shush-pat with 11 weeks old

[yujai]

Hi everyone!

I had tried using shush-pat with my 11 weeks old for around 2 weeks.  Most of the time I cannot get her settle while sitting.  Since she is quite young, I decided I will rock as I pat to help her get to the drowsy state.  Once she is calm I put her down and started to cry in the crib.  If I pick her up and pat her until she is calm, often times she already closed her eyes and fell asleep.  what should I do? Should I not pick her up and keep shush-pat in the crib??  So far I don't have 0 success on shush-pat her to calm in the crib.

Also my girl has a somewhat weird nap schedule.  She usually does a 45min-1 hour nap in the morning, then in the afternoon she sometimes can go from 12-3:30pm (with first 2 hours being very unsettle, often wake twice then go to deep sleep for at least 1.5 hours, sometimes even go close to 3 hours).  The late afternoon nap is always the hardest, mostly 30-45 minutes.  And for the night, no matter what I do or when she wakes up, she cannot settle for night until 9pm.  9pm seems to be her natural switch off time.  Even if she wakes before 6pm for the last nap, she cannot settle until 8:30pm.  Not even nursed to sleep.  But once she settles, she sleep quite well during the night, usually only 1 night feeding even without dreamfeed (at 3~4am, then sleep til almost 8am).  I wonder if the long afternoon nap messed up her last nap.  She has this long afternoon nap since a 6~7 weeks old (back in that time she can even nap from 1-6pm, with a dream feed at around 4pm).  Any suggestion?

[newkidontheblock]

Hi there & welcome to BW
Are you using shush-pat as a part of the 4S wind down routine? If she won't settle when you are sitting, stand up and shush/pat. That's what I did with my DD. I would hold till drowsy, then PD and leave her to do the rest. If needed, you could keep a hand on her. Read through the link below.
What does a good wind down consist of (Includes 4S ritual)

Since she is quite young, I decided I will rock as I pat to help her get to the drowsy state.

Rocking can become a prop, which means that she might come to expect & even need it when going to sleep, and maybe even when transitioning through sleep cycles. She is still tiny now but it is a slippery slope. Pat/shush on the other hand is great as you can slowly reduce it over time. In fact, by 4 months, DD didn't need it at all.
Why are Shush Pat and PU/PD not props?

Looking at your nap routine, I do think that you need to tweak it a bit, especially not letting the second nap continue for so long. After such a long nap, there is no way that you will get another good nap and then she is probably OT by bedtime. You could go through this link. There are many sample routines here, and you could get an idea of how to plan your day accordingly. Basically, you want most of her sleep to be in the night, not during the day. That nap being so long definitely sounds to me like her days and nights are slightly mixed up.
Starting EASY - all you need to know and more!

Why don't you read through all these links and then let me know if there is any other help you need

[yujai]

Yes I have a nap time routine: mobile music, read a book, swaddled, song and shush pat as I stand. It seems to take forever to get to her drowsy state if I don't walk round as I shush pat. 

I also have difficulty to identify mantra cry. Often times I lay her down awake, she is probably going start crying in 10 minutes, not the blood murder cry but it doesn't descend or ascend or and it also doesn't sound like the she is going to fall sleep kinda kitten-like cry. In this case, if I pick her up and calm her, she is likely to fall asleep in my arms immediately.  If I don't pick her up, she can keep this kind of crying for 20 minutes.

[newkidontheblock]

nap time routine: mobile music, read a book, swaddled, song and shush pat as I stand. It seems to take forever to get to her drowsy state if I don't walk round as I shush pat.

Do you think it might help to keep it short and sweet? Say just song, swaddle, shush/pat? It might be a bit stimulating with the mobile and book. She needs to understand that it's sleep time, not play time:)

WRT to the crying, it is possible that at those times she was not tired enough yet and got frustrated after a while? How much before the nap do you get her in bed?

[yujai]

I usually take her upstairs in the room after an hour of A time and aim for 1 hr 20min. These days she is btwn 1 hr20-30min (12 weeks old tmr). Most of the time I will see her yawn after I swaddled her or when I pat her back.

Today she actually fell asleep on her own! I shush pat a bit while standing and she was quite quiet so I put her down and walked away (also due to my toddler making noise in front of the crib). She made some noise and fell asleep in less than 10 min! Unfortunately she still wake up at the 45 min but that was a good start!

[newkidontheblock]

Definitely a good start. I too used to put down 20 minutes in advance as per Tracy's recommendation but I was advised to shorten it to 10 minutes and it worked well for us.