[Emily Sheppard]

Hi Emma,

We’ve tracked the naps and bedtimes for the past week, and it seems like her final bedtime is between 10:30-11:00.

We’ve embraced the catnaps and now accept that bedtime does not occur until she goes to sleep after 10:00pm. We get her up between 7:30-8:00 each morning. She is able to stay awake usually 90 minutes between naps. so her first nap occurs around 9:30am. We will help her link this nap because for the rest of the day her naps only last 30 minutes. She can link a couple cycles with our help here and usually wakes back up around 11:30.

Her next nap often comes around 1:00pm. We may try to help her link this one too depending on how well she slept the previous night, but she doesn’t always want to link this sleep. She sleeps 30 minutes exactly without fail. She tends to sleep sometime between 3:00-4:00pm, then again between 5:30-6:30.

Her final nap occurs around 7:30-8:30 in the evening. She sleeps 30 minutes here then she will be awake for the next 2 hours until bedtime at 10:30-11:00pm. I attempted to begin her bedtime routine early at 10:00pm and she became extremely upset.

She recognizes the early parts of the routine and gets very upset when she isn’t perfectly ready for sleep. We’ve noticed that she has early sleep signs (some yawning, trance like behaviour) but if we try to sleep her here it results in crying. We have to wait for mid-sleep signs (tired facial features, more yawning). This is the best time to sleep her. If we go slightly too late she becomes extremely upset from the fatigue.

We’ve moved to feeding her earlier in the routine and in a different room. We try the sleep pyramid that you recommend but so far, she has not been able to independently fall asleep unless we get her to sleep first in our arms.

She will sleep 3 hours in her basinet for the first part of the night, then we move her onto our bed and co-sleep to try and get her more rest. She can sometimes sleep 3 hours on the bed as well. By 5:00am she is restless and up over and over again until 7:30. She only needs to feed once per night and only needs one diaper change per night.

Thanks,

Emily and Blake

[Emily Sheppard]

Hi, thank you for the reply and questions – your message was a comforting alert in my inbox this morning in Yukon, Canada.

Here are the answers to your questions

1. She averages about 5 naps per day. They vary in length – 25mins to 2 hours. Contact naps can be up to 2 hours, with my help to link her cycles – which means to hold her flailing arms down to not wake her, or some micro bouncing and shushing. 25mins-40mins on her own is typical. She will contact nap with me once a day, that I plan, to give her (in my rationale) some “good solid sleep” during the day. But now, since we’ve started your course, we are trying the pyramid model and putting her down every nap. When those don’t work – which they mostly don’t, I’ll pick her up, shush her, have her sleep on me. I feel like it’s torture for her to not be able to settle into a sleep when she’s clearly tired due to my insisting she gets a bassinet sleep. My husband doesn’t contact nap her, and he’s often successful in “putting her down out of his arms post-shushing”, but times she will wake with the motion of her arms flailing or the sensation of lost contact – asleep or almost asleep.
   i.e today: first nap was my husband with her in the bassinet. She slept for 10 minutes it seemed, but then moved and moved and cried loudly. A fail. I went into the room, picked her up – shushed and bounced her vertically on my chest and got her to sleep. I laid down on my pillows in my bed with her for 50mins. Second nap, 50mins later (after red eyes, looking away, three yawns) I shushed her, bounced her, she was almost asleep (hard to see her eyes exactly in the dark) and I lowered her into the bassinet. She’s sleeping now for 18 mins so far. Fingers crossed. **As I’m writing this, it’s 22mins into the nap and she’s turning her head back and forth (tummy sleeping), moving her bum up and down, coughing crying – REM it seems, but without us going in there to get her she will cry loudly and that ends the nap. Sigh. **
   The difference today is that after her first nap, she woke, I fed her, we stayed vertical to digest and played a bit looking at things in the house, talking, changed her cloth diaper (which we do as a routine pre and post naps as cloth diapers make bums feel wet more than disposable), shushed and bounced, sang to her, and was able to lower her into her bassinet. The feeding was the key difference. Today, I changed our routine based on your comments.
   We have had our routine as follows: nap routine is – see early or mid tired cues (typically 45-1h15mins post waking), diaper change, get into sleep sack, dark room, shushing, bouncing then feeding her a bottle of breast milk. She falls asleep on the bottle, hold her vertically a bit, shushing her and try to lower her into her bassinet or the bed pad we have on our bed where she spends her nights. Bedtime routine is the same but we added in a bath (every 3rd day), wipe down of face and hands, read two short books and my husband typically puts her to bed while I sleep. We take shifts to look after her. I’m midnight to wake up.
2. No, we have done the wake, play, feed, sleep. As of today, we have changed to wake, feed, play, sleep routine during the day.
3. How are you currently settling her to sleep for naps and for bedtime? We are rocking her – bouncing, swaying and once asleep in the bassinet attempt, or we have her feed on the bottle to sleep. The settling pyramid has been done every nap by my husband, but she hates the back sleeping and any Halo sack has been hectic and quite painful to hear and watch as a mom. So, we have recently tried it with her on her tummy and that works better. But, she struggles to sleep on her own and “half awake” into the bassinet is a crying fit and no shushing or patting her helps. She wants to be held, swayed and sleep in arms. It’s painful to experience for us both, and often we spend 45-90mins trying to settle her – going up and down the pyramid – for a 30min nap. Sigh.
4. She used a pacifier in her first 6 weeks, but since then has refused to latch it. She is recently licking her hands, sucking her fingers (even after feeding). She drools a lot! Often soaking the sheets and that may wake her as her cheeks get sticky, and her hand obsession creates drool.
5. From 8:30pm, or the bedtime – maybe 9:00-9:30pm, we are “working on settling her” for that whole time. We may have her for 10mins settled then she wakes. These hours are torture for us all as she’s exhausted and seemingly frustrated by the lack of sleep or comfort, and we are going mental and our bodies hurt as we stand and bounced etc. her. From 11pm onwards she slept until 2am or 3am. Then she will get a diaper change from me, in the dark, breastfeed (she eats from my nipple only at night now), then she falls asleep feeding and I place her on her bed space on our bed. She hardly wakes until 1.5-2hours later and we repeat this until we wake her up around 7:30am. We don’t wake up from a deep sleep. So, that means if she’s “REMing” at 7:12am, we wake her then, or at 7:50am.
   So, we have her in our arms, sleeping or almost, put her down in her bed space on our bed, she settles for a few seconds to minutes then cries, we pick her up and repeat. We switch off so we share this burden as a couple.

   I think that answers the questions. We are new parents, as I’m sure you can tell. 🙂
   It’s been a week that there’s a clear regression in her sleep. May she be doing the 4mth regression at 3mths? We are talking daily about how naps/bed went and how to improve. We research and try new things all the time. I’d like to have a step by step idea on what to change and ensure it’s feasible with our situation.
   We live in Yukon, Canada with extreme cold now (no outside walking which helps her settle), and it’s dark until 11:30am and sets at 4pm. We are focused on lights in her eyes in the mornings and changing the environment for evenings onwards to calm her to bedtime.

   Thank you!