Help with 3-2 transition, 6 month old

[Tabathagucci]

Hello! I'm having some trouble with the 3-2 transition and also having some night wakings that may or may not be related to the naps.
Background, 6 months today, low sleep needs, mild reflux under control by diet, sleeps elevated, swaddled, darkened room with white noise.  Based on help from the EASY forum I discovered that she has to be REALLY tired in order to transition on her own.  Otherwise I have to resettle with the paci.  Depending on how tired she is, sometimes that involves a single quick paci replug, others it's 20 minutes of replug with hand on chest.  Generally the more tired she is the easier it is to resettle.  She also seems to be in her 6 month growth spurt since she's been demanding to be fed every 2-3 hours instead of every 3.5-4.5.  According to wonder weeks, we are on the tail end of leap 5, 9 days left.  We also just stared solids 1-2 times a day.  So lots going on!
We've had to push A times a lot and fairly quickly because she is low sleep needs but since I've had a 3 hour A time, we usually get a solid morning nap (transitions on her own, or needs one replug), but the pm nap has been more spotty.  She has transitioned on her own for pm but only once and it's a toss up as to whether I can resettle her or not.

Here is our EASY on a good day when she's not in a growth spurt:
Wake 6:30
E 6:35
A (3 hrs)
S 9:30-11
E 11:05
A (3 hrs)
S 2-3:30
E 3:35
A (3 hrs)
E 6 pm
S 6:30 (wakes around 30-40 mins, needs paci replugged usually only once and right back to sleep)
Wakes around 3 am (has gone till 3:30/4 or even later a few times) to nurse and back down till 6/6:30.
Recently she's been waking earlier and earlier for her night feed, it's been around 2, but last night was 1:30.  I usually try (and succeed) to hold her off till 3 am because if I nurse her any earlier I tend to get an early wake up (5/5:30) and often won't go back down after nursing. When I do hold her off she spends much of this time awake in her crib sucking on her paci.

When she doesn't resettle for nap 2, we do a 30 min stroller nap 2 hours after she wakes and a bed time about 2-2.5 hours after the stroller nap.  If we are out and about, she tends to fall asleep in the car at about the 2 hour mark no matter what time of day.  If this happens, we do a stroller nap and bed time as above (at 2 and 2.5 hours respectively).  The low A times are in order to keep the day from being too long.

Anyway, sorry so long and would love any advice on how to improve this!  Maybe just wait it out?

[lolsyb1982]

Hi that routine looks good!

A lot of us on the birth club thread found that when going to 2 naps the am one was the more established one and the 2nd one took longer to become more reliable and was more like 7 months before they settled into it.

Personally I think you just need to stick to what you're doing and wait for her to settle into the routine and to come out of the developmental leap she's in as that often causes lots of sleep disruption.

[Tabathagucci]

Ok great!  Kind of what I was thinking but good to hear it from someone else! 😊

[Tabathagucci]

Things are still much the same, but she's starting to sleep long at night, till 4 or 4:30 (yay!). She's still having some wake ups but resettles very easily until that time.  Only issue is, I've been having a heck of a time getting her back to sleep after nursing.  She'll usually fall asleep during feeding, but when I burp her she wakes and is hard to get back to sleep unless I nurse her again and then doesn't want to unlatch and go back to the crib. Any suggestions or is this just something that passes?

Also, she falls asleep if in the stroller or car at the 2 hour A time mark, which makes it hard to go anywhere for very long.  And she seems to get hungry before her nap, but if I nurse her she starts falling asleep.  I remember most of this happening with ODS, but that was almost 5 years ago.  Assume she'll grow out of this as well or am I doing something majorly wrong? 

Thanks!

[lolsyb1982]

Have you tried not burping her for NF? Usually LO are relaxed enough when drinking in the night that they don't take in much air.

Falling asleep in the car etc before naps is all very normal so nothing you're doing wrong at all! It's just one of those things unfortunately and when they are little with lots of naps it does make getting out and about a bit more tricky.

[Tabathagucci]

I will try not burping tomorrow, I used to not burp but lately she's been super fidgety during and free night feeds so I've been trying to burp.  Last night I put her down after feed and she kept fidgeting so I tried burping her and she let out a huge burp.  It still took her some time to settle after that but seemed less restless.  I will try tomorrow and see how I goes tho!  Too late tonight! 

[Tabathagucci]

One more question, is there a rule of thumb about the latest the 3rd nap should be?  I've been giving her a nap if bed time will be before 6 pm, but that still seems early!  I know it depends on the baby, but just wondering if there's a general guideline.
Thank you!

[Scottishmummy]

That's pretty much what I did with both of mine.

[Tabathagucci]

Ok I'm at my wit's end.  She woke at 1:15.  I don't normally feed till at least 3 so I gave her the paci and she lay quietly but awake for a while.  I had to replug a couple times but she was calm so I left her. I finally fed her at 2:30.  She was restless feeding for a while but finally fell asleep.  Once she was suckling but not swallowing for a while I unlatched her.  She was ok for a few seconds but then started fussing. Gave her paci and that didn't help so I just put her back in crib with paci and she's laying there wide awake.  I've now been awake for almost 2 hours in the middle of the night. 
Is this normal for the 3-2 transition?  Is this the developmental leap? I can't keep doing this...I'm so tired. Sorry for the vent...
Update: after all that she slept from 3:15-6, 9h40m overnight.  Truer nursing her back to sleep and got 30 mins of restless sleep before she unlatched and wouldn't sleep any more.  Feel like I'm messing this all up.😟

[Scottishmummy]

Hey

Don't be so hard on yourself, you're not messing things up, sounds like just one of those nights.  Could be a number of things- developmental, hunger, nap transition..etc.

Try not to stress about it, hopefully it's a one off. Carry on as you are, keep a log of your days if you want and come back if you still feel the nap routine is impacting on your nights.

[Tabathagucci]

Thank you! It's hard when I'm so exhausted to think logically about all this.  So we haven't had a really good nights sleep in over a week.  It seems if we have 3 naps she wakes early (1:30 or so) and I keep putting her back to sleep until 3 then feed her and put her back down but getting her back down has been increasingly hard.  If we have 2 naps, she sleeps well for the first part of the night but then wakes between 3 and 4:30 and I'm lucky if I get her back down for another hour until 6.  So it seems no matter what I do we have bad nights.  Plus it's been hard for me to tell her exact wake up in the morning either because I've nursed her back to sleep and she sleeps on and off until wake up or because when I finally get her back down I'm so tired that by the times she makes enough noise to wake me up it appears that she's been awake for at least a few minutes but I have no way of knowing.  I've been using 3 hour A time from the time I see her awake and it's been working ok for the first nap but I've been having to resettle her more instead of her sleeping through and not sure if that's because she needs an A time push or because she's overtired! 

[Scottishmummy]

Yes the 3-2 is such a juggle with 3naps giving UT and 2 OT!

Are you doing early bedtime on 2nap days?

And on 3 nap days how short is your 3rd nap? I cut both of mine to only 10-15mins for a 3rd nap at this point in the transition.

She'll get there soon
Xxx

[Tabathagucci]

On 2 nap days I do her bed time about 3 hours after she wAkes from her nap. It looks like her A times might be moving past 3 hours.  After several days of difficult resettling for second nap, I pushed the A time a few mins and was much easier to resettle and she even slept all the way through once. 
Her third nap us usually 25-30 mins. I can try to cut short but it's often hard because she's undertired so her sleep is restless and hard to tell when she's officially asleep!
I tried it burping her tonight and she ends up waking up every time I try to unlatch then is restless with the paci in my arms.  Last night she got so restless I just put her down and she fell right to sleep. Tonight she started crying when I put her down so I burped her (she let out a big one) then stopped crying but now been fidgeting for 30 mins so far after I put her down. 
She seems to be resettling a little easier (even if just a tiny bit!) each night so maybe she's just coming out of the developmental leap!

[Tabathagucci]

Question...how do we handle late wake ups?  She slept until 8 today by some miracle and her normal A time is approaching 3.5 hours, but by 10:45 she was all over the place so I put her down so her A time was only 2h45m.  Otherwise her nap would have been at 11:30, which seems so late!  Is there some sort of general rule for these types of situations?  Maybe I just watch her signs and wing it but wondering what others do! Thanks!

[Scottishmummy]

Hi
Late wake ups are sometimes catching up on sleep (I think) so the first nap often then happens close to usual time (perhaps a little later) rather than after full A time. So yes watching for tired cues around or shortly after usual first naptime often works.
HTH
Xxx