Hello and welcome to BW forums
Don't apologise for questions others might have asked, everyone has their own situation and every baby is an individual. We welcome people starting new threads with their questions.
It takes time to gently sleep train a young baby, so the short naps you are experiencing are quite normal, he naturally wants to be in your arms or close by you. Tracy said in her books that often parents experience LO waking up 10-20 mins after being put down asleep and this is to be expected when LO has not yet learned to fall to sleep independently or to stay asleep without being held. One of the methods to help with this is to continue to shush/pat until LO reaches the deep sleep phase 20 mins after going to sleep. This means continuing to keep a hand on LO either fully patting or reducing (over time you would reduce to gradually wean this and teach LO to sleep independently) which can take up quite a lot of your time and energy. Some people choose to do this once or twice per day rather than for every nap. It's your choice.
The next thing to look out for is that at around 40/45 mins your LO comes out of one sleep cycle and moves into the next. This again can be a time when LO fully wakes because they are not close to you or being held and have not yet learned to transition alone. You can help to teach LO he is safe and to sleep longer by shush/patting through the transition time, we call this W2S (wake to sleep). This usually begins with patting at the 30 min mark and continues again into the deep sleep phase so depending when the end of the first cycle comes this could be 20 or 30 mins of shush/pat.
With patting through to the deep sleep phase and adding a W2S at the transition you could be shush/patting almost throughout the nap, this is a gentle method of sleep training and the patting is gradually reduced over time. However this is also why some people choose to do this once per day rather than every nap as it can be very hard work and you are already tired. For the other naps you might use a sling or push chair or hold LO either for the full nap or to extend the nap after a short nap in the cot.
For the EASY cycles. If your LO is comfortably eating every 3hrs you do not need to alter this, LO does not need to eat every time he wakes up from a short nap as he might not be hungry enough to take a good feed, obviously if he is hungry then go ahead and feed him. If you stick with 3hrly feeds you would need to watch the clock and possibly move the E a bit earlier than the 3hrs so that you can get him down for his next nap in time. If he continues to short nap through the day you might even see two short naps come between the feeds. The point of the EASY routine is to avoid feeding to sleep becoming a prop, for this you can include a few mins A time after the E and before S, a nappy change is often a good way to put a little A time between and avoid the prop habit.
Using the example you gave of waking at 6am and taking short naps your morning might look like this:
WU 6.00 (wake up)
E 6.00
A 1hr 15
S 7.15 - 8 (45 min)
A 1hr (reduced following a short nap)
E 8.30 (2.5hr so as to fit in before S)
nappy change
S 9.00 - 9.45 (45 min)
A 1hr
S 10.45 - 11.30 (45 min)
E 11.30 (there have been 2 short naps before this E)
Obviously this is only an example. Things would look quite different if LO only sleeps 10 mins after being put down or if the nap is extended with W2S or with extending in arms or in a sling.
The A time at this age is around 1hr 15 to 1hr 20, this is counted from when he wakes to when he sleeps and all activity between including feeding and nappy changes if he is OT (over tired) he might find it harder to get to sleep or stay asleep. Often we reduce the A time a bit after a short nap to avoid LO becoming OT. There are times we suggest a full A time and this is when we suspect LO is UT (under tired) which can also cause nap problems.
It takes time to get onto a consistent routine, you will get there.
I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions or need more support.
