Better naps have led to worse nights- help!

[izpie]

My 5 month old dd has always been a rubbish sleeper, she was having 3 or 4 half hour naps in the day (rocked to sleep in arms) and had managed to get her down to 2 night feeds with maybe one or 2 other wakings. Started to shush pat for daytime sleep a couple of weeks ago and suddenly this week have been getting naps of 45mins up to 2 hours. Yay, I thought, but nights have gone tits up, now waking every 2-2.5 hours, won't resettle without feed, up at 5am, tonight also awake from 3.45 for an hour, burbling happily in cot- have just bf her back to sleep. Yesterday she had a morning and afternoon nap of 1.5 hrs each and a lunch nap of 30mins. I feel she now uses naps to catch up on lost sleep at night.
Do I start waking her up from naps & go back to short daytime sleeps? Anyone else found their dc is like this?

My DD is like this sometimes, for example she is pretty sleepy today and probably won't sleep as much tonight, so tomorrow will have to try and keep her awake as much as possible in order to get her routine back!

Perhaps you should try and gradually reduce the length of her naps, I wouldn't do it suddenly or she'll just get over tired, but she's obviously just switched when she should be sleeping to daytime and therefore not sleeping at night.

I always try and make daytime fun and active for my DD, lots of interaction, noise and music, putting her in proper clothes, taking her outside. Then at night bath her, feed her, put her in to some pj's and keep the noise/lights down and talk gently. Usually she will nap for 10 minutes at a time throughout the day and have half an hour naps morning and evening a couple of hours after/before going to bed. (which gives me time to get myself sorted for the day/get ready for bed)
It's difficult to get things done in the day but that's what slings are for, or I just carry her around and chatter away so that she stays alert and it means she'll sleep for 5 - 6 hours a night. (I have mastered doing most things one handed!)

It's really difficult to keep a routine going as babies generally do their own thing (my DD's routine was her own doing!) and sometimes we just have to work our lives around them in order for it to work as they really don't know any better until they're older - 5 months is still quite young to have a set routine for a lot of babies. Also growth spurts can affect how much they sleep, but keeping the daytime fun and exciting is the thing that works for me. I hope this helps and you manage to get some sleep!