Awake Time

My daughter is 3 1/2 months and is awake for an hour. Should she we awake for longer?

After an hour she is doing all the classic tired signs - clenched fists, wants dummy, yawning, rubbing eyes etc.

I wonder though if I should be trying to keep her awake longer or not? Sometimes she goes to bed and is still awake for 20 mins in bed, should I then get her out of bed or not?

I try and do the EASY thing and am doing everything on a 3 hour schedule. Sometimes she wakes after 1 sleep cycle and I have to dummy her to go back to sleep. Sometimes she seems really awake - should I get her up? If I do then becuase she is awake for an hour before being tired she would be eating and then tired for bed straight away.

If I keep her awake longer I find it so hard to get her to sleep, she sleeps so much better if I put her down before she gets overtired.

She isn't sleeping so great during the night anymore and I am wondering if it is cause she sleeps too much during the day or not?

She is normally awake from 4.30pm to 7pm - 7.30pm and I find it quite hard to get her to sleep then, but she always wakes at 4.30pm and by the time we have bathed her and had dinner etc she has been awake for a couple of hours.

We hired a baby sleep therapist and her advice was that babies of this age (M is the same age as yours) should not be awake for longer than 1.5 hours unless it is after 3pm when many of them start their awake time. She said they should be in bed by six thirty.

This is all wonderful in theory but all babies are different. She did tell us that sleep begets sleeps so babies that sleep well during the day should sleep better at night (in theory of course). M started sleeping in 10-11 hour stints at night then going straight back to bed for another 2-3 hours only after she started having day naps. Apparently fatigue from lack of sleep during the day causes problems with their ability to settle and resettle at night.

Getting her to bed before she is overtired is important just as you pointed out. Bizzy is right, they can have an unsettled period around this age. We are getting the same thing with M who recently started waking twice in the night. She's better now but perhaps tonight might be different. I'm just taking it as it comes and reading her signs as best I can. If your bub sleeps well during the day, let her have it and she will start to settle at night when she gets a bit older. If she wont resettle after one sleep cycle, give her a chance to go back to sleep but if she wont settle within 15 minutes then in my opinion your flogging a dead horse. E.g. M will resettle in the mornings and sometimes will even go to 2 hours but there isn't a hope in hell in getting more than one sleep cycle in the afternoons.

This is just based on my personal experience and what we learnt about sleep cycles from the therapist. All bubs are different and not all fit into the mold but it sounds like Evangeline is just doing her thing.

Thanks for your replies, I will just keep working with her ques.

Glad to know there are other babies out there that are only up for an hour at a time.

I found thesleepstore.co.nz a great site has some great tips - good luck.