Daytime naps - 8 week old wakes after 40 mins

[magicmicka]

Hello

Our baby is 8 weeks today and we can't seem to get him to stay asleep during the day. Initially he resisted going down at all but since we started using shush pat and a double swaddle he responds really well and goes asleep quite easily. However, he keeps waking on the 20, 30 minute jolts and usually wakes completely after 1 sleep cycle. We stay with him to help him through the jolts but can't seem to get him to transition into another sleep cycle. He does seem quite gassy and farting a lot and sometimes it seems like this is what's waking him but he sleeps quite well at night for 3/4/5 hours at a time without waking.

Any suggestions on what we can do?

[lolsyb1982]

Hi there and welcome to BW  Congratulations on your new baby!

40min naps are a huge pain and are completely developmental. Babies tend to work on night sleep first and naps come after.
What does your day look like in EAS format? Will he sleep longer if he's in a pram/sling etc?

At this age you want to keep baby as well rested as possible so if he does nap for longer in the pram etc it's ok to do that as well. Usually mums try the first nap in the cot and then want to get out and about so have some on the go.

[magicmicka]

Thanks for your reply and apologies for my delay in responding, we have been on holidays over Christmas.
The ideal day is wake at 7 for feed and play and we have started lengthening the wake time to 1.5 hrs as he is 11 weeks now.
3 hours between feeds, trying to increase to 4 but not having much luck extending at present.
he has been in the habit of waking early over the past 2 weeks - 5.5.30ish and we shush pat him back to sleep.
shush pat also doesn't seem to work anymore so we're considering switching to pu/pd when it's not happening.
he does get some sleep in a sling, pram is a bit hit and miss but definitely doesn't sleep longer than one cycle.
I'd like to give more detailed info about the easy routine but much as we try without the sleep we just can't seem to establish a regular routine. We do give him play time after his feed and get him down to nap after no more than 1.5 hrs. We were doing 1 hour but seems like he needs to be awake longer as he is very alert and engaged.

in the past week, the naps have gotten worse and his night sleeping has been erratic too (except last night he slept from 7.30pm to 12.30am to feed and woke again at 4.45am to feed down at 5.30am until 7am)
we're thinking that this is a wonder week and may account for the disturbance to his regular sleep and we're hoping he will improve once he has settled into it.

[lolsyb1982]

It doesn't matter if you don't feel your day is a real routine as such if you could just log the next few days worth of timings (no matter what they are) just so I can see if we can help make things a little more predictable although that may not come for a few more weeks yet as he's still very young and I found routines didn't settle into place until more like 4/5 months for my two girls no matter how hard I tried!