Napping and Other Sleep Drama

My little angel napping in our bed.

So a few weeks we hit a wall.

As I said here, Brighton has been a good night sleeper, but as she started to get older her naps were becoming less frequent and extremely short. From about 6 weeks old until she turned 3 months, she slept about 2.5-3 hours after her morning feeding (which I don't count as a nap - it's more of an extension of her nighttime sleep), but most of her naps after that were erratic and short - sometimes as short as 15 minutes, and the longest being about 55 minutes. She'd be fine during the day until about 8pm when her tiredness turned into over-tiredness and she would melt down. She would cry and fuss and cry and fuss until her bedtime at 10:30-11pm. Also, she had been sleeping in her crib at night, but naps were either in the Ergo, on my chest, Matt's chest, in our bed or in the car seat.

She was frustrated and we were too. I knew I was forming a bad habit for her by being inconsistent with her naps and needed to help her sleep so I went to my trusty sleep bible (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child) and also asked some advice from friends with kids. We decided to start a nap time routine asap and start implementing a loose version of "graduated extinction" - leaving her for short amounts of time to let her soothe herself to sleep if she can (it's a much nicer version of the "cry it out" method.)

The first day I tried this new routine, I made sure I looked for the signs of sleepiness about 1 hour after she woke up from her morning sleep. She normally cannot handle being awake longer than 1.5-2 hours at a time. Once I saw her yawn, I immediately started the routine. I did a abbreviated version of her bedtime shtick - changed her diaper, swaddled her with a light blanket (she likes her arms out), read a story quietly, turned on the sound machine, rocked her a little, then laid her down awake but tired. I sat in the chair in her room where she couldn't see me and waited. I was going to give it 5 minutes and if she was still fussing/crying at that point, I would pick her up and soothe her. Well she fussed without crying for 5 minutes and fell asleep for an hour!!! We did the process again at the next nap cycle and it was a success!

I was totally shocked that it worked AND that she stayed asleep longer than 30-40 minutes. She fell asleep that night on her own as well and slept 9 hours.

The second day was a different story. The first nap we weren't at home and she slept in the car for about 30 minutes. At her next cycle, I repeated the process and routine from the day before. Again, I sat in her room and waited for her to fall asleep - this time it was 7 minutes of fussing, but she fell asleep on her own. Unfortunately, she woke up after 35 minutes, still tired and was quite upset about it. I let her fuss for about 5 minutes, hoping she would fall back asleep, but she didn't and her fussing turned into angry crying, so I picked her up, soothed her (which took about 10 minutes) and then laid her back down once she was calm. She immediately started crying, but I wanted to give her a few minutes to try to settle back down - this time I was going to give myself 10 minutes.

Sadly, she cried the entire 10 minutes and my blood pressure went through the roof. I went in and picked her up and felt like the worst mother in the world - her face was wet, her nose was running and her eyes were red. I calmed her down by rocking and shushing her and almost lost my resolve to lay her back down - I thought I would just hold her and let her sleep in my arms, but that would be going backwards in this whole process. She fell asleep in my arms and I laid her down, but she slept for all of 8 minutes and woke up crying. So I gave up. At that point it was close to the time for her to eat, so I fed her and mentally prepared myself for the next cycle.

 Every day after that for the next week was a mixture of the first day's success and the second day's crying. This process was interrupted when we traveled to Arkansas - she was highly distracted and over-stimulated so her sleep was terrible. So once we returned from Arkansas, I was diligent about getting her back on a routine - every nap since I've made sure to follow the routine and stay consistent. 

I am glad to say that for about 90% of her naps this past week, she fell asleep on her own in her crib, and fussed minimally! Occasionally she cried for a few minutes before falling asleep, but we continued to let her have 5 minutes to work it out on her own, and if she didn't after that time limit, we picked her up and soothed her.

We are going to keep this routine since it's going so well. My only concern at this point is how short her naps still are - 40-50 minutes maximum. I've been told to blame the 45 minute nap intruder and that she will eventually grow into a longer afternoon nap. Fingers crossed!

 
Any mama's out there also struggling with naps or the 45 minute nap intruder? What have you done to help? I'm open to suggestions!!!