Hoping some of you who have gone through this can help. I'm stuck in a terrible cycle of short naps with my 2.5 month old. At around the 30-40 min mark, she wakes up crying, which I gather is because she isn't transitioning to a deeper sleep cycle.
I've tried many of the expert recommendations for soothing her back to sleep (but while also being mindful of not creating bad habits) and what seems to work is the paci...but after say 3 mins from the initial waketime, she cries again, and in goes the paci. She'll jolt herself awake (like she can't quite get in to a good sleep...but she is swaddled) and so goes the paci in again. We'll do this for about 20-40 mins, and then she typically goes down for the longer haul.
The problem is that this is every nap for the past couple of weeks. We've had visitors and a vaccine shot (which made her very fussy) during this time, so I think we have some external circumstances at play. Also, she goes down fine at around 1.5-2 hours, so that part is ok.
Her nights were good, then got bad, but these past few have gotten better with some tweaking of the bedtime schedule. I'm hoping that a better night sleep will help with the nap issue.
If I need to do the 20-40 min hover for a short while and she will eventually figure out how to transition on her own, then I'll do that. But if you have other tips, I'd love to hear them. Anything to avoid the nap extension hover...and to get some of my life back during the day.
Many thanks!
