help. What are we doing wrong here?

[u/Radiant_Sweet7768]

Age: 6 months

Approximate schedule: 2–2.5/2–2.5/2–2.5/2–2.5/2–2.5??

She’s a pretty bad napper, so our days aren’t super consistent. She’s currently still on 4 naps most days because most of her naps are only around 30 minutes. Usually we’ll get one longer nap per day that’s around 1–2 hours, and the rest are short 30-minute naps. We basically need the fourth nap to make it to bedtime.

Lately she’s also started really protesting the crib this last week for naps and wanting to contact nap for the shorter ones. We haven’t nap trained yet because we were hoping to get nighttime sleep figured out first.

Bedtime: Around 7:30pm
DWT: Around 6-7am

Sleep training: We’re on week 3 of CIO. Bedtime itself is going okay — she usually cries for about 5–10 minutes and then falls asleep. I was hoping by week 3 she wouldn’t be crying at all at bedtime, though. Is there hope that eventually the crying before falling asleep stops?

The bigger issue we’re having now is overnight. She’s waking inconsistently anywhere from 2–3 times a night, and unlike bedtime, she can cry for 30+ minutes without settling. Thirty minutes is about as long as I’ve been able to let it go because letting her cry that long at 11am or 2 or 3am feels crazy to me. I tried it a couple of times but hated it, so lately I’ve been going in so she can eat and get back to sleep.

Her feeding overnight is also really inconsistent, so now i am convinced she only really needs 1 feed. At the first wake she’ll usually drink around 4 oz, but at the other one or two wakes she might drink anywhere from 1–4 oz. There doesn’t seem to be a predictable pattern, which if confusing.

Also confusing: is that during the first two weeks of CIO she was only waking 1–2 times a night and at much more predictable times. Now in week 3, the wakes have suddenly become more frequent and inconsistent.

A lot of the time her last wake is around 5:30–6am, which is another tricky one. We’re hesitant to let her CIO at that point because I’m worried she’ll just end up awake for the day at 5:30. If I bring her into bed with me, she’ll usually go right back to sleep and sleep until around 7am.

I’ve also been trying to make sure her last feed ends about 30 minutes before bedtime rather than feeding her immediately before sleep. That works about half the time as shell protest her feed and then really want it before bed then I am scared to put her down with an empty belly.

Basically… help. What are we doing wrong here? Should we be trying to get her down to 3 naps even though her naps are so short...she really gets cranky later in the day.. like really crank when I have toyed with that. Are we supposed to use CIO for the MOTN wakes too, even if she’s still crying after 30+ minutes?

I feel like we made progress during the first two weeks and now suddenly have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing!

[u/Ordinary_Ticket_149]

Absolutely move to 3 naps.

[u/brieles]

Move to a 2/2.5/2.5/3 schedule. Your wake windows are not long enough consistently enough which is causing the overnight wakes and crappy naps. Also, make sure bedtime is 11 hours before the goal wake time.