Long naps AND a whole night of sleeping.. Can you have both? Part 1

My 5 month old VL has taken it up on himself to only sleep 30-45 minutes every nap and waking up at least 10 times a night.  As every parent, that has gone through the same, knows it’s so exhausting. Never getting a full night sleep and the baby is overly tired and cranky every day. I read somewhere, can’t remember where, that if you don’t get a full night sleep, as an adult, your behavior the next day is as if you were drunk. And after 7 months (couldn’t sleep properly the last 2 months of the pregnancy) of never getting a good sleep, I agree. So I’ve been looking around for some methods to fix this. And let me tell you, there are a LOT of methods.

I’m going to start with looking at those naps. Mostly because I definitely don’t have the energy to start working on the night sleep. So the plan is to get at least a week (hopefully two) of good naps before we start looking at the night sleep.

Well, when I was looking for some methods I found some pretty good stuff at http://www.sleepbabylove.com/short-naps-suck/ . She talks about how the length of the nap gives her clues about what’s going on. I had never thought about that but it makes a lot of sense.

Length of naps

So, according to www.sleepbabylove.com/, then a nap that last less than 30 minutes means that your baby is overtired and will probably wake up cranky (been there!). A nap that only last 30-45 minutes shows that the baby can’t transfer sleep cycles and isn’t capable of soothing him/her self. A nap that lasts 50-60 minutes is on grey area when it comes to short naps, it depends on how well rested and happy your child is when it wakes up. Babies up to at least 6-8 months should sleep 1,5-2,5 hours every nap (OMG, 2,5 hours would be like heaven!)

E.A.S.Y Routine

I hadn’t realized that if baby is nursed or bottle fed for sleep then the food will become a sleep association (meaning they can’t sleep without it). So short-naps-suck recommends the E.A.S.Y routine, where you move the feeding to right after the nap instead of before the nap. When the food isn’t linked to sleep any more, it can encourage a fuller and better feedings for your baby.

You can find another method of this routine in the link but I’m going to start with this one. As I said, the plan is 2 weeks and then I’ll let you know how it goes. Maybe it works, maybe I’ll have to find a new method.

What is the routine with your baby?