Hello Kelly!
How are you?
I'm desperate for advice! It's been 2 month, since I had a dissent day nap
DD is 7 month and 10 days old now.
The morning awake time is different every day: 06:30/06:50/07:00/7:15/07:30
For last two month I was following our great advice and increased A time. Around 6 month when we lost the cat nap and increased the A times to 3 hours, I had a perfect week with 2 naps, 1.5 hours each.
Then it all got broken again. I tried to increase A times some more, reached a point of A time of 3:40, but that didn't help. I figured that's too long of an A time anyway, so I went backwards, to try to find the right A time.
Now I'm at 2:40 A time in the morning (before first nap) and 2:10/2:20 before second nap, depends how long DD sleeps on her first nap.
I had a miracle day 3 days ago when those A times worked, but not before and not since.
What happens is that DD falls asleep pretty easy (of course no cues in advance, that I can see) and then sleeps for 20-30-40 minutes. Wakes up, sometimes doesn't want to go back to sleep and I quit after 40 min. Lately, it takes about 10-15 min for her to go back to sleep. She sleeps for 20-30-40 min yet again. Sometimes it's 2-3-4 sets like that before the end of the nap time.
I know from other posts that a 30 min nap is OT and 45 min nap is UT but in my case, it seems that same A times cause different awake time on different days, without me making a significant changes in the activity itself- no new experiences were introduced.
At night DD sleeps relatively well, at times she wakes up crying 2-3 times between 20:00-23:00, gets pacifier and immediately falls asleep. My guess is that it happens only on especially horrible naps days. Also she wakes up for 30-45 min sometimes during the night, bur after a few PU\PD falls back to sleep. That happens on random times, so I'm not worried about that.
In terms of the routine, I stopped following exact times, it all depends on awaking in the morning, so this is the log: first A time 2:40, second A time 2:10/2:20, third A time 2:30 (depends on DD's mood) and sometimes, if she's awake long enough before BT (18:30-19:30, again depends on awakening in the morning), I put her down for cat nap that lasts no longer than 35 min.
For last week I stopped playing with A times, in hope that she'll get used to them but I don't think I'm very successful.
Regarding the food, DD has formula every 4.5-4 hours followed by purred foods, an hour/1.5 hours after the formula. She eats well, so at least I'm not concerned about that.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated,
Thank you in advance,
Daria.