Bed time

[Rgk2015]

My little guy is 11 weeks old. We swaddle him for all maps and bedtime and use white noise. When it's nap time I swaddle and rock him and he is usually out in minutes (haven't mastered awake but drowsy yet). His naps usually only last 45 min but that is another issue altogether.

I follow the same swaddle and rock routine with white noise at bedtime and it can take anywhere from 30 min to 2.5 hours for him to fall asleep! I need help I can't keep spending 2 hrs getting him to sleep or I will go insane. He usually is not crying, he is just wide awake staring at me. If I put him down and try to get him to put himself to sleep he flails his legs and head and starts fussing and then crying.

 Below is our sample daily schedule. Any suggestions??

E 630-7 Wake change eat
A 7-815
S 8:15-9/9:15(usually he wakes happy after 45 min and just talks to himself so I leave him in there for a bit until he starts fussing)
E 930
A 930-11
S 11-12
E 12:30
A 12-1:30
S 1:30-3:30
E 3:30
A 3:30-5
S 5-5:45
E 6
A 6-7:30
S 7:30 begin routine, Jammie's, book, swaddle and white noise (usually doesn't fall asleep until 9 or 9:30)
E 4 am (occasionally will wake at midnight in addition but this 4 am feeding is pretty constant)

So my concern is if I keep him awake any longer at night he is fussing and cranky, but if I swaddle him he is calm and seems tired but will just not fall asleep. I've tried more awake time during the day, but he starts showing tired signs through the day so I put him down. As you can see our short naps are causing us to be on more of a 2.5 hour schedule, but that's another question all together.

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated!

[Kellyjs]

Hi and welcome to the forums 

Don't worry there's plenty of time to master the awake but drowsy thing, it's still early days yet. What you can do when you're ready is slowly reduce the time spent rocking over a couple of weeks and start to put him down just that bit earlier.

Now A time is calculated from eyes open o eyes shut, so what I can see initially is that your last A is too long. I would suspect he's OT by the time BT comes along. Especially after a short nap, you're hitting 2hrs + for that last A aren't you? Average A time for this age is around 1hr20-30 max, but after a short nap I'd bring that down to an hour and see if that helps with the BT? I much prefer UT at BT than OT!

That being said, I hate UT during the day, which I suspect is going on with your first nap. I think you're working off a 1hr 15mins A? I would try and increase that by just 10mins for now and aim to be asleep at 1hr 25mins and see if that helps? It may take some tweaking on that bit to get it right but we can definitely work o that too. Looks like you're getting a good solid nap later on after 1.5hrs A after an hour nap so I'd keep that as is.

If you could try both of these and let me know how you go? Then we can take it from there. If you could log your days in real time for me we'll keep tweaking until we get it right for you xx

[Rgk2015]

Thank you for the tips! I will try them today and let you know how it goes!

[Kellyjs]

Good luck, keep me posted xx