the night and she was falling asleep really well on her own (maybe too well, I will get to that). This last week has been really challenging. She has been waking at fairly random times at night, and having a great time playing, yapping, cooing, you name it. I leave her as long as she is not screaming, but inevitably 1) she keeps me awake as I am a light sleeper and 2) she ends of screaming eventually and by then she has been up for 30 minutes. This also gets in the way of her daytime sleep as she has now gotten better at playing in her crib at naptime as well.
2 night ago she was up 3 times at night, then ended up having a marathon nap from 9-12 in the morning to make up for the lost sleep and then hardly napped all day as she was playing instead (she had a 20 minute nap in the car) so was exhausted by bedtime. She fell asleep midway through her bedtime bottle and then was up at 2:00, 3:30 and 6:30 last night. I fed her at 2:00 and at 6:30 (those are not atypical for her - if she does wake up it is often around 2:00 and she often wakes for the day at 6:30). She fell right asleep at 6:30 after gulping down her morning bottle, which she only does when she has had a rough night. She woke up for the morning at 8:00 and I just put her down for her nap (9:30 - she often naps 1-1.5 hours after she wakes up).
The reason that I said she used to fall asleep too well is that I always watch for her sleep cues and when she gets tired, she starts to suck her thumb. It used to be that no matter how long her A time was, when the thumb moved to her mouth, I would put her in her bed and she would fall asleep in under 5 minutes. I think the result of this is that she got onto a very short A schedule (so maybe 1 hour A, rather than 2). I think that this had a negative impact in that she was a bit disorganized on her EASY routine - she would wake, eat, play, nap, play, sometimes nap again, eat, rather than eat, play, nap.
So please give me some pointers on 1) what to do with the middle of the night party in her crib, 2) what to do about the multiple wakings and when I should feed vs. when I shouldn't feed and 3) what should I aim for in terms of daytime routine?
Here is a better day:
6:30 wake and bottle
7:30 nap time
9:00 wake
9:30 bottle or solids
10:30 nap
12:00 wake
12:30 bottle
2:00 nap
2:45 wake
3:30 bottle
5:00 sometimes nap
6:00 solids
7:30/8:00 bath and bedtime
2:00 sometimes bottle
OR
6:30 bottle and back to sleep
8:00 wake
8:30 solids
9:00 nap
11:00 wake and bottle
12:30/1:00 nap
1:30 wake
2:00 bottle
3:30 nap
4:30 wake
6:00 solids
7:30/8:00 bath and bedtime
2:00 sometimes bottle
On worse days, there are more 45 minute naps that are broken up by play periods, rather than nice 1.5 hour naps (so nap for 45 minutes, play for 20 minutes, nap again).