Starting the day

[FreddieEden]

Hello everyone,

I think we are finally getting to the point with Daniel (now 18 weeks) where he takes a longer nap more often than a 45 minute one (fingers crossed).  It's certainly been a long time since we have had to have a four nap day rather than a three nap day.  Hurrah for that.

I had a couple of questions which I hoped people might be able to help with.

First, I've read on posts here and in a few books that starting the day at the same time can be key to instituting a good nap schedule.  Daniel pretty much always goes to bed at 6.30 or 6.45 but his wake up times vary massively.  The most popular is around 7 ish but he can be as early as 6.10 or as late as 7.30 or 7.40.  This morning he woke up at 8 o'clock!  I think I might usually have woken him up before 8 but he had his last lot of jabs yesterday so wanted to give him as much chance to sleep as possible.  Whether he has been up in the night doesn't seem to make much difference (he is now down to no or one feed in the night but even if he doesn't ask for a feed he usually wakes up at least once and settles himself back down).  The only constant is that his "core" hours seem to be 6 to 6 (i.e. he won't wake up as if it were nap sleep if he goes to sleep after 6pm and he won't go back to sleep if he wakes up after 6am).  I have no intention of starting every day at 6am but do people think that it would be beneficial to wake him up at 7 on the 7.30 days?  That would be a shame as I quite like those days but if it is necessary...   The later start means that we are pushed to 3 to 3 and half hour feeding rather than 3 and a half to four hour feeding (because he just cuts back on his naps rather than pushing through to a later bedtime).  Also, I don't always know when he wakes as he is often quite happy to lie in his cot playing  with his hands for a while, particularly if he has had a night feed.

Secondly, at the moment, it seems that I can never get more than 3 and a half to four hours of nap sleep out of him (unless he has had a very early start).  It's just a question of how it is arranged.  So, when he did one hour in the morning and two hours 45 at lunchtime he refused the catnap.  When he did two hours in the morning he only did two 45 minute naps for the rest of the day.  Yesterday, he did two lots of 90 minutes and a 45 minute catnap which is the ideal, I suppose.  I think that is because he is doing 12 hours at night and only needs about 15 hours in total.  But he still seems pretty tired during the day.  I can only keep him awake for an hour and a half in the mornings before he gets really grumpy and sometimes we are struggling to get to bedtime.  I am really fearful of waking him up from naps to try to rearrange his sleep because there is no guarantees he won't then do a 45 minute nap.  Does he just have a bit more growing into longer awake times to do?

Sorry this has turned out to be quite long.  Hope I'm not obsessing too much!  I am very glad he is sleeping better at night and taking longer naps now and he is a much happier baby for it.

Freddie

[Taylor's Mommy]

First let me answer the set awake time question-I personally know that it has been crucial to us setting a good routine with Taylor.  Yes it can be very painful, and still can be some days  :roll:  , to go in and wake a sleeping baby when you yourself can be snoozing as well.  But what I have found is on the days that i let her sleep in, it just ends up being a rougher day because she fights her first nap for 30 minutes then goes down late and only sleeps 45 minutes, which throws us off the rest of the day!  You get my point!   :lol:   So, unless she is sick or had shots (like your ds) or had a horrendous night for some reason, the latest I ever let her sleep is 7:30. 
For a few days you may want to try doing a 7am wake up and see how it goes.  After a week or two when you are in a good rythym you can test the waters and push it to 7:15 or even 7:30 when you're feeling lucky! 

For your second question, I got a little confused readign through the paragraph to see what kind of nap schedule he is on.  Would you mind posting it out in order for his whole day?
What I kind of gathered is that some days he will take a couple of short naps but then take a long one, and that some days the order of the long/short naps change.  Is this correct?
I do remember Taylor at 4-5 months of age doing this.  Some days she would have a super long am nap, then a shorter pm nap and then a 1.5 hour "catnap"!  Other days it would be reversed.  I guess I could have really tried to figure it out and get it working "perfectly", btu at that point I was just so happy she was sleeping longer than 45 minutes every day I wasn't going to overlook my blessings!   :lol:

Is ds taking 45 minute naps everyday or are they sporadic?
ANd yes, if he is doing 12 hours at night, then 3 hours of day sleep is great.  Sorry I haven't helped much with question #2, but if you could break it down for me a little more I can give it a go!

thanks!

[FreddieEden]

Thanks very much.  I will try the consistent wake up time and see how we go.  On the second question, yes we are all in different patterns of naps at the moment so difficult to post a typical day.  DS has been taking 45 minute naps since about 8 or 9 weeks old.  I managed to extend for a while and then it stopped working.  So during the transitional phase when he started managing to stay awake for longer he was taking four 45 minute naps (or five if I was lucky).  Over the last couple of weeks, he has started lengthening his naps, beginning  with waking and settling himself back and now for quite a few just sleeping through.  I find that he still has a relatively short awake time in the first morning slot of about an hour and a half and that he is generally more alert and stays awake longer in the afternoons.  I think he is settling into a pattern of taking a longer nap in the morning and then two shorter naps in the afternoon.  Ideally, I would like one of the afternoon naps to be longer as I think he is quite tired by bedtime.   For example, yesterday he was awake at 8, napped two hours from 8.45 to 11.45, napped 45 minutes from 1.35 to 2.20, napped 35 minutes from 4.30 to 5.05 (I might have put him down a bit earlier as he had only had a 45 minute nap but I went out shopping and DH interpreted no later than 4.20 as at 4.20 :wink: ) and went to bed and straight to sleep at 6.40, then woke up at 7.40 (after a short waking when he got himself back to sleep at 2.30 and a feed at 5.30).  But I don't want to wake him from a 2 hour nap in the morning only to find that he still takes 45 minutes for his next nap.  Also, at some stage, I need to try to shift an hour of the night sleep into the day sleep as I will be going back to work when he is seven months and I don't want him to be falling asleep on the way home from daycare!

Freddie

[Taylor's Mommy]

I find that he still has a relatively short awake time in the first morning slot of about an hour and a half and that he is generally more alert and stays awake longer in the afternoons. 
Freddie

This is quite typical so he sounds on track.  In fact even to this day Taylor's first A time is ALWAYS shorter (by about 15-30 minutes) than her afternoon A time.  Now that he seems to have his mornign nap figured out, it is time to work on the afternoon nap, which he will naturally start to do soon.   :?: I knwo you said his mornign A time is 1.5 hours, but  what is his afternoon A time?  I am thinking it should be close to 2 hours.  Is that correct?  If not, you may want to start working towards that.

Let me know abotu the afternoon and we'll go from there.

thanks

[FreddieEden]

Hi,

Well yesterday wasn't such a good day.  I made a mistake with the first nap - heard a noise when I was outside his room and had a peek.  Once he saw me it was all over.  After that I could only keep him awake for one and a half hours at a stretch and we ended up throwing in an extra nap which meant that he went to bed an hour later than usual and took an age to settle.

Today has been better.  He woke at 7 without having fed in the night (though he was awake for quite a while at about 5.30).  I decided to give him top up feeds as he has been hungrier than usual lately.  So I was able to stretch him to 1 hour 45 in the morning.  He made the same noise during the first nap but I ignored him and when I peeked ten minutes later he was asleep.  He slept for two hours for the first nap.  I then gave him two hours of A time and he slept for 1 hour 15 for the second nap.  After that it went a bit wrong.  I put him to bed after 2 hours of A time but he wouldn't settle for the cat nap.  After 40 minutes, I was so fearful of bedtime without a catnap that I let him fall asleep on the breast and held him in my arms for 45 minutes  :oops: .  He was obviously a bit overtired and wired at bedtime but I put him down at his usual time of 6.45 and he has settled after about 15 minutes of talking to himself.  Not sure what went wrong with the third lot of A time.  I think maybe he had not napped for as long as I thought so I had given him too much A time.  Also, might have been overstimulated as I had been trying to change activity to distract him and we got so carried away playing flying baby that I forgot the time and we only had about five minutes of quiet before nap time!  And he hadn't slept as  long as usual the night before so maybe it was cumulative overtiredness.

I do feel we are getting there but I still think that we need another 15 to 30 minutes onto the second nap if I am going to get to bedtime without a very tired baby.

Freddie

[FreddieEden]

Oh and Happy New Year as well!  I'll definitely be asleep at midnight...

[Taylor's Mommy]

Hi,

How are things going Freddy?
Just checking in!

[FreddieEden]

Hi there,

Thanks for checking in.  We had a rough few days where everything seemed to go wrong and I was even struggling to get DS down for naps in the first place.  But we seem to be back on track today so I think it was maybe a growth spurt or something developmental (he has been hungry and has just started rolling front to back, though has forgotten how to do it now).

We got 1 hour 45 for the first nap with just a bit of stirring.  For the second nap, he woke at 45 minutes, settled himself back and woke again at the 10 minute jolt (grrr).  I gave him a five minute cuddle in the rocking chair and put him back down when he had started sucking his thumb.  It took 20 minutes or so but eventually he settled and slept for another hour and fifteen minutes!  It's so difficult to judge these things.  I was listening on the monitor and thought he had switched from fussing to crying so decided to go and get him after I had been to the bathroom and put some laundry on  but by the time I had done that he had settled.  The second nap may have been a bit long as he took a while to settle for the catnap but he has gone down OK now.  So, I have a very well rested baby today and am very pleased.  Am working on 1 hour 30/1 hour 45 for the first period of A and 1 hour 45/2 hours for the second two periods of A which seems to be as much as he can stand at the moment (I leave fifteen minutes for him to settle himself to sleep but it doesn't always take that long).

Still not sure about starting the day as he has changed his pattern again.  He is waking at 6.30, just talking to himself and if it were 2.30 I would leave him to settle himself back to sleep, but I feel bad for him as he hasn't eaten for 12 hours.  So I have been feeding him and putting him back down as he doesn't seem ready to start the day.  He then sleeps to 7.30 or 8.  This seems to be working at the moment so I'll leave it be for now as he'll probably do something different again next week.  He seems happiest waking at 7.30 and taking his first nap at 9, which I guess works with the Weissbluth theory that 9 is when he is programmed to take his nap anyway.

So, good news at the moment.  I'll have to look back at this post if it all goes wrong again in a few days to remind myself that there are always good days and bad days :lol: .

Freddie