A bit confused...

[KiwiMum21]

Hi, I am new to this board and have a little boy who is just on 5 months.

I read BW when he was a newborn (fantastic book) but only discovered this site recently.  I would really appreciate advice on implementing a routine with my boy.  At the moment we are still struggling with 45 minute naps and are on a 3 hour feeding routine.  Reading through the site I can see that ideally I should be trying to extend his feed time and nap times but am a bit confused at what to do.  I have ordered the book from the library again and will probably buy it but would like to start now.

Our general schedule is as follows:
6ish - wake, breastfeed
Quiet playing in bedroom, chatting with Mum
7:30 - sleep (generally goes down quickly and easily)
8:15 - Wake, activity
9:00 - b/f
Activity - lying on floor, playing with toys, some time under playgym.  We might go out at this point and he'll fall asleep in the car at naptime, I can usually transfer him into his buggy and he'll go back to sleep for a bit
9:30/10:00 - Sleep
10/10:45 - Wake
Activity - play on floor, etc.
12:00 - Bf, small amount of solids
12:30/1:00 Sleep
1:30/2:00 Activity - generally chill out outside under trees, talking and cooing
3:00 - Feed
Generally he will not sleep again until bedtime.  I usually put him down but he'll generally coo in his cot for up to 1.5 hours or sometimes get really wound up and I can't soothe him.
Around 5:30 Bathtime
6:00 - Feed time (long feed for at least half an hour) and I usually have to keep waking him cos he's so tired he falls asleep
Sleep - generally through to about 6:00ish.  He might wake once in the night but my husband goes in and gives him, a retuck and pat and he'll go to sleep.

Sometime he will wake earlier and I will adjust the times accordingly, by the end of the day I will feed at 5, have a bath, give a top up and put to bed around 6:30 if poss.

As you can see, with the short naps he is feeding near the end of activity time and generally will not tolerate being up for more than 2 hours and sometimes less.  He goes down okay, usually talking to self for around 10-15 minutes sometimes getting louder but rarely needing settling.  If he does cry I gently rock him with my hand on his chest and say shush.  This will work if he's overtired.  If he keeps crying I sometimes get him up and might put him down 10 minutes later but I don't like to do that as I feel that he should be in bed!

My main concerns are:
By the end of the day he is often really tired as he is missing late pm nap and will often fall asleep feeding.   I usually wake him to make sure he has had enough and give him a top up after bath if his feed was due before otherwise he wakes early.  He is also quite fussy and needs lots of attention - he's usually happy if I am carrying him around or playing quietly with him. 

How do I lengthen his naptimes and will this mean he will be less tired in the late afternoon?

Do I need to be extending his time between feeds and which do I do first?

Will additional activity time mean that he will sleep longer?

Any advice would be appreciated.  There is so much info on this site I am a bit confused as to how to do things.  Also, we do baby swimming and a music programme plus coffee group, is it okay to tweak his routine to accommodate them or should I tweak the activity.  For example, it takes me just over half an hour to walk to our music programme and he usually falls asleep in the buggy and is ready to join it by the time we get there, is that okay to do?  The other option is to pop him to bed, get him up and arrive later but if his naps are all wonky we'll miss it altogether... he loves music and dancing around and is beginning to be really interested in other babies and children so I would like to enhance that if possible.  I feed him there and then the walk home counts as another nap... is this too disruptive?

Thanks in advance...

[LŠuren]

Kiwimum
I have just seen your post before going to bed, I have posted the guidleine for moving to 3 to 4 hr easy, I will have a proper look at your post tomorrow.  You seem to have quite a few issues and they need to be sorted gradually, but a lot of it is due to your 3 hr routine.


Hope this is OK.
Lauren

[Deb_in_oz]

My main concerns are:
By the end of the day he is often really tired as he is missing late pm nap and will often fall asleep feeding.   I usually wake him to make sure he has had enough and give him a top up after bath if his feed was due before otherwise he wakes early.  He is also quite fussy and needs lots of attention - he's usually happy if I am carrying him around or playing quietly with him. 

with regards to him falling asleep at the last feed... this would improve as his naps improve. the goal is to get him to the end of the day without that overtiredness.  since he seems to sleep well in the buggy is it possible to take him for a short stroll in the late afternoon to try to get him to have the catnap while you are still sorting out the rest of his daytime routine?

How do I lengthen his naptimes and will this mean he will be less tired in the late afternoon?

Will additional activity time mean that he will sleep longer?

if you lengthen his naps he should be better rested as he goes through the day... you have 2 options regarding his naps - you can 1) try to extend them using PU/PD or shh/pat or 2) you can start stretching his A times and see if that does translate into him naturally extending them with no further intervention from you. based on his age and current A times i would be inclined to start with the first A time and see if you can find his "magic" A length that extends his sleep length. start adding 15 min more awake time and see if he still goes down happily as he currently does. if that goes well try another 10-15 min the next day or 2 until you get either 1) a longer nap or 2) he starts struggling to go down - in which case you know to go back to the previous "happy" length  (is that confusing or do you get what i am saying - it is trial and error until you find the new A time and that is why we tend to change A times gradually in 10-15 min increments so that if you go too far you know what the previous successful A time was)

once you have successfully extended his 1st A time stick with the length that works for him and then move on to the next A time cycle to find what works there. you might find that he continues to have a shorter A time after 1st getting up in the morning and then has longer stretches as the day goes on... they do not all have to be the same length - but you can definitely use that 1st A time as a starting point so if you get his 1st A time up to 2 full hours then you can aim for 2hrs - 2hrs 15 for the next one and so on...

Do I need to be extending his time between feeds and which do I do first?

if you are pushing out his A time it should naturally push out his feed times even slightly - i would hope he would not go backwards to less than 45 min and would hope that he would go through 2 cycles = 1hr 30 so you should at least be able to push his feed out to 3 1/2 hrs and even later if he sleeps longer or is not hungry when he wakes (in which case you just have some activity then food then more activity - this is fine) Speaking of 2 sleep cycles - i assume at some stage he was sleeping more than 45min at a nap, demonstrating that he is capable of resettling himself (if so then he should be OK, if not then another issue would be to work on helping him through the transitions of sleep cycles - there would be some good support for that on the naps board if necessary)

Also, we do baby swimming and a music programme plus coffee group, is it okay to tweak his routine to accommodate them or should I tweak the activity.  For example, it takes me just over half an hour to walk to our music programme and he usually falls asleep in the buggy and is ready to join it by the time we get there, is that okay to do?  The other option is to pop him to bed, get him up and arrive later but if his naps are all wonky we'll miss it altogether... he loves music and dancing around and is beginning to be really interested in other babies and children so I would like to enhance that if possible.  I feed him there and then the walk home counts as another nap... is this too disruptive?

i think the way you are doing it is on the right track.  i would try to limit these classes to one in a day and also try to alternate days so he some days at home for his naps, but obviously you want to do activities and be involved with other moms and kids so what i suggest is you time his nap for the walk there like you are currently doing and let him sleep until the last possible moment so that he gets 1-1 /2 hrs and i assume the class is 1hr or less i would not put him down for a sleep on the return walk as i would personally think to stick with the cycle of the day so if he has had a nap of 1hr+ and is happy enough, then if possible I would either 1) give him toys in the buggy / point out nature things etc and use it as more activity time on the return walk or 2) since the walk is an hour and you need to feed him you can stop somewhere between there and home and feed him and then continue the walk or 3) stay local to where the classes are and give him his A time and feeding there and then time the walk home for his nap again and try to keep him asleep for 1hr 30 or more (by either keeping him happily asleep in the buggy or transferring him to bed at home if you are able to do that successfully - i know that at that age i was never successful with transfers)


obviously in order to do classes and such it requires more flexibility on your part and tweaking where necessary. if he does not sleep enough on the walk there then you might have him sleep on the return walk and go with his flow after that for the afternoon (still aiming to space his feedings and get some good sleep in); over the next 2 months his A time will really stretch and this should not be much of an issue anymore - so do what you can to be consistent but flexible (if that makes sense) and know that it is probably a short term situation and not an every day thing.   HTH 

[KiwiMum21]

Lauren and Debra, thanks heaps so far, it is starting to make a little more sense.

Funnily enough today he was up for 2 hours this mid-morning before I popped him down to sleep and he slept almost 2 hours!  I am not sure whether its just coincidence!  And he went for 3.5 hours before his next feed.  He had a 45 min nap in the PM and nothing after that but he obviously can go longer when he wants/needs to.  If it made any difference he might be teething at the moment, he was up several times overnight which is unusual so maybe he was super duper tired.  I was!

My thought at this point is to try and extend his awake time and hope that this lends itself to extending feed times but try and do that incrementally as well, similar to that outline you provided Lauren.  BTW, Daniel was born on the 20th Sept, so very close to your boy. 

Also, are dreamfeeds essential?  I stopped giving him a late night feed just after Christmas and he has gone through since.

I know what you mean by consistent but flexible, that's kind of the approach I would like to take. 

[Deb_in_oz]

sounds great!

and no, DF is not essential. the aim of the DF is to help them sleep through/ drop a night feed, so if he is doing that without the Df than YIPPEE! and count your blessings 

keep it up! and ask questions  ont his thread if necessary as you go through the process
Deb 

[LŠuren]

Glad you're seeing some improvement!!

I have tried a d/f when he was younger a couple of times, however I was need to set my alarm to wake up and do it, so it felt like a night feed.  I have never done it again since and never needed, he used to get up at approx 2 and 5 for a feed when younger, he cut the 2am out and then the 5am. Heres hoping it continues 

Lauren x