Hi there...just had that sinking feeling when you hear baby's voice through the monitor at the 35 minute mark! Even worse than the usual 45 minute! Enough's enough! I had to register and post for some expert help please!
So, my daughter is 1 in a few days and for the past couple of months she has started waking up at 5.15am. Just that bit too early. I never get her up until 6am but still I'm awake listening to her chatter, or more recently, listening to her screaming to get up, not quite as pleasant! Her routine was
6am Up
7am Bottle
8am Breakfast
9.30/10am Nap
12 lunch
3.30 nap
5 dinner
6.30 bed time bottle etc
7.00 bed
She has always gone to bed without a whimper and slept through but the 5.15 starts began to wear me down and so I decided to do some research and try and find a solution. I read that the early morning nap could be her catching up with night time sleep and so the general idea seemed to be to push the nap back till 11 which I did, as well as pushing breakfast back till 9am and lunch back till 1pm. Also it said try and bring the afternoon nap forward with a view to transitioning her to one nap eventually. I kept a sleep diary and brought afternoon nap forward to 2.45/3pm. For 4 days there was a 45 minute nap in morning and afternoon and then she just started refusing afternoon naps completely. Her morning nap was a bit longer at 1 hour 15 to 1 hour 40 on a really good day, but always she would refuse the afternoon nap. I left her for a good 25-30 minutes as well in the hope she would eventually fall asleep but never. It hasn't affected her WU time at all. Disappointingly. It varied from 5- to 5.45.
So I thought, ok. plan B. I read about wake to sleep and started to set my alarm for 4am and go in and gently rouse her and run away and hope that would work. Apart from a few random 6.40 wakes (BLISS) usually it was the same around 5.30. SO if it was just this early waking in isolation, I would accept that that is all she needs but I know that the lack of sleep is affecting her day time naps- or in fact, that her lack of daytime naps is affecting her sleep at night. There has been a few night time stirrings as well lately. She is all over the place at the moment but probably not helped by me trialling things all the time in a bid to FIX IT ( I'm a bit of a control freak!) Her complete point blank refusal to sleep in the afternoon really upsets me as she is so sweet natured and it's started to affect her, she's rubbing her wee eyes all the time, very clingy and wants to be on my knee or held all the time. I'm pretty sure that's cos she's knackered and wants comfort! I tried wake to sleep on her naps as well. I went in after 20 minutes and it worked a treat, she slept 1 hour 20/30 minutes ! Hallelujah! (it's amazing how happy it makes you ha!) but then one day I was proudly showing my husband how it was done and how i'd 'cracked it (aye right!) and I woke her. It was awful. I totally lost my confidence in the whole technique and now worry if I'm going in on the right sleep cycle and I'm so keen for her to get rest I daren't do it again. Especially as she slept 1 hour 20 on her own the other day without my clumsy intervention! So she is only having maximum 45 minutes sleep a day and waking before 6 every day. Not enough sleep and I know it's starting to affect her as she is overtired. NEVER have I had a problem putting her down at BT until these past few days she is waking after 45 minutes again? Or grizzling when she goes down. Normally she's crashed until morning.
So everything I have read suggests that maybe she is transitioning to just one nap a day, as she has consistently been refusing the afternoon nap for the whole of March pretty much. So my plan is now to perhaps hold off till 11.30 and she can have a 2 hour nap and lunch at 1.30pm? In an ideal world. I'm just not sure because that cuts right in to the day as well and she won't nap on the move so that's me house bound at lunch time over summer BOO. Is there a better way? But ultimately whatever is best for her I'll do.
So yesterday, I thought perhaps 10.5 (occasionally 11) hours is all she needs at night so I'll try and move her BT back by half an hour then eventually (when I stop waking up myself at 5.15) it'll be a more sociable post 6am WU. So I tried that last night and she woke at 8.15 on the dot as I think she was overtired by the time she got to bed,but she self settled and I didn't hear her till my heart sank at 5.15 this morning ...but amazingly after a cry for a minute or so, she slept till 6.40am. Wonderful. We went to Stay and Play and I kept her up until 11.30AM. She woke at 12.05pm. Disaster. I am now totally flummoxed because I was going to try for one nap but that's not long enough? Do I put her down this afternoon? But then what routine do I follow? I feel like I am messing around with too many variables and it's negatively impacting on her rest and the poor girl is knackered. So I have just put her down at 2.00pm as she looked knackered and now she is chattering away doesn't sound like she has any intention of sleeping. She is dropping hours left right and centre and the more tired she is the less she wants to sleep! Then it affects the quality of her night time sleep which has always been great. I think the main problem I have now is that I have lost the courage of my own convictions. Each time I think something is working then it doesn't work and the routine is all over the place, I just haven't found one that works yet for this stage. If only someone could give me a definitive routine then I would just stick to it and know I was doing the right thing! PS it's now 2.21pm and she is still wide awake even though she's exhausted. I just don't know what else to do as if she doesn't have a sleep this afternoon she'll be way too tired to stay up till 7.30pm this evening. then I can't stick to my new plan, and it all has a knock on affect to everything. So confusing.
I would appreciate some help please. Sorry to rant.
Lxx
