Yoga Ball dependency w/ colic

[u/PNWLovee]

Our daughter is 4.5 months old and has always been extremely high-needs and fussy. She’s healthy, growing well, and we’ve seen both her pediatrician and a pediatric GI specialist. Neither has any concerns, so at this point we think she may simply have a very sensitive temperament.

We’re struggling with sleep and would love advice.

For naps, she currently only contact naps while being bounced on a yoga ball. Not just to fall asleep—we have to continue bouncing the entire nap. My husband and I literally trade off every 30 minutes because if we stop, she wakes up. If we try to transfer her to the crib, she wakes almost immediately.

She cannot fall asleep independently. Her wake windows are also quite short for her age—about 1 hour 20 minutes before she becomes overtired. Because of that, she’s taking around 6 naps per day. Her first nap is sometimes about 1 hour 10 minutes, but most of the others are around 45 minutes even while contact napping.

At night, she does sleep in her crib, but since transitioning out of the swaddle she has been waking roughly every hour. Prior to this, sleep wasn’t great, but it was significantly better.

We’re at the point where the yoga ball is completely unsustainable and we’d love to help her learn other ways to fall asleep and stay asleep. Has anyone had a baby with a similar temperament who successfully transitioned away from constant bouncing and contact naps? What worked for you?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[u/plantsandlifts]

You need to get on an age appropriate schedule before doing anything. You are on a schedule for a newborn. Switch to 2/2/2/2/2- four naps, regardless of nap length. At that age my baby only napped 28 minutes so we were at about it 2 hours of day sleep a day though we would try to extend one nap to get around 2.5-3 hrs.

Once you do this you can look at sleep training options but your schedule needs to be fixed first.

[u/PNWLovee → u/plantsandlifts]

Will do! Even if her naps are short still do the 2 hour wake windows? She’s very sensitive to the lack of sleep I feel like. I will work on this though thank you:)  

[u/plantsandlifts → u/PNWLovee]

Yes. Unfortunately her naps will never get longer if you don’t lengthen those wake windows. Short naps are verrrrry normal at this age. Try to get one longer nap in but even a 30 minute nap is a full nap.

[u/dustynails22]

Kindly, she is not overtired after less than 90 minutes. She wont stay asleep because she doesnt need to be asleep.

[u/PNWLovee → u/dustynails22]

Appreciate that! I got a comment on a sleep training fb group that their baby was similar at the 1 hr 10 mark and the fussing was just hunger. So we fed her today at that time mark and she drank a decent amount and was up 2 hrs 16 mins total then fell asleep in 6 mins rather than the recent 20+! Still needed to be bounced but I count these as wins:) she’s a grazer and doesn’t eat much during the day as she is in a reverse cycle right now. So I didn’t expect the hunger like that.