Hi Jane,
Thanks so much for responding so quickly! I'll try to be as concise as possible, although the more information probably the better.
To answer your questions:
1. Typically she will go down for her first nap about one hour after waking. She will show sleepy signs from about 20 minutes after waking (yawning). The longest stretch I can get out of her would be about 1 1/2 hours, however it is clear at that point that she is overtired (flailing arms & legs, fussing, rubbing eyes). --Just because this might be relevant for your recommendations, she typically goes to bed around 6/6:30 pm, wakes between 12-2 for a feeding (I do not dreamfeed, instead let her wake herself to feed when she is hungry in the middle of the night). She goes back to sleep awake after nursing (she seldomly falls asleep while nursing). The remainder of the night can either be her sleeping soundly until 6:30 am, or (like last night) she wakes around 3 am and fusses in the crib for 1-2 hours, eventually falling asleep around 5:30 and waking again around 6:30 am. Oh and one more thing that is relevant, her awake time typically ends up being about one hour throughout the morning (since she takes about 3 naps prior to 1 pm), however come afternoon she just cannot settle and will usually have a very long awake time (2-3 hours) prior to her final nap of the day.
2. How she falls asleep: We have a routine of diaper change, reading a story, closing the blinds, cuddling for a few minutes (without moving, sitting on the edge of the bed) and then I put her into her crib. Nearly every time she begins to cry prior to me putting her into the crib, typically as I say "it is time for sleep now". I will intervene with shh/pat which sometimes will calm her, other times I need to do PU/PD. Depending on the method that I've used, she either goes down easy or after a bit of crying. In the afternoon, I can do a full round of PU/PD for 40 minutes, take a break & go back to it before she even begins to settle.
3. When she wakes (btw...she is a belly sleeper--not my choice, she just rolls onto her tummy or will not fall asleep): Typically she'll move a little (her legs or arms), then she begins to move her head back and forth (rubbing her face into the mattress), then she will begin to rub her eyes with her hands. Eventually she'll lift her head off the mattress and cry loud & quickly.
4. The strategies that I have used in the past: I used to sit by the crib and wait for her to start to squirm & give her back her pacifier, however we recently got rid of it (via PU/PD) because it was a BIG PROP & was causing up to 20+ night wakings. This hardly ever worked because she would end up opening her eyes wide & would cry (also, I should mention that she was swaddled at the time--but within the past 2 weeks she has been busting out of the swaddle within about 30 seconds and clearly is more distressed being swaddled, so we've eliminated it and she is sleeping much better without it.) I have also intervened with both shh/pat (which has never worked for me) and PU/PD (which has worked on a few occassions, but as I mentioned earlier, takes at least 45 minutes).
Wheew, that was a lot of information!! My husband and I are very distressed about it all since we have been working so hard to get things better. She was a kid who had colic and honestly slept best in the swing, swaddled & with the pacifier. We feel that we have come a LONG way prior to implementing the babywhisperer techniques, but really needed some help with the last prop--the pacifier--and therefore have started to use her PU/PD to eliminate it.
I don't know if we're hitting the day 4 or 5 regression (at day 7 though) because she was doing great and now seems to be doing much worse. A few nights ago, I put her into the crib and she NEVER made a sound. She put herself to sleep wonderfully, however the past two nights have gotten worse. Tonight it took her almost 2 hours to finally settle!!
Any help would be great. Again, I appreciate your assistance with everything!!
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