Day 65: Trying to find the sweet spot between not tired and too tired

Sometimes my insights seem blinding in their obviousness... after I have them. But it has come to me that perhaps Mari has been having trouble falling and staying asleep because she's not really tired when I try to get her down for a nap.

I once again experimented with letting Mari set her own schedule today, to see what's changed. And clearly, some things have. Mari can happily stay awake longer than ever, and I've finally decided she's given up on her third nap for good -- it's been a couple of weeks since she's taken one and she hasn't even seemed close lately.

I didn't set out to let Mari set her own schedule when I woke up this morning, but when I was trying to get her down for her first nap at about 9:15 it became clear she was nowhere near the point of sleep. So I decided I'd let her stay up for another hour or until she started showing signs of fatigue, whichever came first. Well, the hour mark came first and she wasn't sleeping until 10:30. However, she napped without waking for nearly an hour and a half.

The afternoon worked less well. I decided to do it purely on sleepy signs. But Mari has never been very consistent or clear about showing signs of fatigue until she's already overtired, and that's what happened. The screechiness of overtiredness came on suddenly, without so much as a warning yawn. She didn't go down for her afternoon nap until close to 4 PM and she was up again 35 minutes later. I suspect short naps are likely to happen when she's either overtired or undertired, and I think we've been having plenty of both lately.

So the conclusion I'm coming to is that Mari's schedule needs to change to reflect her only having two naps a day and greater comfort with being up three to four hours at a stretch. But she clearly does need to have a schedule, because she's not old enough to know what's best for her.

Another thing I've been thinking about is moving Mari's bedtime slightly later, in hopes of getting her to sleep a little later in the morning -- she's been waking up before 7:00 most of the time, and 7:00 is just barely tolerate for me. Last night she went to bed early (7 PM) because she hadn't napped well, then she was up and wanted to play at 5:30 AM this morning, though I eventually managed to get her back down for awhile before she woke up for good at 6:50.

Perhaps a new (ideal) schedule might look like this (not including feedings), with half an hour of flexibility on either side for naps:

7:00 - Up and play
9:30 - Naptime routine
10:00-11:30 - Nap
2:30 - Naptime routine
3:00-4:30 - Nap
7:00 - Bedtime routine including bath
8:00 - Asleep

If she really follows this, she should be getting about 14 hours total sleep a day, about ideal for a baby her age, and she would never be up more than three and a half hours at a stretch. Anyway, I'll give this a try for the next few days and re-evaluate.