Hi everyone,
My LO is 12weeks old and for the last month and a half we haven't managed to get her to sleep for long stretches during the day. 50min is a victory, but most naps are 30-45min long. This, obviously, makes EASY quite challenging.
I've read the three fundamental questions to know if baby is a short-napper or linked to OT/UT and I'm unsure:
* Does baby sleep well at night
yes! She used to do 11pm-9am with a feed at 5am and the last couple of weeks she's started sleeping 10pm-5.50/6am more and more often without a feed. She sometimes stirs or wakes up but goes back to sleep by herself after a while.
* Has baby ever slept for longer stretches?
Only three times. Once three weeks ago, she slept for 2h at lunchtime. I keep staring at the schedule that day and can't see anything different. A couple of times in the last month she's also stayed asleep after a walk in the pram, again reaching 1h30/2h of sleep (once at 2-4pm, once at 4-6pm). Again, no idea why as nothing was different that day.
* Is baby grumpy?
Not generally. Every other time she wakes up crying though, with real tears but she has a big smile as soon as I arrive. She sometimes still seems tired though, yawning or rubbing her eyes. Today, I could see on the monitor that she was trying to go back to sleep, putting her little head on the side as she always does when getting sleepy but it wasn't working. After 15min she started crying out of frustration so I went upstairs to help. She kept calming down, getting drowsy and even asleep (eyes closed, little reflexes and yapping when she descends into sleep) only to pop her eyes awake again and crying out of frustration of not being able to sleep. Because she was so close each time I kept trying... for 1h!
Last time we did this we ended up spending the whole 1h30 of her A time nearly succeeding at extending her nap and she finally fell asleep after 1h30 but I suspect she was then UT as she had a rubbish nap of 18min which I extended by 12min.
So today I decided to get her up to give her some A time for at least 30min (tummy time, proper stimulation) and she fell asleep easily after that...but only for 40min.
So I suspect my answer is that baby isn't a short-napper and we should be able to get over it but how?
She knows how to fall asleep by herself and that's now how she goes down 90% of the time (I put a hand on her for a couple of minutes then just stay by the basket and she falls asleep by herself).
I've been trying to extend the naps (no shusshing as this stimulates her too much, I've even stopped the patting but a firm hand on her chest works well) to no avail.
I used to give her 1h of A time, reducing to 45min if nap shorter than 45min, but we were having massive tantrums before going to sleep, it was horrible and the naps weren't any longer. The HV suggested to extend the A time to 1h30 and she was right, she now goes down happily and by herself. Maybe I should push to 1h45 and see? But I read somewhere that anything under 45min means OT baby... I'm confused.
An other point I will certainly address in another thread is that she still eats every 2h (it's changing at the moment, she can do 3h but is sometimes ravenous after 2h15...). Not a problem at all for me and lots of people have said not to try to push it back as I EBF. But again, this makes EASY all over the place - although it works better with short naps than 3h EASY.
Thanks for your opinions!