5 mo suddenly taking 25-45 minutes

[lkat]

Hey everyone,

First time poster here although I've been perusing the boards since my baby was born mid-May. She's now just shy of 5 months and has always been a fantastic sleeper until recently. Since 3 months she has been sleeping 7pm-7am with no night wakings as far as I can tell, and until 4 months she was having 3-4 1-2 hour naps per day with a shorter 45 minute nap around 4pm which was working great. Then one day it was like a switch went off and all her naps only lasted 45 minutes, occasionally only 30 minutes. Her average wake time is 1.5 hrs which I know is low for her age BUT I haven't had much success in increasing them; by 1.5 hrs she is usually already overtired (fussy, rubbing her eyes and scratching at her head, burrowing her head in my chest) and ready for sleep.

I've tried various things based on the advice on the boards  - decreasing WT to 1.25 hrs, increasing it to 1.5hrs, or 2 hrs. Yesterday I tried 1.25 hrs of wake time and got 45 minute naps, today I increased it to 1.5 hrs WT and her first nap was only 25 minutes and she has been crying on and off for her second "nap". I've tried pu/pd and shush/pat but she tends to get overly excited and distracted by my presence so neither of these have worked. I was going to try W2S today but her first nap only lasted 25 minutes. I let her fuss in her crib for 30 minutes then went and got her (occasionally she will go back to sleep ). The short naps are a problem because after only sleeping for 45 minutes she is obviously still tired - rubbing her eyes and scratching at her head upon wake up.

She is on a 3hr EASY schedule with bottles of BM at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and 6:30pm, 6-7oz per bottle. I've tried moving her to the 4hr EASY schedule but she is already quite hungry at 3 hrs. She was born 3 weeks early so maybe she is closer to 4mos, not sure how that works exactly.

It's only 12pm here but so far our day has looked like this:

7.15am awake
7.30 eat BM 7oz.
8.45-9.15 sleep
9.15 awake, left in crib until 9.45
10.15 eat 6oz
10.50 put in crib, quiet on monitor
11.00 crying, then quiet again
11.25 awake, cried briefly then quiet again
11.40 more crying then quiet

The EASY schedule was working perfectly when she was having 1-2 hr naps because she would wake and it would be time to eat. Now she wakes after 30-45 mins, and it's 45 minutes -1hr until shes hungry, so she has a bottle and then goes to bed, which messes up the whole eat-play-sleep thing. Grrr.

Advice???

[becj86]

Hi, welcome

At 5mo, she's almost certainly tired at 1.5hr A time out of habit. Average A times go from 1.5hr at 3 months to 2:45-3hr at 6 months so that's an increase of 10-15min per fortnight over those 3 months. She's probably become OT from the short naps. That's something you can only fix by pushing through the OT for a few days and increasing her A times. The first few days, you will likely have to resettle OT short naps of 25-350min, so go in and watch from 20min and resettle when she stirs rather than letting her get worked up. She's too tired to learn much so this is about getting her back to sleep and getting long naps again. I would say to start with 2:15 given she's 5mo and stick with that for a week. Do 2hr for the A time following a short nap if she doesn't resettle.

[lkat]

Hi Becj86,

I took your advice and have seen a lot of improvement today and yesterday. She went from taking several 25-45 min (max) naps to sleeping 1-2.25 hours at a time!! Plus one cat nap towards the end of the day.

Yesterday I tracked our schedule and it looked like this:

A 7.30am WU
E 8.00am 7oz
S 9.20am-10.20am

A 10.20am
E 10.45am 6oz
E 12.35pm 2oz topup
S 12.45pm-2.30pm (woke briefly in the middle, fussed a bit, went back to sleep) -- should have had her down a bit sooner here but we were at a baby group, I think I should have done her nap routine at 12.15

A 2.30
E 2.45 6oz
S 4.45-5.15pm in stroller

A 5.15
E 630
S 7.00pm-7.30am


It is so frustrating, before this sleep regression her sleepy cue which was yawning was really accurate. As soon as i would see her yawn, id get her right off to bed and she'd fall right to sleep for 1-2 hrs. Now she doesn't seem to yawn and when she does it is not necessarily because she is tired ( I see her yawning sometimes at 1 or 1.5 hrs AT), grr. I guess she is at the age where most people go by AT and not necssarily sleepy cues?

Any advice on the EASY schedule?

[becj86]

She may need a touch more A time - say 2:30 but just stick with 2:15 for a few more days at least and see how that settles. Much better naps there than you had been getting, so that's good.

[lkat]

Unfortunately she has gone back to only sleeping 45 minutes at a time during the day I've been keeping her awake about 2 hrs. My question is, if she is only having 45 minute naps should I shorten her awake time or keep it at 2 hrs?

[becj86]

Ok, so 2hr is not long enough, as expected, so increase to 2:15 and see if that helps.