-
Thanks for your reply Emma. Yeah it was a bit of a triple whammy….coming back home after spending 5 weeks with family, and then she had her 3 month imms a few days later, then the sleep got all mucked up and I have no family or friend network where I live- so it has been challenging for sure.
1. I’ve only been properly tracking her sleep the past few days, but generally she wakes up around 6ish. Sometimes it’s that 5am unsettled period, but often I’ll feed her to sleep next to me then she’ll go back to sleep again till 7 or 8ish. The past few days looks like around 6.30 seems to be a common wake-up.
2. It’s only in the past week I’ve been starting implementing the wake, feed, play, sleep routine. A few times in the last two days I have also fed her before a sleep, as she was displaying signs of hunger and was having meltdowns when putting her down- giving her a feed seemed to settle her and get her to sleep. I think with having the longer wake times she was getting a bit hungrier…?? Also I think if I give her a feed before the midday/early afternoon nap then she ends up having a longer sleep for that one.
3. She is having 3-4 naps a day. Usually they are around 40-50 minutes, with one long one around 1h40-2h20ish. Sometimes only 30mins long, but generally around the 40-45min mark.
4. Between naps is now around a little over or under the 2hour mark. Sometimes 1h45ish, sometimes 2h10ish. Sometimes I will settle her to sleep, but it takes so long I think she reaches that overtired threshold, so it is then about 2.5hrs between naps.
5. The nap routine is quite short. I bring her into the bedroom saying ‘It’s sleepy time’, we go around and close the blinds and curtains, as I tell her “here we go, let’s close these”, lay her on the bed and put her sleeping bag on (if it is a hot day I will skip this step), say to her “let’s put on our water music” and I put on a running water sound clip (it’s a 10hr YouTube clip, the phone is face down), then I’ll hold her to my chest rocking a little and sing twinkle little star. Usually I sing it a few times, patting her back. Often I’ll need to hold her like this for a while. If she’s unsettled I’ll put her in the sloth hold position which she often likes- especially if sometimes she has a burp or fart that’s giving her jip and preventing her from settling. Sometimes it can take as little as 10minutes, sometimes an hour.
A few times I have put her on the bed before her eyes are fully closed and she has drifted off to sleep- sometimes she fully wakes up & have to start it all over again.
6. Helping her fall asleep by generally holding her, swaying & patting her back till she falls asleep on us. My partner often does the sloth hold with her- sometimes we tag team if it’s been taking a long time, the other will step in & see if they can get her to sleep. At first I would feed her to sleep, but I don’t really do that now. The last few days I’ve done it once or twice just to have a break from taking ages to get her to sleep. But I’ve noticed that sometimes she can be suckling for 20mins, and if the nap is only 40mins long, I literally have only 20mins to rest till she’s awake again- so I’m trying not to do that unless she seems proper hungry.
7. Once she falls asleep I will put her down on the bed. Sometimes before she’s fully asleep. If she has been very unsettled & taken a long time to fall asleep I might hold her for the first 10mins till she’s in a deeper sleep, then put her down.
8. I recently got a set of curtains to make the room darker, as there is a big ranch slider which only had a sunshade- so it wouldn’t get especially dark during the day. Now it gets quite dark, I try to keep the room cool either having the ranch slider open between naps or during the nap….if it’s a bit noisy or windy outside I will close that door & have an overhead fan on. I shut the other doors in the hallway to keep that also dark so light doesn’t peek through.