Sleep Training

So, I probably shouldn't complain because my 8 week old has been STN since she was 5 weeks. But her naps are somethin' aweful. I breastfeed and the kid really likes to fall asleep nursing, but most of the time when I lay her in bed for her naps, she's awake but drowsy and can fall asleep on her own. The problem is... Her naps are like 20 minutes long. Sometimes 30-45 min. And, on good days, she'll wake up 20-30 min into a nap then fall back to sleep on her own after 10-20 min of stirring, grunting, fussing, etc, but it's like clockwork that she wakes again and does that again (sometimes I have to go in and burp or rock her or shh-pat her) but it ends up being a 2-3 hour nap (or at least that's how long she was in her room for. Lots of times though she can't get back to sleep so her naps are short and she's tired. She eats a lot. I try to nurse her after she wakes up to get into that eat play sleep routine, but she acts like she's hungry after 1.5 to 2 hours and that's when she goes down for her next nap. It's frustrating. She may eat a lot during the day so she can sleep through the night which is fine, but I go back to work in less than a month and I was hoping to have her napping somewhat routinely and maybe even without eating by then.

Like I said, nighttime is great. We have a bedtime routine and she does nurse to sleep, but I'll change that up when she's older.

Oh, she's a swaddle-only sleeper and she has reflux so she sleeps in an elevated co-sleeper that it's in her crib. Before these measures, she only napped on a person which was really tough.

The selfish part of me wants a little longer naps so I can get stuff done (and the nanny can focus on my 2 year old and her baby), but I also want her to have restful sleep which I don't think she is getting because of all the waking in between.

Anyone else go through this?

Ideally everyone's baby would take great naps and sleep well at night... but I've found that's usually not the case. At her age, I would say her sleep sounds terrific. My kids both did better at night than during the day. As hard as it is, I'm so thankful. It doesn't help ME if they take a 3 hour nap if they're going to be up all night, KWIM?

She is very young and I think it will just take a while before she gets the hang of napping. When she's older you can nurse right when she wakes up and she'll need another nap before she needs to eat again. It sounds like you know what you're doing and I bet things will get better soon. Hang in there and congrats on STTN! That's very young!

I'm with Sarah.. I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear. I was in the EXACT same boat as you where my little guy would sleep great at night (he did wake for one feeding at 3am), but daytime was a mess. He took 20-30 minute naps, then they turned into the chronic 45 minute naps and FINALLY at about 5-6 months we started getting consistent, great naps. I won't mention what happened to his night time sleep at 12 weeks. ;)

People told me this, and I figured they really didn't understand, but you need to go with the flow at this young age. Don't kill yourself attempting a routine, or even stressing over the eat/activity/sleep thing. If you have a reflux baby who is a touchy sleeper, you won't be able to 'fix' it at 8 weeks. Know that you are not alone and even though you see all these people going around, at the mall, restaurants, wherever with babies in the bucket seat sleeping away - it's not all babies. In fact I call those 'fake babies'. I think just as many babies are like yours (and mine), and just don't sleep well until their bodies (tummy) and minds mature. You just don't see those babies all the time because their poor mommies are stuck at home desperately trying to get them to sleep!!

So give yourself a break (as much as you can) and nurse to sleep, stick him in the swing/stroller/whatever works for the next 6 weeks and if he's still really struggling and if his nights start to deteriorate then come back and we'll help you thru a "sleep training" plan. The fact is, even if you were really ready to work on sleep training now, you most likely would get him to fall asleep on his own, but he'd still wake after 20-30 minutes.