Getting rid of the evening catnap

[Lippy Chick]

We think Alice is deciding herself that she doesn't need that evening catnap, but just wondered when was a good time to stop it and should we persist with the evening battle to get her to sleep.  She's just not going to sleep at all at this time of the evening.  She hasn't for about 3 days now and we're trying for about 30-45 mins to get her to sleep.  Normally for a nap she goes straight to sleep, so this is quite unusual.  Her naps during the day are really inconsistent and unpredictable.  She's 6 and a half months and wondering if it's just time to get rid of it.

Any advice welcome.

Pauline

[gleek]

oh god, i'm having the same problem. i've been trying to push out her A time in the morning and the afternoon but then that only leads to bad naps and she'll STILL not want to take the cat nap. i'm totally at a breaking point.

[NiknLily]

Hi, Just my experience but they do tend to just drop that nap whenever they see fit and there is little you can do about it.  Took us a good 2 months of bedtime hell when she dropped this nap until she was old enough to cope with longer A times during day 

[skatty]

My DD dropped this nap herself and it was completely painless as we just put her to bed earlier, I sometimes think the less you think about these things the easier they are (going through the 2-1 so am praying I am right lol!)

[Lippy Chick]

Thank you ladies for your replies. 

On Monday we spent 45 mins trying to get her to sleep (which was highly frustrating as I was trying to make dinner at the same time, as we use that opportunity to eat).  She didn't, we got her up bathed her, fed her and put her to bed, she went straight to sleep and that was it.  Last night we did much the same, she did wake a few times inbetween 8 and 12, but then she's got terrible nappy rash at the moment and we think that's what was waking her.

I think I agree that we can over think these things and that I think she's dropping it herself, it's just that there was no warning.  I mean how inconsiderate.    I think we'll try to get her to sleep a bit earlier in the evening now.

Thank you again.

Pauline

[gleek]

so am i not supposed to lengthen her A time to make up for it? yesterday, she took 2 1.5-hour naps and out of nowhere dropped her cat nap. i ended up putting her to bed a little overtired at 5:45PM! my god, that's the earliest she's ever been to bed. then she woke about six times during the night and i think it's because she had very little awake time during the day.. less than she's used to.

today, she blew her second nap (only 40 min) because i tried adding another 5 minutes on to her awake time before hand. i'll definitely try to put her down for a third nap and i think (fingers crossed) she'll take it. thoughts? what should i be doing? her schedule used to look like this before she dropped her cat nap. this was an ideal schedule and she used to sleep through the night with it.

6:30AM - wake
8:30AM - sleep
10:00AM - wake
12:20PM - sleep
2:00PM - wake
4:15PM - sleep
4:45PM - wake
7:00PM - sleep

[Lippy Chick]

This is what Alice's day time looked like last week before her afternoon naps went pearshaped this week and she stopped the catnap.

7am wake feed
9.30am sleep
10am wake
11am feed
1pm sleep
2.30-3pm wake
3pm feed
5-5.15pm sleep
6pm bath
6.30pm feed
7.30 sleep

This week it's looked more like

6.30 am wake
9 am sleep
10am wake
11am feed
1pm sleep (then she wakes at 40 mins and I spend however long it takes to get her back to sleep again, Mon it took and hour and a quarter, yesterday 40 mins, today 30 mins)
3.30pm wake and feed.  Then she hasn't slept again and we've bathed her at 6pm (because we've been trying to get her sleep)
6pm bath
6.20pm feed (then she poos and needs her nappy changed)
7.30pm bed.

Not sure what to suggest, maybe others can help.  I just keep her up and she does it, I do have to distract her and then make sure I do the wind down before naps etc.

Sorry I can't be more help, you do sound very frustrated.

Pauline

[gleek]

yeah, my daughter will freak out if she has too much A time. no matter how much wind-down time we will do, she'll cry and cry when i go to put her down for her nap. wind-down time with her is very short because sometimes she cannot just relax and the low-key activities just make her frustrated. just now i put her down for her third nap (because her second nap was only 45 min) and after only 1.5 hours awake, she was hysterical and i needed to rock her to calm her down. i hope that she sleeps more than an hour.

i am very frustrated because she does so well with the 3 naps per day. when all goes that way, she sleeps through the night and all is peaceful. she goes down easy for all her naps and bedtime. it's heaven! yesterday, we tried for the cat nap for 45 minutes before i got upset and gave up, so it was close to 5PM and she had been up since 2:15! i raced through her pre-bedtime routine and got her into bed 45 minutes later with some difficulty. she had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. i'm in a pickle.

i'm beginning to think that i should just keep increasing her second A time until she gets used to it and sleeps through that nap and then drop her cat nap. anyone else have any ideas? this is the schedule that i'm working towards:

6:30AM - wake
9AM - sleep
10:30AM - wake
1:30PM - sleep
3:30PM - wake
6PM/6:30PM - sleep

it would be great if she could sleep till 7AM. she has in the past couple of weeks a few times but not consistently. if she could sleep till 7AM then maybe her father could see her in the evenings when he gets home from work otherwise, he'll see her when she turns 2 or 3 

[Lippy Chick]

I'm not sure I've got it right.  Are you trying to get rid of the catnap or is she not sleeping at that time of day?

For Alice's wind down I've started using a DVD called BabyIQ.  It has pictures and music by the London Symphony Orchestra and you talk about what's on the screen.  The first couple of days I showed it to her she cried, I think because it was making her sleepy.  Now she loves them and smiles at some of the pictures when they come on.  The ones I have are "the world around us" and "counting".  I'm getting a bit bored of them and so am going to get more.  I watch it for about 5-7 mins and then take her into a quiet room and watch the trees for about 5 mins.  This seems to help with her wind down and by this point she's yawning and so I put her to bed.  Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly tired, I'll just let her watch the pictures quietly, but I do prefer to talk her through them.  She sits perfectly through it and would watch it all day given half a chance.  I don't know if you've considered something like this, I'm also thinking about getting some classical lullaby CDs to help with the wind down too.

Maybe she's just not ready to transition to 2 naps and maybe keep trying to extend her A time until you feel she can cope with it.  Have you tried W2S in the morning to extend her sleep in the morning?  Alice was waking at 6.15 every morning and so we did that for about a week and it does seem to have worked.  Now her wake times vary every morning, from 6am to needing to wake her at 7.20am. 

Not sure what else to suggest.

Pauline

[gleek]

her wake times really vary. a long time ago, it used to be 6AM! but anywhere between 6:30 and 7:00 is totally bearable. i'm so used to it now!

well, i'm trying to get rid of the cat nap because she seems to not want it when she takes two decent naps per day. it's when she bunks a nap that we're able to get in another one to compensate. the main problem is that her A time is not long enough to get her to a 12 hour day/12 hour night pattern with only two naps. she really needs the 12 hour day to sleep through the night. it's a very delicate balance. even if she gets the two good naps in (anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours each) then i'm still putting her down at like 5:30/6:00PM and she hasn't been awake long enough during the day to be properly tired to sleep through.

we'll see. today she did three naps (1.5 hours, 45 min, and 1 hour) and i'm suspecting that i'll put her down around 6:45. if she sleeps through then i think i know what to do. i need to stay and increase that second A time until she can properly handle it and lengthen that 45 min nap all on her own. then dropping the cat nap will work.

[skatty]

Gleek I think the night she kept waking after going to bed OT was because of her being OT before bed rather than not enough A time, if it was not enough A time shes have had trouble geting to sleep in the first place. I have had to put Leorah down as early as 4.30pm before (at 10 months!) and she still sleeps until her normal wake up, early bed is our best friend when it comes to changes in routine, its only temporary and if it means avoiding accumalated OT it is so worth it (I have been there!). Once they drop a nap it can take a few weeks for their bodies to adjust but they will soon be able to go to bed at a reasonable time still and you dont have a cranky baby on żour hands 

[Aly Mac]

Skatty i was going to suggest the same thing.  Try a few nights of going to bed early, wth just 2 naps and hopefully she will sleep through again for you.  then you will find that both A times will be able to extended, gently, just 5 mns at a time. I did this when L was going through it, and still do sometimes if her naps are horrid (she has 45mins naps sometimes).  Like today - two lots of 45 naps so she is off at 5.30 and wakes at 6 and we start the day afresh!

hth

[EllenS]

We got into such a mess at 6.5 mos that I artificially "forced" a catnap on her by incorporating a walk in the stroller every day between 4-5 pm.

She tried dropping the nap, got OT, started waking early and having short naps, and could not extend her A time b/c of short naps.  So we'd have days where she was up for the day at 5:30 and done with her second nap at 1:15 pm!  I could not put her to bed at 4pm!

The stroller helped, sometimes it was her longest nap of the day.  Now we seem to have come out the other side, she's started taking 1h 20 - 1h 40 min naps, and can do 3 - 3.5 h A time.  If she's up at 6, she naps approx 9a to 10:30 and 1:30p to 3p.

She'll be 9 months next week, - it was a long transition for us.

[gleek]

what time do you put her to bed then?

i can't count on the stroller for a cat nap anymore she's so alert these days that sometimes all she can do is look around at the trees and people! i tried to force a cat nap on her like this once and she cried so hard. it was all i could do to rush home and put her to bed.

we generally have two good naps a day if i don't push the A time too hard. we'll see today. she slept like a champ last night after having the three naps yesterday. if i can get two naps to be long, i'll drop the cat nap and put her to bed early.

[~*~Little Miss Sunshine~*~]

gleek - what worked for us when trying to get ds to catnap in the stroller was to put a blanket over the top so he couldn't look all over the place!  Works like a charm!  (Thanks Ellen!!)