Hi all. Just a little background...DD (13 weeks) is a rotten nap taker due to accidental parenting I think. In the beginning, I thought attachment parenting was for me, but after a few weeks I became horribly exhausted and my milk supply was totally messed up due to improper demand feeding (not reading cues), which caused DD much tummy suffering. I also nursed her to sleep and allowed her to sleep on me for almost every nap. I don't know how people successfully accomplish attachment parenting, but I decided that I needed much more "Y" in my day or I would go insane. Anyway, I tried to implement EASY but had such a hard time because of all the bad sleep-associations I was dealing with. I decided to put EASY on hold until I resolved my other issues first. Finally I got the nursing to sleep fixed (wow that was rough) and now I'm fairly confident the sleeping on me association is greatly diminished. We are, however, battling 45 min naps, but I think that is more of an age thing maybe (we're working on it). So now I've been observing for 2 days and want to start putting together a loose schedule. I would really love a bedtime of 10pm because I will be returing to work in a week, but posters here advised against it, and I tend to agree with them. DD will not stay up past 9 anyway. Now here is my problem, she always wakes up after 10 hours of sleep. I do beleive this is developmentally correct for this age, but how would I structure the EASY for 10 hours? I looked for sample routines, but they are all 12 hours. I would really like her to wake at 7:30 so I could BF her right before I leave for work but there is no way I can keep her up happily until 9:30 (10 hours). Beleive me, if I could get her to go until 9:30, I would do so, the more time with her after work, the better. However, she gets sooooooo overtired and overstimulated that she won't even eat. I try to give her an evening nap, but for some reason that is the nap she fights the most...probably from too many 45 min naps earlier in the day. So what generally happens is I put her down at 8pm, so she wakes up at 6am...which is too early. Even if I put her down at 7...she wakes at 5. I try very hard to get her to go back to sleep, but she never does. I have used shush/pat, ignoring her, paci, etc. This morning when she woke at 6:20 am I just let her lay there...she was content and happy, but stayed awake. I picked her up at 6:50 am because she started to fuss from hunger I'm sure. This throws our entire day off. Not to mention I can't figure out an EASY schedule becuase I don't know if I need early wake times or late bedtimes. Of course I would prefer late bedtimes to early wakes. lol. Regardless of my work situation, who wants to wake up at 5 am??!! Do you think short naps is causing this? Maybe once the 45 min nap is resolved the 10-hour night sleep will lengthen? Or maybe she will tolerate staying up later? Please help, as I would really like to try moving toward the EASY schedule before I start work. I know it takes a while, but I just want some kind of guideline for my sitter. TIA!
