5m DD not having full nap, any tips on resettling her?

[milki]

DD2 is 5 months old and the only real routine we have is that she has a nap every morning starting sometime between 9-10am. This normally lasts around 45 mins then she wakes up and cries - but I think she needs a longer nap because she is grizzly and even starts yawning straight away if I get her up. I think the problem is that she can't settle herself back to sleep and would really like to snooze for another hour or so on my boob. Anyone any tips on getting her to settle again? Should I try PUPD? She settles fine initially for the nap after a feed so I don't think she's hungry.

Our nightimes are still all over the place - prob because she wants to feed back to sleep whenever she wakes in the night and we also quite often have a period of 1 - 2 hours in the middle of the night that she is awake..... I am really hoping that if I can get daytime naps sorted it will have a knock on effect at night. Also have a 2 year old DD so am finding it hard to spend time getting DD2 into a routine/ good sleep habits etc.

Help!

Thanks in advance,

M

My DS (3.5 months) went through a long phase of only napping for 45 mins and not going through longer, but this past week or so he will take a nap of 2 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon.

I think feeding them just before a nap can sometimes be counter-productive because after the initial drowsiness post-feed babies can often then be really active. So maybe feeding her close to her nap means that she wakes up more quickly ready to play.

With my DS the problem was he would feed on waking (7.30am) and go to sleep around 9.30-9.45. But his next feed would be due at 10.30 so he'd come into light sleep, realise he was hungry and wake up. Now I try to delay his morning feed slightly - he wakes around 7.30am, but I hold off feeding until 8-8.30 which usually isn't a problem as he never wakes starving anyway as he usually feeds around 5am. He still goes down around 9.30am (he tends to need a nap 2 hours after waking) and instead of his feed being due around 10.30am (which means he'd wake after about 45 mins as he was getting hungry), it is due around 11am-11.30am which means he will go through the 45 min light sleep without feeling hungry and can then nap for longer.

Maybe try a slightly different feed/activity/sleep pattern and see if that works better. It was all a bit of trial and error trying to get this working with my DS but it seems to be okay for now!

The feeding too close to sleep idea is interesting, but I feed her to sleep mostly so will maybe have to think about breaking that habit too.
I think I am going to persevere with a 10am nap - just keep picking her up, feeding etc until she actually sleeps. Just done that and she has finally gone to sleep again after nearly an hour and a half! Is it worth persevering with that? Or am I jsut forcing the issue....? I know she will sleep in the sling and it is so sunny I am temped to just go out and let her sleep n that, but really feel like I should be a little stricter with myself and try to get naps/ sleeps sorted, for my long term sanity.

DD1 is waking up at an ungodly hour at the moment which means that she'll have her nap early at 10am'ish so I can concentrate on DD2, so hopefully her morning nap wil get sorted soon then I can think about ways to sort DD1's early rising......

Phew! Might be funny if I wasn;t so tired.

M

milki - i'm trying not to worry too much about naps if possible and just sort of stumbled on the answer for us (although i bet it will stop working in a few weeks time just to bamboozle me again!). if he won't settle, i sometimes just go out for a walk with him and let him sleep in sling/pram. i am a bit 'stricter' about bedtime because sleeping well at night is something he'll need to do for life, but eventually he'll drop naps so i try not to worry quite so much about those.

having said that, i have the luxury of only one DC to worry about at the moment if you are having problems with DD1 then i might be tempted to try and sort those first and just let the baby sleep whenever and wherever and then focus on the baby after that.

good luck!