Short wake windows and restless nights - an endless loop
My 7-month-old has always had wake windows on the shorter side of the "normal range" for her age, and up until the 4-Month regression would take long naps and sleep pretty well at night too. I figured she was just a high sleep needs baby.
Then 4 months hit, and it's all steadily gone downhill since. One of the problems is that I literally can't keep her awake for longer than 2, sometimes 2.5 hours during the day. She is clearly tired, rubbing her eyes, getting fussy, nodding off if I hold her and desperate to fall asleep. So if I follow her cues, she takes 2-3 great naps during the day (up to 2 hours in her crib), totaling probably 4 hours of daytime sleep.
THEN she is up literally all night long, multiple false starts, needing to be resettled every 1 or 2 hours with nursing. We co-sleep and even then she still wakes to practice crawling for at least an hour or two in the middle of the night. The wisdom of the internet would have me believe that she is getting too much daytime sleep and that is causing too little sleep pressure at night... But I don't know how to get out of this endless loop, because no matter what I do, I can't keep her awake for longer during the day without causing what I think is an unhealthy amount of tiredness for her (I.e. complete meltdown and delirium). So she is tired in the morning, and takes great naps to make up for it.
I've tried:
- capping her naps at 1 hour (x3 daily)
- keeping a strict 2 nap schedule (1x 2 hours and 1x1hour)
-experimenting with earlier and later bedtimes
- giving Tylenol at bedtime for teething pain
Nothing has made a substantive difference... Am I missing something or should I just accept that this is where we're at right now?