Don't know where I'm going wrong

[Ashpan26]

Basically my daughters sleep is all over the place and has been since about 3 months old she is 5.5 months old now I try and be consistent every day but sometimes thats not always possible.

She was having 4 naps a day about 45 minutes to and hour and falling asleep either by walking in my arms pram or the car. She's now taking longer and longer to get to sleep I do it when she shows tired signs yawning rubbing eyes becoming clingy then when she is asleep it's 20-30 minutes. She's also very clingy and won't be put down for very long I'm seeing this as overtired but when I try and get her to sleep she won't go. I tried everything today which took an hour and she stilll didn't sleep so I gave up. I'm not sure if she actually is tired but why the clingyness?

About 7pm we do bedtime either bath or upto dark room for lullaby and change into sleeping back and I breastfeed her to sleep she then wakes multiple times a night most nights, some nights she's only up twice but that's rare and she sometimes self settles another rare event, so I have no idea what I am doing wrong I'm trying to get her to sleep after being awake for 1.5-2 hours a bedtime routine I've also been trying to feed her more in the day but she still won't sleep

It sounds like baby is over tired and you have got to the stage that you are putting baby down for naps too late.

The ideal time to get baby to sleep is at the just-got-tired point. There will be no outward signs of being tired at this time, and probably won't be for another half an hour.

Tired signs are when baby is over tired. And the more tired signs you have, the more over tired baby is. Tired signs (in approx order of how tired baby is) include

• wanting to be picked up
• clingy, won't be out down
• crying or grumbling
• eye running
• yawning
• inconsolable screaming
• back arching
• head thrashing side to side

Poor sleep = worse sleep

The more over tired baby is the harder he will be to get to sleep. Then once asleep will be in a lighter sleep so wake more easily. So the over tiredness cycles and gets worse.

You can break an over tiredness cycle, but it takes some concerted effort.

I would suggest you limit awake time between naps. Look at the clock when baby wakes and make a mental note to start getting baby back to sleep 1h after waking. That gives you half an hour to get baby to sleep, resulting in 90m maximum awake time. If baby is very over tired it may need to be less.

Thank you for your reply @FATEdestiny. I do also think it's overtiredness which I am trying to break. Today was much better she usually wakes up early from her naps but today I have been trying to get her to sleep every 1 hour and 45 minutes of being awake and she slept 1 hour and 15 minutes today in her pram for her second nap which she's never done before let's hope we're onto something, will see how tonight goes.