Hi. I’ve been reading Tracy’s book and some other books and meticulously scanned this site, and I have gathered some tips that might help me, but I wanted to ask the forum first.
The problem: once a good sleeper (knew how to fall asleep on her own) turned into a 35-45 min napper after turning 2 months. Also, somewhere along the way we managed to “lose” her ability to fall asleep on her own and she became a paci-addict. With a paci, she goes down very easily, sometimes I have to do a few minutes of shush-pat in her crib, but that’s it.
I know the paci is a prop - she doesn’t wake up when it falls out and she is deeply asleep, but it has fallen out by the time 2nd sleep cycle begins, so she will wake up. I’ve tried shush patting, putting the paci back in her mouth, pupd-ing (the version for 3mos), but nothing works. Usually she wakes up smiling and being cute, but often she is cranky. The added problem is that she wants to feed, but sometimes it will be an hour until the next feed (an hour full of fussing and crankiness).
We’re taking her out in the stroller for at least one 1,5-2 h nap a day so she wouldn’t become OT.
So you see, it is hard to keep her on the EASY schedule like this, and I can’t even begin to think how I could shift her into 4 h EASY like this.
Now, the bedtime problem. The main problem is that… I don’t know when it is! Up until 2 mo I could see she wanted to go to night sleep at 6ish, but after that it’s been here and there – sometimes it’s 8, sometimes it’s 9… The problem here is that she wakes up also after 45 min or so after I put her down to bed. For the past few weeks we’ve been going in putting the paci back in and not feeding, lest it creates a bad habit, but she is still doing that. Could it be she is hungry? She wakes up 2 times at night.
I feel like there’s no solid bedtime with her - just an endless cycle of naps.
I’ll post our typical day:
E: 7 wake up and eat
A: 1.5-2 h
S 8:30/9
E: 10
A: 1.5-2 h
S 11:30/12
E: 13
A: 1.5-2 h
S: 2:30/3
Usually either this one or the earlier one is the time I take her out in the stroller, meaning a longer nap
E: 16
A: 1.5-2 h
S:... This is where it starts to get messy. There are mostly two ways: A) She has been fighting the cat nap between 5 and 6 and wants to go down at 6. But this means that she’ll be up slightly before 7. And this means that bedtime is 8:30/21, but I think it is too late. And still she wakes up after I put her down.
B) she doesnt take a cat nap at all and makes it until 7, she eats and drops off. ...only to wake up about 45 min later. Sometimes I cave and feed her.
Some solutions I picked up:
To help with the 45 min naps:
topping up. How exactly does this work? Does it mean that BEFORE the nap I give a slight feed?
WTS: going in about 25 min after she has fallen asleep and holding her.
Eliminating paci as prop? I am swaddling her because she keeps pushing the paci out, but with a paci, can she ever learn how to connect the two sleep cycles? Because 99% of the time it has fallen out by the second cycle.
…..
I haven’t found anything to help me figure out when is her natural bedtime - any ideas?
Sorry for the long post!
