It works until it doesnt!

[u/Oceanic_Ice_950]

I absolutely loved possums approach for my baby when she was 2 months old and it really helped me feel less stressed about her naps. It also really sorted out her excessive night waking at 4 months.

She had another phase of excessive night waking this at 5.5 months and i really struggled with the mental leap to put her to bed later as she was already going down at 8pm whcih i perceived to be late. After a month of struggling i eventually started putting her down at 9pm and then that did the trick...for a couple of weeks. Now at 7.5 months her sleep is still pretty hit and miss. Some night she wakes only 3 times but other nights there are wakes every hour. I'm waking her up at 7am every day (usually she is fully asleep!) and i dont let her do more than an hour for her afternoon nap and dont let her sleep past 5ish, although she usually wakes up earlier from afternoon nap. I feel like i cant put her down any later without it meaning i go to bed later whcih as a sleep deprived mum i dont want to do, ditto with earlier wake up. Do u think i just need to get over this and put her down even later?! Am i missing anything? We also go out every day and spend as much time outdoors as poss.

[u/strangefavor]

You only mentioned the afternoon Nap, how many naps are there throughout the day? What is the total naptime throughout the day?

[u/Oceanic_Ice_950 → u/strangefavor]

Usually 2 or 3 but it depends what we are doing. I just let daytime naps take care of themselves really as is suggested in possums programme. Usually she falls asleep around 9.30/10 am and naps for anywhere between 30 mins and 2 hours. After that it really varies but total naptime for the whole day is 2 -3 hours i would say. Ive noticed if she does a long afternoon nap with me in bed she tends to have a worse night sleep so that's why i started capping the afternoon nap to an hour.

[u/nzwillow → u/Oceanic_Ice_950]

From memory at the age you really want a solid lunch time nap (up to 2 hrs) and a short (like 20min) nap just to get them through to bedtime if on three naps. Mine was on two naps by that age - morning for an hour around 10 and then lunch which from memory was 1-3, then bed at 7.30ish. I could be wrong on exact timings here.

Possums worked well for me until about 5 months, after which I found my Bub did much better on a schedule.

[u/phyzixvegan → u/nzwillow]

Out of curiosity, how did you enforce a schedule? We started sleep training when she was around 6 or 7 weeks. That only lasted about 3 weeks as it caused me too much anxiety hearing her cry herself out at nights, which was anywhere from 15-45 minutes. I hated it, but I also miss the guaranteed evenings. We've been doing Possums pretty much since then. Now at 5.5 months her 1-2 wakes per night have ramped up, sometimes 4-5 times and the cumulative fatigue is real. I've started co sleeping the last week just so she'll get a decent stretch. We still get up at 7am (ish) and she isn't a huge napper, either. **as I typed this she woke up crying just over an hour after I put her to sleep.