Push As or cut naps first?

[Kiwi_one]

Hi ladies,

Once again (happens with every single one of my babes ) I have "lost" DD's routine by not realising at the time that she needed an A-time increase and now things are a shambles!

I know she needs significantly longer A times and that she naps much too much for her age because she's making up for all her bad nights. What I'm not sure on is how to go about fixing it. She still naps well so I'm not sure you'd say she's in an OT spin so would the first port-of-call be to cut back the nap length?

Yesterday (after a bad night) went like this:

EA  0745
S   0920-1130  (woken)
EA  1130
S  1330-1555 (lost track of time and woke her up very late obviously)
AEA  1555  (Tried to put down for a nap 1730 but she wasn't interested)
S   1915-1945

Woke 1945 crying hard. We tried to settle in the cot first, tried another feed, etc. but DH finally gave up at 0130 and she slept in my bed overnight (which she usually finds impossible to do).


I tried some longer A times last week and she took shorter naps but I think she was actually getting to sleep at something closer to a normal time (say 9, 930pm).

The best day we've had for a number of weeks was last Saturday (also after a bad night):

EA   0715
S    0830-1005
AEA   1005
S   1215-1410
AEA   1410
S   1640ish-1840
EA   1840 (she took lots of solids this A-time which I'm thinking helped)
"Bedtime"   1920ish
E 1800

I can't remember if she slept at all before I fed her at 8pm, I have a feeling not, but she settled after that with only a few replugs (she still has a dummy and is swaddled with white noise).

[Kiwi_one]

Perhaps I should say that a few weeks ago -- the last time her routine was more settled but not perfect -- she was doing As of 1:20, 1:30, ~1:00, and ~40min and sleeping till the 4-hour mark. It was taking a couple of hours for her to fall asleep at night so clearly (in hindsight) she needed an A-time push at the first and second As then.

[jessmum46]

Is she nearly 7 months?  I think you need to get onto a two nap routine really, she may well be HSN if she was doing such short A times and four naps until recently, but there are some rapid increases in A time at this age and it can be tough to catch up!  Ended up there with DD and trying desperately not to fall into the same trap with DS at the moment!!

Looking at your posts she is using the first nap as an extension of night sleep.  It's only long on such a short A time because of a bad night, so the first thing to do is to work on pushing her first A time.  I'd do 10 mins every 3-4 days, and aim to get to 2.5h as a minimum fairly quickly, and ideally closer to 3h.  Sounds scary I know, and if you jump there all at once she'll be a bit of a mess as she's used to having that long nap to catch up, but if I tell you that DS at 4.5mo is doing 2.5h A time first thing you'll see she really is having a very short first awake time right now.

As long as her first nap goes ok (an hour or more) I would also push her second A time a bit.  I think she's probably only napping well on the short A times because of her bad nights right now, but once you've pushed her a bit hopefully the nights will start to improve and you can push her more.  It may well get more messy before it gets better, but that's because you need to cut back on her daytime sleep first before nights will improve.  Arm yourself with some chocolate!!  OT will happen, that's part of transition, but pushing through it really does help with the 3-2.

To get to a good two nap routine you need to probably have 2h30-45 A times across the day as a minimum.  If they are significantly shorter I would try for the third nap in any way you can but keep it short and aim for a 13h day maximum.  If your A times get up to to 2h30+ range and your second nap ends at around 3/3.30pm I would skip the third nap and do BT around 3h after she wakes from her nap.

How does that sound?