Need help with 6 mo routine

[corrina01]

Yes teething can make him more sleepy sometimes.  My DD was teething on and off from 3 months, 1st tooth cut at 4 months, 2nd tooth cut at 5 months, then teething really bad till 81/2 months (early wakeups, crying on and off from 4.30pm till bedtime) then she had 5 cut within 2 weeks.

I know when my DD is teething, 1 day she will have 45 min naps, really cranky. Back to her normal naps for a 2 days and then 2 days of long naps.

[erinsmum36]

can i piggy back!!
my lo is 25 weeks and i hve similar problem (for about 5 weeks). goes down great for naps but is hell to put to bed these days. the last 3 days i have been with her for 2 hours a time to get her to go to sleep. after reading these posts i am wondering if it is nap related.. would appreciate some advice pls.
7:30 awake and bf
9:30 sleep
11:30 up and solids
12:30 bf
1:30 - 1:45 sleep
3:30 bf
6:00 small solids
6:15 bath
6:30ish bf
7:00 in bed.
i tried pulling her bedtime back to 6:30 this week but no better.

would love some advice as i am unwell at the moment and the evenings as just too much at the moment. thankyou!

[HeatherC]

IF it's any help, at 6 mo, my dd had a 12 day with 2 x 2hr naps, and a 12 night.  Translation, have you tried a 7:30 bedtime if she's not ready at 7?

[becky1969]

It looks to me like A time isn't quite long enough. That 2nd nap of the day is only 15 minutes? Or is that a typo?

I know what happend in our case is he DEFINITELY wasn't tired enough! I was trying to put him down for bed after 2 hours of awake time, and he fought like crazy. He seemed SUPER tired to me. But, when we changed his awake time to 3 hours, holy cow! He went to sleep just like he used to! I was terrified he'd be overtired, but nope! He LOVES his new bedtime and is no longer waking up 30 minutes after I put him down -- that's what he was doing before the 3 hour A time.

At 6 months, we were doing about 2.5 hours of awake time, and at 7 months exactly moved to 3 hours. Looking back, I think at 6 months he was ready for 2hr45 but I didn't recognize it. You could try extending A time slowly or all at once and just see how LO does. Also 2hr25 minutes of naps is a bit on the short side at 6 months, I think. It probably should be closer to 3-3.5. If you extend A time, that 2nd nap will probably be longer. The morning nap is probably fine b/c the bedtime is so late and it's probably just an extention of night time sleep.

[erinsmum36]

oops - was a typo - usually between 3.5 nd 4 hours of sleep in naps.. am now wondering if that is too much going by your reply..

[HeatherC]

Every baby is so different, but dd had 4 hours of day sleep at that exact age and didn't have bedtime problems.  If however, he seems to be resisting bedtime, you could either make it later, or shorten the pm nap to 1.5 hrs.

[becky1969]

OK, that makes more sense!

My LO did 4 hours of daytime sleep for quite awhile too -I think up to 6 months. It was suggested on the nap board that I shorten his daytime sleep b/c we were having bedtime issues. That was a disaster! Probably my solution should have been extending awake time before bed. My LO shortened his naps on his own really quickly after the 6 month mark. Suddenly we went from 4 to 3.5 then 3, all within about 2 weeks. You may just be in that transitional phase where LO is about to shorten her naps on her own, but in the meantime it's making bedtime a disaster! That definitely was the case with us, and like I said -- i didn't realize he wasn't sleepy enough before bed, probably due to the naps.

You could try shortening the PM nap, like PP suggests, and see if that makes a difference. I think some of these bigger changes they go thru - like transitioning down to 2 naps from 3- cause some sleep disruptions, but it DOES get better. For awhile, I wondered if it would, but it definitely has.

[erinsmum36]

well today i had to go out and about in the afternoon so she only had an hours nap. in the am she woke after an hour of nap, and where i would normally leave her to babble and fuss and then she goes back to sleep, i got her up. so all in all only 2 hours of naps (ok maybe too little). Anyway, brought bedtime forward to 6:00 hoping to get her to sleep by 6:30 and she eventually nodded off at 7:30. I tried taking her out of the cot and laying on the bed with her, I tried walk in walk out and eventually when tht didnt work I picked her up and cuddled herr. She lay her head on my shoulder and immediately calmed and tried to sleep. I put her back down when she was almost asleep and left and she went to sleep. Does this sound like SA, cot phobia etc or do you think its more sleep related i.e. naps etc?

[HeatherC]

How many nights do you think you generally spend that much time picking her up, taking her to the bed, cuddling her back to sleep?  I'm not faulting you by any means, but I was just thinking she might be growing attached to that.  In just 2 or 3 days of my dd having a cold recently, it took some extra soothing to calm her down enough to sleep.  She would be so upset going into her crib (I assumed b/c she couldn't really breath lying down and just didn't feel well).  Well, she (I think) got used to me spening time rubbing her back, rocking her  , stroking her hair, etc, and it became a habit I had to break (walk-out, wait, walk-in).  It didn't take too long b/c it had only been a few days and she was older (17 mos), but just thinking that could be a related issue for you.

[erinsmum36]

its highly possible. its been over a month that this has been happening, so for that time she has grown used to the extra time and attention. Today she had weird naps - 3 one hour ones, the last finished at 2:30. I thought bedtime would be horrendous at 7 as she would be so tired, but it took 20 mins for her to fall asleep. I tried to leave her once settled but she cried and I went back twice. In the end I stayed till she was asleep, just with my hand on her tummy, and she fell asleep quite easily. Now Im wondering if this is a mixture of nap and me related. She obviously still wanted me to stay with her, but 20 mins is bliss compared with normal, and the only difference was less duration of naps, but more importantly finishing all naps by 2:30 instead of 3:30 or even 4.