Hi all! I am a first time mom as well as a first time poster and am hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of the group to help my overtired newborn. A will be 11 weeks old tomorrow and although she has never been a GREAT sleeper, up until a few weeks ago she slept what I considered to be a fairly normal amount: 3-4 naps a day lasting an hour or two each and waking up a couple of times at night to eat. At 8.5 weeks we had 4 days in a row of 5-6 hours in one stretch at night and I thought we were finally seeing the longer sleep stretches I'd been dreaming of. Then everything started going downhill. For the last week or two, she has only really been napping for 30 mins at a time (with an occasional 1-2 hr nap thrown in) and is back to only going 2-3 hours in a single stretch at night (after the first stretch she often wakes up every hour or so unless we bring her into our bed which is a habit I'd rather not keep up). We are having a harder time getting her to go to sleep at night as well.

I know sleep begets sleep and that an overtired child will have trouble going to sleep but I'm not sure how to break the cycle. I'm trying to put her down after no more than 60-90 mins of wakefulness to try and prevent her from crossing into overtired territory but these catnaps don't seem to be working and i can see it impacting her night sleep. We've also tried swaddling, white noise, the swing, and putting her down in her pack n play (she's not yet in her crib) for naps and nothing seems to help.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!