Restless sleeper

Hi Guys

I desperately need your help, Ava is 10 weeks old and is sleeping 6-7 hours per night and 3-4 hours there after Fantastic!! My problem is, during the day i struggle to get her to sleep for longer than 1 and half hours, she seems to wake herself up, startles herself. Also it takes her along time to get to sleep and sometimes just lays with her eyes closed. I wrap her up with her hands by her side like in the hospital so she cant startle herself and wake herself up but she still wont sleep properly during the day, does anyone have any suggestions to help her sleep better.

Thanks heaps :pray:

During the day, I have started to wrap DD while she is laying on her side: the arm that is against the bed I don't tuck up as high but the outside arm I wrap so her hand is near her cheek.....was working mostly ;)
Some thing that I also discovered recently was keeping her up a little longer after her feed - ie play mat time, chat time etc... a good 10-15mins. Then when I put her down, she would only squawk for approx 5mins instead of not sleeping at all and crying through to the next feed! :rolleyes: I figured that she simply had pent up energy and I wasn't giving her a good enough outlet to get rid of it all before sleep time.......again, a working mostly scenario!

But & however!!! Am eager to see what other advice you are given as my DD is also 10weeks old and seems to be going through a stage atm of waking up an hour into her nap and not going back to sleep, cryng through to the next feed and then will sleep for approx 4hours solid at night and then for the next THREE:doh: will snort, sniff, wiggle, grunt and throw her head around. Every time I get up to check on her, she has her eyes closed and will settle for anywhere from 5 - 15mins before starting up again....so hope you don't mind me watching the responses with eagerness as well! :)

Anyways, hope the little tid bit is of some consistent use to you ;)

Thanks Charlyfrog, sounds like im not alone here and your advise is useful. Hope you are able to get some insite aswell.

And it seems our little ones have the same birthday :-)

Cheers

Oh that's so lovely!! You should come over to the baby buddies for June 2007 :) and it is so nice to know that I'm not alone either!! ;)

At that age, DS was in the same sleep pattern for the day he is now - short naps only, three times a day! I used to be able to get him to do a longer nap at lunchtime, but he's not wanting to nap for more than an hour now.

I gave up fighting him down in the day. He would sleep in the car, in his pram, after a feed at the appropriate time. So I let him sleep where he was - the bed was nighttime only. Then once he wakes up he comes in with me; quite often my presence will help him re-settle, especially in the small hours when I can just stay asleep myself while I pat him!

HTH.

Moving to baby & toddler general discussion forum.

Hi Tanz, sorry I'm no help to you either - Natalie was the same when she was little-little. She used to catnap during the day and have good sleeps at night like Ava. On the settling thing, though, does Ava like being patted? Natalie used to settle best for day sleeps wrapped, on her side and with good firm pats on her bottom. :dunno: HTH?

Around about 8 weeks of age Rylee's day naps changed - going from about 2 and a 1/2 hours to 45 mins - big shock for Mum - seems they just wake up all of a sudden and decide being up and about is much more fun than napping. So like Mads says an hour and a half is good. They change all the time with their routines and sleep habits (well Rylee does) and just when you think you have got the hang of things it goes out the window - just to keep us Mums on our toes I guess....all I can suggest is if you have found you have tried the usual settling back techniques - patting, keeping wrapped or whatever technique you used to get them to sleep in the first place then to get them up again as it is pretty frustrating trying to get a bub who doesn't want to sleep back to sleep (if that makes sense). Sorry I'm not much help either.
Laurin :)

Thank you so much guys for your responses, I think aslong as she is getting some power naps during the day she will be ok. I have another question, at what age should I start putting her down to fall asleep by herself? Im scared that she will become reliant on me always putting her to sleep?

Thanks again :-)

Tanz, how you feel comfortable settling Ava is the key. I think if Ava finds it hard to settle with your help, settling without it is going to cause some upset.
Having said that, for me, I found that from about 3.5 months, I could most often settle Natalie in the cot with patting rather than rocking in my arms which I'd been doing previously. Gradually we got to a point where she was happy to settle herself, but not every time. She didn't consistently settle herself til recently - about 6.5-7 months old. But every babe and mum is different, as you know, so your story may be vastly different...
Go with what you're comfortable with. And I'm sure Ava will let you know what she's comfortable with too ;)

With DD#1, we'd put her to bed after she had had some play time after a feed and then let her squawk for 5 - 10mins (checking if the squawk appeared to change from a, "seriously don't want to be here now mummy & daddy!" ;) to something a little more urgent ie wind, spit up etc) and she would fall asleep on her own and then sleep like an angel right through to the next feed....we found that she wouldn't sleep in our arms anyways so the cot was the answer and the bonus was that we could pretty much take her anywhere and she would sleep in the portacot.....

DD#2 - oh ma gosh!!! COMPLETELY not interested in sleeping longer than an hour at a time during the day!! Tried everything we did with DD#1 and feel like we've tried everything that i thought I was dead against doing with DD#1........keeping my brain on the edge of frying!! Wrapped or not, rocked or not, patted or not, even 'plugged' or not!!!

I thought I knew how to handle a baby ....then I had this second munchkin......:rolleyes: