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Hi Emma,
Thank you for your answer, we’ve tweaked a couple of things in the last week based on your comments and now have some follow up questions. Here’s what we are now doing:
A. We have made the switch to have her sleep in her own room at night. Transition went smoothly and she is sleeping for 11-12h straight without needing us to help her go back to sleep at any point during the night. We see her waking up on the camera and being able to go back to sleep on her own.
B. We always do the routine before naps, even if in the baby carrier. Almost all her naps have been in the dark in her room in the past week (mostly in the baby carrier).
C. We’ve started doing the first nap of the day in her bed. She is sometimes able to fall asleep on her own, sometimes she cries a lot before falling asleep in our arms, but we are then able to put her in her bed. She sleeps for only 30-40min. We’ve tried giving her time to fall back asleep (up to 15min alone in her bed), but it doesn’t happen. We’ve also tried picking her up after those 15min to put her back to sleep in our arms and that doesn’t work either.
D. The other naps of the day are in the baby carrier so she sleeps for a longer period and get those 3-4h of nap time during the day.
E. We’ve persevere more when she wakes up in the carrier after a 30min nap. We’ve been able to put her back to sleep, sometimes after 10-20min of wake up time by staying in the dark and padding her bottom. Therefore, her naps in the baby carrier have been longer.
Our questions:
1. When she wakes up in her bed after 30min nap, what should we do? We know she needs to sleep for longer as this is what she’s doing when she sleeps in the carrier. Should we be more patient and wait until she cries to go and help her get back to sleep? Should we go straight into the room after 2-3min and put her back to sleep in our arms? Should we just accept the nap is short and do a second nap not too long after so she gets her sleep?
2. Do you think we should already start doing a second nap in her bed even though the first one isn’t quite secure yet? We are worried she won’t get enough sleep if we do that, but at the same time, we are conscious this will probably accelerate her learning curve by getting more exposure to her bed.
3. We struggle having a fixed schedule for naps (except for the first one) since their length is varying so much. For now, we are respecting the wake windows, meaning that we put her back to sleep 1h30-2h after she wakes up, no matter what time it is to ensure she doesn’t get overtired. Does it make sense to prioritize this over having a fixed schedule?
Thank you for your thoughts.
Catherine & Sébastien
- This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by Sebastien Seguin-Gagnon.
- This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by Sebastien Seguin-Gagnon.
- This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by Sebastien Seguin-Gagnon.