Advice needed on changing the ratio of daytime/nighttime sleep for 4 month old.

[YompingJo]

DD, 4 months, has never been a great night sleeper but will occasionally pull a 7 hour sleep out off the bag just to tease us. She was terrible at sleeping in the day too until a month ago when we realised how much sleep she needed overall versus how much she was getting, and we got tough with daytime sleeps. Now she will go down for a nap 2 or 3 times a day, usually in her cot if we're at home. If we are out we try to time long car journeys or buggy walks to coincide with nap times and if she is resisting sleep, being popped in a sling usually does the job. She sleeps for anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours (we wake her after 2 hours if still asleep). She self settles in her cot but generally needs to be picked back up a couple of times and shushed and patted to calm her before she stops crying and actually drifts off. I'm not convinced I get her down to sleep at the crucial moment... we don't have set nap times but try to spot her tiredness cues. I wonder if by the time she rubs her eyes she is already over tired. Set nap times would be hard as the length of her naps is so variable, so if she went down at 9am but only slept for 30 mins then she would be very overtired for her next nap if we tried to keep her awake until 1pm, say. We get her up at 7 every morning and she usually goes down for her first nap around 8:30, the time she wakes from this determines the time of her next nap, as she starts yawning and rubbing her eyes after 90 minutes or so. And so we carry on through the day, trying to respond to her cues. She is very alert and needs winding down for sleep so when she yawns etc, we slow dance to a song before heading upstairs, putting white noise on, swaddling her (disastrous if we skip this step, leads to very short sleep) and sitting with her calmly until she starts to nod off, at which point we put her in her cot and she either protests a little then falls asleep, or she cries lots and we pick her up until she is calm again then have another go. The third go is usually the charm.

At night we put her to bed at 10 and she sleeps until 5ish with one or two wakings to feed. I have tried to resettle her without feeding her but have had no luck. From 5, after a feed, she is generally quite awake. She blows raspberries and chats, she will settle herself back to sleep for a bit but not usually more than half an hour at a time and often less.

So, I would appreciate advice on how to get her to sleep for longer at night (I mean for longer overall, but for longer in one go would be good too!). She gets more sleep in the day than a 4 month old needs but obviously she is more tired than she should be due to not sleeping for more than about 9 hours at night. I feel that if I reduce her daytime sleep she will end up exhausted and overtired which will not lead to good nighttime sleep, but then again maybe she is not tied enough at night? We tried an earlier bed time but it didn't make any difference to her waking time, and I have tried an 11pm dream feed but this just seems to disturb her sleep for the rest of the night and result in her only sleeping in 2 hour blocks.

I make sure she has at least 6 feeds in the day so she should in theory not be waking due to hunger at night.

Apologies for going into so much detail, I wanted to give a complete picture. Thank you for any thoughts.

I would persist with bringing bedtime forward. Although it may not affect wake up time at first, I would imagine it would start getting her into a more manageable day/night rhythm. She may be overtired by bedtime so sleeps less well. Certainly that has been the case with my babies- once the early bedtime is in place they are much better overall.

In terms of naps, my ds is nearly four months and has around 5 hrs daytime naps, then 12 hrs at night (not without feeds though!). So her overall amount of daytime sleep doesn't sound too much to me. Having said that, ds' nights have gone tits up recently so perhaps don't listen to me!

Thanks for your response. The trouble with an earlier bedtime is that if his down earlier, I don't go to bed with her so I don't benefit from the first long block of sleep and the following blocks are shorter, so I was ending up pretty frazzled plus it effectively meant 4 night feeds some nights which is more than I could cope with.

I totally agree with you about benefitting from the first block of the night feed. I bath my DD (15 weeks old) at 7.30pm and feed at 8. She takes a while to feed (FF) and goes to bed about 9pm. Then wakes at 8am.
In regards to feeding her 6 times in the day to ensure she doesn't wake hungry I used to think this but found what was crucial was the last feed at 8/9pm. If my DD drank a good bottle then 5/6oz then that would see her through, regardless of what she had drank all day. She has 4 bottles a day currently.
I was going to recommend trying to just cuddle her when she wakes in the night and not feeding as I found my DS just needed teaching she could wait for a feed and in fact she was still tired. Just so you know she naps in the morning for about 1 or 2 hours and again in the afternoon for an hour till about 4pm. She then has a 20 minute snooze in her chair about 7pm. Then bath at 7.30, bottle at 8, bed at 9. So about 4 hourls of naps all day.

How come you wake her at 7am if u don't mind me asking?

Oh and my DD also 'liked' to be swaddled or so I believed. We would swaddled her, it with her quietly with abit if rocking, or patting. Put her in her cot and she would wake either 10,20,30 mins afterwards. Then one day I was buttoning up her button and turned her onto her tummy to do so. She drifted off to sleep that way before I even had chance to turn her back over. She slept like that for 3 hours. I didn't leave her side as didn't want her to suffocate but to cut a long story short she now sleeps on her tummy as she finds it cosy. Similar to swaddling but less restrictive.

I don't know if any of that info is helpful x

Agree with pps about bedtime. I hear what you are saying about missing that first block of sleep, but perhaps in the short term you could have some earlier bedtimes yourself?

If she is awake from 7am through to 10pm at night that is a really long day for her & her short nights may be because she is overtired. Also if she's waking at 5am thats really quite normal at this age & even if she is awake, so long as she's fed (assuming hungry) & laid happily in the dark & you treat as night she may just drop off eventually. Also you saying that she still wakes up at this time even with the earlier bedtime, if you look at it from another perspective - ok she wakes, but she's had 3hrs more sleep than she would have done if she went to bed at 10pm.

If you really really dont want to change bedtime then like pp i would also question why she needs waking at 7am - you could just let her lie in til she's ready.

I learnt a valuable lesson with my ds that waking in the mornings & limiting day sleep just leads to a crabby child in most instances, esp at that age. They need the sleep to help them grow/develop.

Thank you for the replies. I wake her at 7 because it seemed like a good way to start to establish a bit of a routine, and because she then goes down for a nap at about 9 from which she is awake in time for the classes we do like Baby Sensory. The rest of the day then falls into some semblance of a routine as well. She is starting to respond to this over the last few days and, following advice upthread from okthen, we are bringing bedtime earlier by about 15 mins each day until we get it back to 8pm.

That's a good point, omama about her having more sleep even if she still wakes early. She is beginning to self settle at night without a feed sometimes too, so there is progress!