6 mos; lots of changes

[sprinke]

DS is almost six months and we have seen a lot of changes in the past few days. He is doing a lot of new developmental milestones like learning to sit himself up, trying to pull himself up, and we just started feeding him solids too.

Lately he has been fighting naps really hard and some of them are getting shorter. Sometimes he fights the entire 3rd nap (catnap) and doesn't take it at all -- we will give up after about 30 min and just go straight to a short time of quiet play then bath/feeding/wind-down and then early bed.

It's hard for us to tell if he's fighting because he isn't tired yet or is overtired. Sometimes I think it's one and sometimes the other.

When should we be thinking about extending his A time? Right now we usually try to put him down for the nap after no more than 2 hours 15 min, but sometimes with the fighting and PU/PD he is awake almost 3 hours.

[vadensmommy]

Around 6mo there are just so many changes, and yes, it can be really hard to read your lo and what their cues are because everything is changing and nothing is consistent!  That being said, yes you probably can start to stretch those A times.  If your lo was handling 2hrs well at 4mo - when many babies move to a 4hr EASY, and he is 2mo older, but only staying awake 15min longer, AND you are having to fight to get him to go down for a nap, I would think you might start trying for more like 2.5hrs of A time, maybe a bit more between the AM and PM nap and see if that helps.  This was also about the age that dd started fighting her catnaps, and I really just didn't fight her.  If it was time, and she seemed tired, we'd try.  If she fought it, we did the same, just did quiet activity for going down for an early bedtime.  Took a few weeks for her to really get used to that longer A time at the end of the day, but it eventually came and sorted itself out.  I've heard another mom describe the catnap at that age as a "freebie" and if they took it, great, and if not, nothing to "loose sleep" over iykwim. 

[Grace's Mom]

How are things going?

-Melissa

[sprinke]

I'm sad to say, very poorly. Every naptime is a crying battle of at least 30-40 minutes and last night's bedtime he fought for over 2 hours.   

[vadensmommy]

Bless his heart.  And your too!  That can be SOOOOooo frustrating!  Do you think he might be teething?  Right when dd was learning to crawl we had an entire week of really really really bad naptimes.  And really the naps themselves weren't so bad, but the GETTING her to sleep was the hard part.  I wasn't sure if she was having issues because of milestones, or because of teething, even though there were no teeth popping through and I couldn't feel anything.  I started medicating her, and it really helped.  I still don't know if it was milestones or teeth, and I felt a bit guilty about giving meds without a clear reason, but it helped so I did it.  She still doesn't have any teeth  but I know they'll pop through one day!  All that to say, have you tried any meds, talked with your dr, had his ears checked, etc?

[sprinke]

No, he's not teething (he already has 6 teeth and that's enough for now!). We have his 6-mo checkup on Friday so we'll see what the doc says. He is not showing any signs of pain anywhere though.

It's just frustrating when we spend 1.5 hours of crying and fighting for a 30-min nap.

I'm sorely tempted to do some accidental parenting just to get him to sleep. He is chronically overtired now and it's making it even harder to get him to sleep. His eyes are red-rimmed from lack of sleep and crying so much, and he has dark circles under his eyes. I feel so bad for my poor baby! 

[vadensmommy]

Poor guy
I know what you mean about the AP just to get a nap or two.  I've done it myself a bit.  DD is an angel baby, so I haven't ever had to pay a huge price for doing it like I know some moms have.  I hope your doctor can give you some insight!!!  Keep us posted on how things go!

[MJMom]

Oh, I really could have written your post not that long ago!  About 3 weeks in fact!  Here is my tale!  We're still working through some things, but it has gotten a LOT better!

https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=104971.0;all

Give your LO PLENTY of A time to practice those new skills!  I would spend 30 minutes just letting her stand up, helping her sit down, go to lying position, over and over.  Good news is, she can get herself down now too! 

Now that they are more mobile, the wind down is even more important.  Our wind down can last up to 30 minutes now for a nap.  This means, the wind down starts before your LO shows tired signs.  This helps calm the muscles and relax a bit before laying down in the crib.  Then when he shows the tired signs during the wind down, he is more likely to give a clear signal and be rested enough to go to sleep.

I would caution against AP right now.  A teeny tiny bit for a nap or two won't hurt, but too much and it'll be hard to get him out of the habit.  I never AP'd until my LO learned these new skills.  Luckily we were able to get her out of it fairly quickly, but it was a nice wake up call when I realized I had AP'd her so her naps were not as good.

Do you have Tracy's 3rd book?  I ask because the details on PU/PD are much more detailed than in the first book. 

HTH! 

I'm still working through these too, but now that I'm on the other side, I definitely see the long wind down is key!

[sprinke]

MJMom ... that's encouraging. Yes, he is spending a lot of time sitting up and trying to stand up in the crib when we put him down to sleep. I really really want to believe that it's just a developmental phase because he was going down for naps and bedtime pretty well just a couple of weeks ago. We are trying to give him really low-key quiet playtime before naps (very few toys) and our wind-down takes about 10 minutes.

And yes, we have the 3rd book, since you asked. It's been much more useful to us than the first two.

[MJMom]

Take a re-read of the Pick Up/Put Down chapter.  When I re-read it, I realized where DH and I were going wrong with the PU/PD.  Especially the 6-8 mo section and the Dirty Dozen.  I realized that had we done PU/PD properly from the beginning with the increased mobility, then we wouldn't have had the issues as long as we did.
Our DD would sit up, and then start sobbing because she was so tired.     It was sad, yet cute at the same time. 
If you think of PU/PD as tool to help them learn to sleep, it could be beneficial. 

Hope my other post helps you!  It would be lovely if you didn't have to go through 3 weeks of this and just a week! 

[sprinke]

Alissa, I'll read the chapter again, since when we started PU/PD with him we were using the 4-6 month techniques. We actually mostly let him work it out on his own these days since he isn't really getting that worked up where we feel that PU is necessary.

I'm very happy that this morning he took a 2-hour nap; hopefully it wasn't a fluke.

[vadensmommy]

Alissa - very much enjoyed your post about your experience with pu/pd.  I am going to have to read up on pu/pd - we've never done it either really as dd has always been very easy, but with learning to pull up more and more, and walking in our future, I want to have the "guns loaded" iykwim. 

Debi how are things going?

[MJMom]

in our case, she generally wasn't getting worked up either.  She would just stand and do the happy jig until she got tired and then was like 'hey! I'm tired!  Why am I not sleeping!"  then get upset and OT.  So sad... really... but yet funny at the same time!