Babe stays awake in the evening hours.

[kendra's mom]

First of all, I think Tracy's book have been a God send.  This is my first child and it has helped so much to have such guidance.
I have a 3 month old girl and I have been following the EASY program since 2 weeks of age.  Right now she gets up at 7 am, plays till 8-8:30 then goes down for a nap usually until 11 am.  At 11 am she is up for her feed and then tends to remain active until her afternoon sleep around 12:30 pm sometimes 1 pm.  She then will sleep until around 3pm.  That is when the confusion starts.  She'll feed and then be another 1 1/2 to 2 hours awake.  If, when and how long she sleeps after that last feed is very variable.  She will feed around 7-8 pm and then usually wants to remain awake until 9:30-10 pm.  I do feed her at the 9:30-10 pm mark and either she'll go to sleep ASAP or stay up till 11pm.  She then sleeps through until 7 am.  What do I do to get her to just go down for the night at 7-7:30 pm or will she in time convert to that on her own??  Have I screwed up her evenings somehow?  I hesitate to skip the 9:30-10 pm feed as I fear she may wake up during the night but I have never been very skilled at the dreamfeeds.  Some guidance/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Jaime]

let me see if i've understood correctly...

morning nap 8:30-11
afternoon nap 12:30ish-3
another nap around 5:30

how long is that last nap?  seems to me like she goes down late cause she is sleeping an awful lot during the day.  the afternoon nap seems fine but 2.5 hrs in the morning sounds long to me.  that 3rd nap should probably be less than an hour.

HTH a little

[kendra's mom]

Yes, that is basically how the day goes.  Today the morning and afternoon naps were both 2 hours (she has 2 hour activity periods).  The nap around suppertime lasted about 45 minutes and then she ate around 8 pm.  Should I shorten up the nap time by giving her some activity before a feed??

[Jaime]

i would be inclined to cut the morning nap off at 1.5 hours, and definitely by 2 hours.  any more and i think you're going into nighttime sleep. 

plus, by shortening that morning nap, you bring the day up a little earlier, and that catnap should be done before 6pm - having a baby well ready for bed by 7:30/8pm.

short activity time before a feed may also help if you're having problems with your lo focusing on eating.

HTH