Day One of the new sleep plan was actually yesterday, but I waited until today to post about it because I wanted to see how the night went. One thing is clear to me already: naps are key.
Day One went astoundingly well. From about 8:30 to 2:30, Mari woke up only once, briefly. I attributed it to being well-rested during the day. Though she woke up after only napping in short spurts, I did everything in my power to get her back to sleep, and she did sleep.
Today, though, everything went wrong. Her first nap was a little over an hour, short of the 1.5 hours I would like, but long enough, I thought. I think now that was a mistake. An hour just isn't enough for her; she seems to really need 90-minute naps.
She woke up around 10:40 and around 11 AM, we went shopping. I'd previously thought she was generally good for about 2.5 hours after a nap. She has managed to stay up more than four hours at a stretch before.
But by about noon, she was overstimulated and fussing. I should have taken her straight home to bed, but I wasn't done in the store. So it was about 12:45 by the time we got home, 1 PM by the time I seriously started trying to put her down and 1:40 by the time she fell asleep. By this point she was overtired and woke up after only 30 minutes. I rocked her to sleep again in my arms and put her down, but she woke up. So I let her sleep in my arms until she next time she woke up, which made for a total nap of about an hour.
After that short early-afternoon nap, she was showing tired signs again after only an hour or so but I again thought she could stand to be up longer. Wrong. By the time she was down for her late-afternoon nap she was again overtired and this time she only slept for about 45 minutes. But because it was about 5:30 by that point, I let her stay up thinking she would be having her bath in only an hour, and I had to make dinner.
Another mistake. Mari started to have a meltdown. Jon took over but she wouldn't fall asleep for him. So I ate a quick dinner and started to put her to bed around 6:30, skipping the nap. It took her until after 8 PM to fall asleep and she has woken up multiple times since then, a far cry from yesterday.
So, do I have to come to the conclusion that I can really only take Mari out of the house for less than an hour at a time, and only if she's well rested? At five months (and as of today, able to sit up), you'd think she would be able to last longer. But maybe this is the lesson I needed to learn to get Mari to sleep better: she's still only a little baby. And she needs to sleep an awful lot.
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