OT - Bedtime/Naptime rituals
I'm looking for ideas and advice. I have DD2months, my first child. She sleeps through the night no problem, and usually has 3-4 naps of 20-45 minutes each. She used to be a 'snack-feeder', which took quite a lot of time to figure out because somehow no professional person knew what I was talking about. She now eats every 3 hours, and takes naps!!! She's been on this rhythm for 5 weeks now.
She isn't consistent with when her naps occur anymore - she was consistent for these 5 weeks. It used to be Eat-Play-Sleep, but lately that is *sometimes-but-not-always* Eat-Sleep-Play or even Eat-Play-Sleep-Pissed Off. I think the pissed-off part is another growth spurt as she's super-clingy and I can see changes in what she can do/wants to do.
She used to barely nap during the day (related to the snack-feeding) so she would get so overstimulated and overtired during the day that at night she really struggled to wind down enough to sleep. Hence the schedule, which has really helped.
Since she just falls asleep when tired, it seems futile to me to 'put her down for a nap' when she just woke up, seeing as how she used playtime for naptime. But (and here's question 1), should I try to create some routine for her naptimes? And if so, ideas?
And question 2: She just gets tired in the evenings and we put her to bed, if she's not mostly asleep already we turn on her crib mobile but she's always in bed at the latest 20.00 (although if she's super-awake she often pees and cries for us to change her diaper around 20.30). What kind of bedtime routine can we start now that can transition to when she starts eating 'dinner' with us but still has a bottle, to when she stops with the bottle, to when she will understand stories and songs and prayers. Right now she gets her bath in the morning, but once she's playing more actively (like, can come in contact with actual dirt), we'll switch that to the evening, but I don't know if it will be before or after dinner.
Anyway, I can't remember any routines from when I was a kid, and I don't want to get all involved and create habits I don't want (like, she sleeps in her own room already and has from birth, but for us it was a no-brainer anyway since our MB is so small there wasn't room for her too). But I want to be nice and create something loving and peaceful for her.
Ideas?
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So I'm getting the idea that
So I'm getting the idea that 'normal' naps are longer than the 20-45 minutes my girl normally gets? I was very happy when she started to sleep that much, as before there was nothing or 10-15 minutes a couple of times/day. She does sleep through the night, from no later than 8:30 pm until no earlier than 6:30 am. If she is up earlier, once it was belly cramps so I did the upside-down jiggles for some time and then put her back to bed. Another time she was, I changed her and put her back to bed. She was fine until normal wake-up time.
She has always freaked out about pee diapers, so I tend to be alert to changing them. I agree that she most likely is using that last pee diaper at 8:30 to get attention, but it is less than 1 night out of 3, and we are careful not to engage with her - we just have a pleasant expression and don't turn the overhead light on nor say anything. We will stick around and stroke her forehead for a few minutes. She sometimes seems to need her pacifier and other times is fine without it - she cries for it more when she's overtired and/or going through a growth spurt.
Right now, a typical 'cycle' is always 3 hours (she eats at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm):
1. 15-30 minutes - Bottle
2. 15-30 minutes - Interactive play on my lap (standing/sitting, making faces, 'talking', singing, etc)
3. 30-60 minutes - Independent play on baby-gym (my god she loves that thing!)
4. 10-30 minutes - Wind-down (sometimes in her baby bouncer- not electronic, but not for long. In my country they think that letting a baby her age sit in a bouncer more than 15 minutes a day will damage their bone development. But she likes to sit and watch, and sometimes the baby-wrap is too stimulating for her, and inconvenient for me- like if I'm cooking)
5. 15-45 minutes - Naptime (Bedtime if the bottle was at 7pm, although then we keep all the activity on the short end).
It has happened that she has never actually wound down, and ends up crying her head off through naptime as well. That is regularly the case at the end of the day, and if it happens earlier it will be in the afternoon.
I'm living in a different country than the one I grew up and using a language I only started learning 5 years ago... so I wonder sometimes if I'm getting correct information. Also, this country's attitude towards medical/health care is very laissez-faire, and of course individual health-care professionals assume that I know things because I'm living here, not realizing that it actually has to get said out loud. No one ever identified or suggested anything was weird the first month, when I called my midwife crying (no OB-GYN for pregnant ladies) about how I couldn't keep breastfeeding because she was hungry all the time, nor did anyone think it was odd that she didn't sleep during the day... But as soon as I said 'snack-feeding' they all nodded and listed all the issues I'd been having and what to do about it. Eff them. But I digress...
DD2mo eats a bit less than
DD2mo eats a bit less than but with 5 bottles per day. But 1 hour at a time during the day! Wow! I was thrilled when my girl started napping at least 3 times for 30 minutes or more!
Reading what you all have said, I think she's not getting enough sleep during the day and possibly not getting enough to eat - she's still only 10 weeks today, so even though she's quite big (8lbs 13oz at birth!!) she's still not able to eat a lot at once.
Starting tomorrow we're to go from a 3 to a 2.5 hour cycle to see if she'll benefit from eating more often.
Yeah, my girl is actually
Yeah, my girl is actually quite slim, some of her pants are too short and yet too loose in the waist. She's 61 cm (about 2 ft tall) now and weighs 5.3 kg (11 lbs 11oz). She's slightly heavy for her age and quite tall for her age. She was born at 41 weeks, but at birth she was already 52 cm (20.5 inches).
We're halfway through the first day of the more frequent feeding. She napped for an hour first cycle, 30-45 min second cycle, and is just now down for a nap third cycle. I'm expecting another 30-45 minute nap here.
She usually gets her bath in the morning, partly because she sleeps in her clothes rather than jammies and partly because my husband is not home at a regular hour but he's in charge of her once he gets home - so I make it that he HAS to give her a bottle, a diaper change and off to bed, and everything else is gravy. It would not be nice for her if she either got no bath all week or if she did get bathed but was going to bed at all hours due to his schedule.
Because of the snack feeding, she was eating constantly but not much at a time. When I switched to bottle feeding it was an ounce here or there, took her about 30 minutes, and 30 minutes later she'd want more. So going to the schedule means she's got a lot more 'free' time - at first I'd let her eat as much as she wanted within about 60 minutes, then gradually reduced it to 30 minutes. Now she usually is finished within 15-20 minutes, but I've never looked at the clock and removed the bottle!
And because of her previous habits, I get hesitant to feed her at random times. But I must say, I'm pleased so far with the new schedule, it seems she is benefitting from less time between naps and feedings.
Yay! I feel like a good mommy again!