hi kristin
sorry you are having a rough time with naps. It feels so bad when you know your lo just needs to go to sleep and yet you can't do it for them.
Some lo's are just stuck on 45 min naps and nothing you can do will work for them. I found with dd that if I stayed in the room and held her through the jolts she would sleep for 90 min, but if I didn't, she would wake after 45 mins. It obviously wasn't practical to do this for every single nap for weeks on end (I would have gone crazy
) so many many days we had 45 min naps all day long.
My lo was also on 4 hr EASY at the time and with a bit of routine juggling you can kep the feedings at 4 hrs but still accommodate the 45 min naps without him getting overtired.
For example: on a true 4hr EASY, most lo's will have 1.5hrs of naps, and 2.5 hrs of A time = 4 hrs total. But your lo is having only a 45 min nap, and therefore it is unlikely he will manage 2.5 hrs of A time, and
no way will handle 3.25 hrs to make up the 4 hrs of EASY. (are you with me so far?!)
So what you end up with is EASAS looking something like this:
sleep 45 mins
activity & eat 2.25 hrs
sleep 45 mins
activity 2.25 hrs
sleep 45 mins
activity & eat etc So sometimes you will have an activity period where he doesn't eat. Or perhaps eats right at the end of the activity time, just before the nap. This is fine as long as you don't feed him to sleep so he starts to need the feed to get to sleep. This way you can still keep the 4 hr feeds, but accommodate the short naps. You will probably have 4 naps in a day this way, and perhaps even a further 20 min catnap at the end of the day.
I hope this makes sense! Let us know if you need any further help
kathryn xxxx
