3 months - sleep/routine

[MrsRV]

DD has always been fab at night, since 8 weeks she's been doing 8.30/9pm to 5/6/7am... Lucky I know! She's never been great at napping during the day. I do try frequently and she'll fall asleep & then wake after about 10/20 mins... Sometimes she'll have a good hour or so during the day but rarely! Just recently sleep during day is for a couple of 1/2 hour stints and then mega Groucho in evening and tired and crying for last bottle/bath! So, new natural bedtime seems to be 7 pm, she's just been falling fast asleep at that time naturally so we're going to try actually putting her up at this time - but would u wake her to feed her at 9.30/10pm-ish when we go to bed? Or just leave her and see when she wakes naturally (which I suspect will be early!) and feed her again then? Also, should I try to impose a nap during the day? And how???? It's all changing and I'm not keeping up!!

Remember these words:

never wake a sleeping baby

When it came to naps, I was just grateful for whatever I got.

Tee

Our now 5mo DD goes to bed between 7.30-8, which we're loathe to bring forward as DP doesn't get home from work until 7.15. We also struggle with consistent naps (she's one of those 30 min catnappers, so we only really get 1hr or more if she is in the buggy on asleep on someone) so sometimes she would have to stay awake 2.5 or 3 hours till bedtime. If that's the case then I do force a 15 min power nap about 6 to get her through to bedtime, which seems to work and hasn't disrupted her bedtime.

We've been dreamfeeding since around 10w. She takes the bottle happily without waking and goes back off, and it turned the 2-3am wake up into a 5-6ish wake up (well, generally!). It took us a week or two to get right in terms of what time she would take a bottle, teaching her to feed, and also her learning that she was full and didn't need to wake up at 3am. It could be worth experimenting for a week or so to see if she will take a feed before you go to bed. If she is anything like DD and a good, hard sleeper at night, you might find that she won't wake up and so you actually have the ability to experiment with a dreamfeed!

Hi, here's what I did, you may find some bits sound good & might help you (or not), or you may be doing these already! my DD is 6mo now.

At night I personally don't wake her up to feed, just feed her when she wakes & settle her down again. I had to learn how best to settle her down as in the early days assumed she was up for the day & didn't try too hard. I have a friend who did dream feeds but I am too chicken to wake her & think she would be annoyed! Settling her down again is just recently becoming harder as she only sleeps 11 hrs a night & is now doing these in 1 block of 7pm-6am ish so doesn't want to go back to sleep at 6am, although if she woke earlier she would.

Daytime naps - learn her sleepy signals & help her get to sleep quick-smart. My dd got better at signals as time went by after she stopped the newborn thing where they sleep at the drop of a hat! Look for staring, yawning (obv!), eye / head rubbing & grizzling. I have a routine for helping her get to sleep - sit on sofa, cuddle her on my shoulder, hum nursery rhyme that I found works well with her (Hush Little Baby Don't Say a Word), then make shhh noises for a minute ish, maybe a bit of rocking. When she is totally asleep I can put her down on sofa next to me (but often don't). Sometime she falls asleep without all this but I think building up the association helps.

I now know she needs a sleep approx 2 hrs after waking up, then may go a bit longer & sleeps very roughly the same bracket time in the afternoon. Hopefully your DD will start to fall into a pattern which you can pick up on & run with.

I read (No Cry Sleep Solution) they need approx 14-15 hrs sleep in 24 hrs, 10-11hrs of that being at night. So this would give you a rough idea of what is about right, obviously there are exceptions.

Hope this helps a little, good luck.