Nap Time Troubles

Little Miss will be 12 weeks old this Thursday and I'm trying to fine tune her schedule. She was doing great on a 3 hour schedule for quite a while but she started having nap trouble about 2 weeks ago. I'm trying to figure out if she needs shorter or longer naps, more or less time between feeds, or something else.

Here is what we have been doing.

6:30 am - nurse and right back to bed
9:30 am - nurse
10:30 am - nap
12:00 pm - nurse
1:00 pm - nap
3:00 pm - nurse
4:00 pm - nap
6:00 pm - nurse
6-9 pm - usually fussy, sometimes nap, sometimes not
9:00 pm - nurse, bedtime routine, down for the night

Like I said, this was working beautifully for quite some time and then she started waking exactly one hour into each of her naps. I thought it was the 45 minute intruder that they talk about in Preparation for Parenting (more on that another time). I thought maybe she was waking up hungry so I tried feeding her when she woke. Sometimes she was hungry but often times she wasn't. I would often pick her up only to have her fall right back to sleep in my arms.

Seeing this, I next tried leaving her in the crib but patting, shushing, or singing to her. Sometimes this worked but other times it just made her more upset that I wouldn't pick her up. When it was apparent that she was just getting more worked up by seeing me, I started letting her cry it out. That doesn't seem to be working either. Over the weekend at my parents' house, Little Miss seemed to not be feeling well so when she woke up after an hour, I just let her finish her nap in my arms. When I do that, she sleeps until the next scheduled feeding time.

I am feeling unsure of myself and I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I think I've come to the conclusion that she wakes up at the end of her first sleep cycle and doesn't know how to settle herself back down for the rest of the nap. She isn't hungry, seeing me makes her cry harder, and holding her for the second hour of every nap is not something I want to do regularly.

I know her ideal wake time is close to 60 minutes. For a while, it seemed to have lengthened to 65 or 70 minutes but it now is back to right around 60 minutes again. There is a great post over at Chronicles of a Babywise Mom about Optimal Waketime Lengths. I'm not sure if this changing waketime length issue has anything to do with the middle of the nap waking issues we're having.

So today we are trying something new. For the next week we are going to try this and see how it goes.

7:00 am - wake up and nurse
8:30 am - nap
9:30 am - nurse
10:30 am - nap
1:00 pm - nurse
2:30 pm - nap
4:00 pm - nurse
5:00 pm - nap
7:00 pm - nurse
8:30 pm - nap
9:30 pm - nurse
10:00 pm - bedtime

This morning went very well with Little Miss sleeping solidly for the first two naps. We are on nap number three right now and she has been fussing on and off from 45 minutes in until now (an hour in). Hopefully she'll adjust in the next day or two and naps will be a bit smoother for a while at least.