Reply To: Help with naps (5mo)

[Sebastien Seguin-Gagnon]

Thank you for the quick response!

1) She wakes up around 6am give or take 15 minutes on either side. The range was larger a few weeks back but it seems to have stabilized now.

2) She’s awake from 1h15 to 2h between naps usually, depending on her tired signals (she hides them pretty well).

3) Yes and no. The first wake of the day is wake-feed-play, but depending on the length of her nap we might not feed her when she wakes up. E.g. wake at 6am, feed at 6:10 after diaper change, play until 7:15, nap routine + 45 minute nap bringing us to around 8am. At that point we usually play for 1h, 1h15 before doing another nap. Then we go back to wake-feed-play.

4) Almost never, only when nothing else works and she’s overtired. She loses it when quickly after she falls asleep which wakes her up.

5) Yes, for the carrier we walk around for a couple minutes before going in front of a while wall or corner. Otherwise she understands we’re trying to put her to sleep and starts crying 😛 Other times we bounce on an exercise ball. When she’s in our arms we swing around and sometimes have to pat her too. Then we slowly put her down continuing the patting, which we slow down until we finally stop. We tried not doing that but she gets quite agitated, and we seem to get nowhere 🙁 To clarify, the later has been rare in the last two weeks as we have mostly kept her in the baby carrier for the whole nap and stayed standing so mouvement continues for the whole nap.

6) The night time is done in our room in a little crib, and day naps are done in her room in her bassinet. We initially thought it would help habituate her to her room for when we move nighttime sleep there too. We were also worried of affecting night sleep if we failed at naps in her crib.

7) Yep both our room and her room have blackout blinds

8) Yes, closing the blinds is the last step of the routine. However, the window faces West so it’s not direct sunlight until late pm.

Thank you so much for your help. We’re starting to feel stuck now that even in the carrier naps are getting difficult.

Seb & Cath