My dd is almost 5 months old. She has had an excellent routine, 4 hr easy, now for a month, and before that a 3 hr routine! It has taken about 3 months to teach her to nap on her own, but now we put her down in her crib, swaddled, and she goes to sleep, without anyone there, in minutes! I am thankful. Bedtime, however, isn't so smooth.
Here is her day:
8 am wake and eat
8:30 activity (play time is a variety of things usualy including: lying on back or tummy, gymini, bouncer saucer, cuddling and talking, going for walk, under mobile...)
10 Nap time (swaddled, hold for 1-2 minutes, put into crib, alseep in 1-2 minutes)
** sometimes wakes up and needs a varying amount of help back to sleep.. anywhere from soother to more tummy rubbing (our method instead of patting), sometimes a reswaddle
12 Eat
12:30 activity
2 Nap
4 Eat
4:30 activity (we are out about 2-3 nights a week... i have noticed no difference/pattern in her ability to go to bed when we are out or at home, or have people over)
6:30/7 cat nap
8 eat
8:30 bath, swaddle, cuddle, story, song, bed
11 dream feed (is this df too early since she eats at 8, instead of at 7 like the book describes?)
It takes longer for her to settle at night, so i take that as a hint from her that she needs more wind down and i sing or read until she seems about the same amount of sleepy she is at nap times. Sometimes this helps, other times she ends up screaming. We try pu/pd but have never gotten her to sleep with this method. Usualy what will happen is we will try until her dreamfeed, stop to feed her, and then she will fall alseep.
Before i started BW she slept 6-7 hours straight at night, ate, and then did 3-4 more. However, she wasn't napping in the day so i decided to start the BW routine and sleep training. This ruined her night time stretch, and i was hoping that as she got older and transitioned to a 4 hr easy (which she did with very little problem!) that she would go back to her long stretches. However, she is still waking up 2-4 times a night. I only feed her one of those times, and put her back to sleep the other times. Sometimes she only need her soother and a reswaddle ( a short tangent: she must wriggle and move around alot before she makes any noise and wakes me up. If i don't reswaddle she pulls her soother out and gets very upset. Cute to watch her fight with herself to get it out.. but very annoying. I am working on weaning her off swaddling for nap time because she goes down fine with an arm out, but has trouble with an arm out in the night... any thoughts???) Other times she is very upset and needs help. We have tried pu/pd and have ended up doing it until it is time to eat again (say around 3-4). Again, she will eat and then fall alseep from exhaustion. During pu/pd her cries escalate, she flails about (meaning many reswaddles). I have stopped trying the past few weeks because i am so tired from staying up with her, but i know that putting her back to sleep in my arms (takes about 5 minutes until she is alseep again), isn't teaching her to put herself to sleep.
when i do pu/pd i:
-pu, hold horizontaly (craddle position) until she calms down, or until 5 mins has passed
-i pd (she starts crying as soon as i move her away from my body)
-i place her in the crib, giver her a soother, and rub her tummy for about 30 seconds, and if nothing changes i pu again
- hold her until she calms, pd... reswaddle is necessary, give soother, and so on.
I am hoping for a few tips or ideas. Maybe my bedtime routine is too much, or not enough? I think she may be feeling her teeth.. sorta a preteething stage, as she drools as ton, sucks/chews on every finger she can pull to her mouth, sucks on stuffies, etc. So perhaps this is waking her up at night.
The first two nights that we swtiched to a 4 hour easy completely, she slept until 3:30, ate, then slept until 7:30!! it has been about three weeks since those nights, but i keep thinking... hoping... that perhaps this is just a little regression and will fix itself.. but it has not.
Her wake up times are as follows:
11df, back to bed by 11:30
12:45-1:30 first wake up (we just put her back to sleep)
3-4 second wake up (i usualy feed her at this time because she exhibits hungry cues and rooting)
5:30 third wake up (back to sleep)
sometimes she will sleep until 7:45 at this point, other times she is back up at 6:30 (and back to sleep we put her!)
I hope this is enough info to elicit a few responses, critiques, ideas and suggestions. Thanks for taking the time to help me out.
Janie
