Short naps

[Jbroomer]

Hi all, first time posting here!  So excited to discover this community.  So I have a 12 week old girl who I'm having trouble keeping on a 3 hour schedule.  She gets cranky around 45 mins of awake time and I need to hold her for the last 15 mins in order for us to make it to an hour of awake time.  Then she naps 30-45 mins and wakes up.  I don't believe she is waking because she was overtired (as developmentally she she be awake longer than an hour).  I usually can pick her up and rock her back to sleep and she'll sleep another 45 mins or so if I hold her.  If i try to put her down or even just not pick her up and put the soother back in then she just fully wakes up).   With such a short awake time and short naps how can I stick to a three hour routine?  I should specify that we swaddle, turn on white noise and give her a soother and she always drifts off to sleep in about 5 mins without a fuss.  I have tried a tiny bit of wake to sleep with no luck, but I'll give it another go if you can confirm that that is a good idea.  Any other thoughts?  I should mention that this has been an issue for most of her life.  She was almost never a typical sleepy newborn and has pretty much never had a longer nap in her life unless held and jiggled constantly.   Also, often when picking her up from a nap she either farts or spits up.... So maybe that is also contributing?? (She is a major happy spitter)

[creations]

Hi there and welcome to BW forums

So excited to discover this community.

We're glad you found us

It sounds like you need to be a bit more focused on extending the A time to be honest.  In one of the BW books Tracy describes how to put a routine in place it might be necessary to keep a LO awake and to "do a fan dance if necessary" (or words to that effect).  Whilst BW is about following LOs cues for sleep it is also about setting up good routines which suit your LO, this might mean ignoring the sleepy cues which are coming from habit (she is used to going to sleep after a short A time but also used to waking up after a short nap then can only last a short A time) and watching the clock for a while instead.  When you encourage LO to stay awake longer, to a more age appropriate time, there is more chance of a better nap length, there is also more chance of you being able to use W2S (wake to sleep) successfully as it won't work without a suitable routine or to resettle and extend the nap more successfully.

I think you already looked at the guidance times but here's a link in case:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=84884.0
at 3 months it's around 1hr 20 to 1hr 30
I would increase her A time by 10 mins then wait 3 days or so and increase again, you should then reach 1hr 20.  Wait at 1hr 20 to see what happens.  She may need another increase of 10 mins.
It's okay to hold her for some of that A time, there no requirement that she entertain herself for the activity, but perhaps do something different, maybe go for a slow walk around the house or go and look out of thee window together and talk about what you can see.
I do think it's worth trying W2S again with the increased A time.
Although your LO is going to sleep independently she might not have learned yet how to transition from one sleep cycle to the next, W2S and you helping her is one of the methods to learn to link the cycles.  If you want her to nap in the cot the full  nap I would probably try to resettle one nap per day without automatically picking up, if she is crying for you then of course pick up and sooth in arms, but then once she is calm I'd put her back down and shush/pat in the cot all the way to sleep and into deep sleep if necessary.  it's habit teaching as well as reassuring and building her confidence to sleep alone by helping her when she needs it.

I must also add "happy spitter" was what my DS was called by multiple doctors and health visitors.  He was anything but happy when it stopped him sleeping.  Only when I insisted on a paediatrician referral was he diagnosed with silent reflux and medicated to control it. Silent reflux or reflux can have a big impact on sleep and could be the reason that she has taken short naps her whole life so far.  I am no reflux expert I just know my own experience and what I've read on the forum but spitting up after that length of time would indicate to me that the reflux needs looking into.

For farting, if it is causing pain this could be adding to the problem of waking too like you said. Cycling the legs can help, I gently pulled one leg to the side and up and then across to the other side then lowered (all quite slowly) and did the other leg rather than cycling the legs and could almost play my DS like bag pipes!  Maybe some of the crankiness is wind or reflux rather than tiredness?  You could do some farting exercises before nap time, that would take up a bit of A time, you might even get a smile out of her.

hope this helps some, there are a few things to consider there.  let us know how you get on.